Question NAS Performance-Raid vs Single Volume

[markc23]

Greetings. I have a Qnap ts-231p 2 drive NAS. Originally I had a 2 terabyte and a 1 terabyte drive installed as single volume. I then bought 2 4 terabyte drives and installed as raid. My question is, does single volume perform better than a raid volume? I'm not terribly concerned about redundancy as I back up regularly to an external drive. I would be doubling my capacity if I change the configuration to single volume as well. I understand that with RAID if a drive fails I can keep functioning until its replaced and that may not be so with single volume. Thanks for any help.
-Mark

 

[colonelcorto]

What RAID levels are you comparing? With two 4tb drives you’d get 8tb in RAID0, or 4tb in RAID1 (mirror). You have no other RAID options with only two drives. RAID 0 has no redundancy protection.

 

[markc23]

Thank you. I currently have RAID 1, is RAID 0 faster?

What RAID levels are you comparing? With two 4tb drives you’d get 8tb in RAID0, or 4tb in RAID1 (mirror). You have no other RAID options with only two drives. RAID 0 has no redundancy protection.

 

[USAFRet]

2 drives = RAID 0 or RAID 1.

RAID 1 (mirrored) is the only case where "I understand that with RAID if a drive fails I can keep functioning until its replaced " holds true.
Of course, with 2x 4TB drives that is only a 4TB volume.

And as always, performance is dictated by the slowest device in the chain. RAID 0 would be absolutely wasted, because the speed of a typical LAN is the limiting factor.

 

[markc23]

Thank you. If I understand you correctly, the only benefit to moving to RAID 0 is to increase capacity if needed, and there would be no speed or performance increase in RAID 0.

2 drives = RAID 0 or RAID 1.

RAID 1 (mirrored) is the only case where "I understand that with RAID if a drive fails I can keep functioning until its replaced " holds true.
Of course, with 2x 4TB drives that is only a 4TB volume.

And as always, performance is dictated by the slowest device in the chain. RAID 0 would be absolutely wasted, because the speed of a typical LAN is the limiting factor.

 

[USAFRet]

Thank you. If I understand you correctly, the only benefit to moving to RAID 0 is to increase capacity if needed, and there would be no speed or performance increase in RAID 0.

Not even to increase capacity.

2 x 4TB + RAID 0 = 8TB
2 x 4TB w/ No RAID 0 = 8TB.

Your Qnap should give the volume of option simply combining the 2 drives space, no RAID 0 needed.