Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110... Time Machine = Good, Network Transfer Speed = BAD

I recently bought a Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110 1TB Network Attached Storage device as it has full support for Time Machine backups over the network.

Installation was simple, just hook the box up to my Gigabit Router, plug in the power and pop in the CD in your SuperDrive.  The application that installs finds the NAS quickly and lets you mount your shares from it and also allows for management of the system.  The web management interface is fairly straight forward and I was able to start building my shares quickly.  Once I had those setup, I went to Time Machine and clicked on "Select Drive".  Guess what, nothing listed :(

After spending some time researching (should have just gone to Seagate's support site first), I found out that the firmware the unit ships with does not include support for Time Machine.  You need to download and install firmware version 1000.1081 to enable that feature.  So after about 10 minutes of updating the firmware (yeah it takes a while) and enabling Time Machine support in the admin interface, I was able to see the network drive pop up in Time Machine.  At this point, I was fairly happy with my investment as I can just sit back and let Time Machine do it's thing (and it didn't cost me $300+ for a Time Capsule).

Now on the the bad news.  Seeing that I don't really need 1TB to backup my 160GB SSD, I decided to move some of my music and movies from my Windows 7 machine over to the NAS 110.  I selected about 400GB and told it to copy over and I'm sorry to say, was NOT impressed with the copy speed.  Windows 7 reported approximately 11.1MB/sec and that it would take 24 hours to complete.  Now I know what some of you will say, 11.1MB/sec is not bad.  Yeah, I can agree with that if I was getting that when copying between other systems on my 1000MB network.  I typically see anywhere from 20 - 40 MB/sec when copying from my Windows 7 system to my MacBook Pro or my HTPC.  So I started looking online to see if other people are reporting the same problems and guess what, they are (really should have researched better).  There seems to be some known issues with this unit and D-Link routers (I use a Cisco E3000 router) and a number of people complaining on the Seagate forums about horrible speed.

I did some tests using a 700MB file and ran copies between the NAS and my MacBook Pro and Windows 7 system.  Here are the results:

NAS 110 -> MacBook Pro = 39MB/sec (Activity Monitor)
MacBook Pro -> NAS 110 = 18MB/sec (Activity Monitor)

NAS 110 -> Windows 7 = 16MB/Sec (Windows File Copy)
Windows 7 -> NAS 110 = 13MB/sec (Windows File Copy)

Windows 7 -> MacBook Pro = 42MB/sec (Activity Monitor)
MacBook Pro -> Windows 7 = 31MB/sec (Activiy Monitor)

So at this time, I'm torn as to what to do with this device.  Some people in the forums have suggested putting a 1000MB switch in between the router and computers to speed up network performance.  I'm considering trying this to see if that helps, but seeing that other machines are copying at a much faster rate, I'm not sure it will.

Either way, I will do my due diligence and pick up a switch to see.  If that doesn't help, I'll likely have to live with the sub-par performance as I don't want to spend $300+ on a Time Capsule.

UPDATE:

Well, I decided to try removing my router from the picture (as many people on the forums have suggested) and just ran a network cable from the NAS to my Windows 7 machine.  EXACT SAME RESULTS!  I even used a brand new CAT 6 cable and nothing changed :(

I'm going to try some Windows 7 tweaks as I am seeing better performance from my MacBook to the NAS, so maybe that will help. 

Until then, my recommendation on the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110 is this...  If you want a cheap solution for Time Machine, buy it.  If you are looking for a NAS that will be quick to copy files to and from over a Gigabit network, look elsewhere.