FreeNAS & USB, Network, HD Transfer Rates / Speeds

I am currently setting up a FreeNAS (www.freenas.org) server for my home and that sparked my interest in ACTUAL transfer speeds among my various mediums. Before I dive into that I'll let the not so savvy in on what FreeNAS is and its capabilities.

FreeNAS is a a FREE Network Attached Storage operating system that you can load on older machines like Pentium4 PCs. It's for people who want one location to keep adding and sharing drives with whomever they choose. The OS is based on FreeBSD which is a ROCK SOLID OS. A million times stabler than Windows, yeah I said it! I will be using it for the following:

• Combining my drives and using software RAID to automatically back up everything. If setup correctly, it can keep my files available even if one of my drives crashes.
• Streaming Media Server to my XBox360 for watching downloaded shows
  
• Streaming iTunes server to share my music
  

So the following is a test I did in a real business environment (I rounded a bit on the MAX theoretical rates):



Now currently I have 2 x 500GB USB drives and 1 x 1TB USB drive which all have a whole bunch of shows scattered on them. I have them formatted in Windows NTFS. However, FreeNAS DOES NOT RECOMMEND using NTFS. It recommends formatting to UFS which is touted to be faster, more efficient and more secure.



Pretty sad right now at 6MB/s. I am going to try and backup everything this weekend and try to use the recommended UFS on my drives. My goal is to upgrade my network to a gigabit network and be able to transfer my 700MB shows at 20-30MB/s via LAN. Which would be around 30 seconds to copy a show. Why? Because I want to be as close to the max speed of my USB drive as possible. It essentially will be my only bottleneck.

For now, I have a 7 port USB hub running FreeNAS off a laptop. I use USB drives because it just makes my life easier to plug them in a hub and I really don't need SATA speed.

I will post instructions on my setup and how it went with UFS soon. Until then, here are some videos and links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8-DrhYKTFE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S8ixAR4Opo

http://www.lagesse.org/freenas-tutorial-for-windows-users-part-one-installation/

http://www.hexteq.net/2009/07/17/freenas-tutorial-part-1-introduction-to-freenas/