NAS Roundup

Pardon me while I diverge into geekdom for a minute...

Since I wasn't totally satisfied with the performance of the 2 Network Attached Storage (NAS) units we had, I recently purchased a much more robust one.  I wanted to run some tests to see how much better the new unit with my type of usage.

The NAS units

NAS Unit	Disks	RAID Type
QNAP TS-419P	4 x Western Digital Green 1TB	RAID-5
D-Link DNS-323	2 x Western Digital 500GB	RAID-1
Linksys NAS200	2 x Western Digital 500GB	RAID-1

The first thing you'll notice is that the 3 NAS units I have have slightly different configurations. Keep this in mind as you read the remainder of this article, these different configurations are sure to figure in the overall results.

Test Process

While the NAS configurations aren't totally consistent, I did use a consistent set of parameters to run my tests. I copied two sets of files to/from the NAS units using Microsoft's RichCopy utility:

• Movie - 1 file: 4.3GB
• Photo Collection - 8,900 files: 8.94GB

Test Results

The following chart summarizes the results of my tests.

Observations

The first time that stands out is that the QNAP enclosure is substantially faster than the other two with one exception.  The QNAP lost out to the D-Link in the write test of the photo collection.  The likely explanation for this is the fact that, in general, write operations on a RAID-5 have more overhead compared to simple mirroring as in RAID-1.  In all other tests, in particular the read tests, the QNAP unit performs significantly better.

Another observation not captured by the raw data pertains to working with a smaller amount of files (as in, when editing 1-2 photos for example).  Under these circumstances, the write operations appear to be nearly instantenous with the QNAP, something that I didn't really notice with the other two units.  I'm guessing that the QNAP does a lot more caching than the D-Link and Linksys.  Clearly, that cache isn't large enough to impact the write tests which used such a large amount of data.

All in all I have been very happy with the QNAP TS-419P.  While it is a pricier unit compared to the other two, the added performance (in addition to the feature sets) made it a worthwhile purchase.

Clearly, the Québecois make you sick...

Not a hugely exciting day this morning.  Woke up this morning with a rather sore throat, thinking it must be as a result of the rather dry air in our hotel room.  It turns out that it's more than that, as I seem to be suffering some *gasp* flu-like symptoms.  Good news is that I haven't started growing a snout just yet ;)

After having breakfast at a bakery, we hit up Épicerie J. A. Moisan to look for some cheese.  The store is quite neat, and is apparently North America's oldest grocery store.  In addition to cheese, we bought frozen peas; gotta keep the cheese cool for the duration of the flight, right?

Before Cath and her husband started heading back to Ottawa, they dropped us off at a mall, where we killed some time before catching a taxi to the airport.  We've got about 2.5 hours before taking off, but hey, the airport has free wireless!

Québec City: Plains, Citadels, and other closed things

We were up and around about 8am this morning and were out the door shortly after 9am.  Some people (*cough*Henry*cough*) filed a complaint about scaling the hills on the way to old Québec yesterday, so the plan today was to drive around.

We spent part of the morning looking for breakfast.  As we had noticed yesterday, November is very much a quiet time when it comes to tourism.  As such, many places are closed for the season (including our first choice for breakfast: Restaurant Toast!).  Thankfully, Cess was superbly prepared and had a second choice ready.  We ate at Panache, a restaurant inside a fairly swanky hotel.  Between the four of us, we had a variety of French toast, traditional Québecoise pancakes, and eggs.

Next up, we spent a couple of hours exploring the Plains of Abraham and the enclosed citadel.  Unfortunately, at this time of the year the citadel only offers one tour a day, at a time that was not going to work for us.  Regardless, it was still an interesting place to see, despite the rather cool and overcast weather.

One of the places that Cath had scoped for us to visit was Île D'Orléans.  We drove around the majority of the island, stopping for a light lunch at a bakery (La Boulange).  We also visited a winery where we got a couple of bottles of locally made Port wine.   Just like yesterday, we weren't really hungry at dinner time. We still ate at a local pub and then picked up some hot caffienated beverages at a nearby café.

Martello Tower, Plains of Abraham:

Québec City: Bonjour!

Bonjour, mes amis!  Hier nous sommes arrivés sans risque à l'aéroport.  Ma soeur et son mari nous ont pris et alors nous avons conduit à l'hôtel. 

Translation: Hello, my friends!  Yesterday we arrived safely at the airport.  My sister and her husband picked us up and then we drove to the hotel.  (Yes, I cheated and used Babelfish.  My French is a little, um, lacking.)

Let's just backtrack a little to before arriving in la belle province.  Matt and I had a little adventure getting to our gate at Pearson.  We drove around Pearson twice because we missed the sign telling us where we needed to go to drop off our rental car.  We wandered around Terminal 1 for a good 10-15 minutes until we finally figured out that oops, WestJet flies out of Terminal 3.  When we finally got to Terminal 3, we were unable to use the automated check-in machines and were forced to check-in at the counter where the customer service representative rolled her eyes at us and sighed heavily.  After going through the security check (where they swabbed our one bag for "bomb residue", good times), we walked quickly to our gate.  On the way there, we got a really nice text message from my sister letting us know that they would be picking us up at the airport  Sweet!

After we settled down at our hotel, we went out to in search of food.  We ended up at this nice place called Mo Resto-Bar and had a really nice meal.  I had a veal burger and Matt had a duck confit pizza.  After dinner, we wandered over to Brulerie St-Roch and had a cappuccino and a hot chocolate.

Today we started out by having breakfast at De Blanchet where I was "volunteered" to order breakfast for everyone.  Croissants and coffees all around!  After breakfast, we walked about 10 minutes to catch the Ecobus to the lower part of Vieux Québec.  We spent the day exploring the area on foot.  There were tons of little boutiques interspersed between historical buildings and churches.  We had a huge meal at Le Cochon Dingue and continued exploring.  It is now 9pm and we're STILL not hungry.  I think we're going to skip dinner. 

A Tale of Two Cities

As a combination birthday and name day present, we sent Matt's parents to Québec City for a mini vacation.  They left on Thursday evening and returned on Sunday evening.  When we picked them up from the airport on Sunday, they were all smiles.  What a fantastic experience for them!  And if they're reading this, maybe they would be willing to share some photos and write a few words about their trip so that we can post it here.  Heehee.  =)

Since Matt's parents were out of town, we took a short trip of our own.  After a quick breakfast on Saturday morning, we headed out to Prince Edward County.  Our first stop of many that day was at Huff Estates Winery.  After purchasing a few bottles, we decided that we should find somewhere to stop for lunch.  We wandered into the Marshmallow Room Bakery & Tea Shop.  With a name like that, who could resist!  We purchased 2 slices of tarts (a sour cherry, peach, and chocolate slice for me, I can't remember what Matt's slice was right now) and 2 oatmeal raisin cookies.  Pastries for lunch, mmm.  After gobbling down our tarts, we headed across the street to Slickers Ice Cream for dessert.  Campfire crème.  Yummy!

After lunch, we stopped in at Black Prince Winery.  Next, we stopped in at the County's only micro brewery, Barley Days Brewery.  We left both places with a few items.  Good thing we had lots of room in the trunk! 

Next, we stopped in Picton.  We parked in one of the free parking lots and then meandered up and down Main St. and some side streets.  We managed to wander into Buddha Dog.  Yes, there *is* such a thing as gourmet hot dogs.  =)  They're small on size, but big on flavour once you add locally produced cheese and a sauce dreamed up by local chefs and made using locally sourced ingredients.  (Lucky for us, there's a Buddha Dog in Toronto, with their own locally sourced sauces.  I think we'll have to go investigate it at a later date.)  After finishing our gourmet dogs, we went to Bean Counter to pickup some caffeinated beverages.  It is located a couple of doors down from Buddha Dog.  Although they had gelato, I resisted temptation.  After more wandering, we went back to the car and headed to our accommodations for the night to check-in.  Seeing as it was only about 4:45pm after our check-in, we hit up one more winery, Waupoos Estates Winery.  A winery on waterfront property.  Wow.  It was very picturesque.  A few more bottles found their way into the trunk. 

Seeing as we didn't make any dinner reservations, we thought we might have a better chance by having an early dinner.  We arrived at Harvest just before 6pm.  We were told they were fully booked, but we could come back at 9pm.  Yikes.  Next, we tried Angéline's, located across the street from Harvest.  It was a little fancier than we were prepared for.  We ate dinner at the Barley Room, a lively local pub.  We indulged in an almond encrusted brie for an appetizer and baby back ribs basted with a blackberry smoked barbecue sauce.  Very tasty!

In the morning, we enjoyed a lazy breakfast at our B&B.  As we were getting ready to head out, we discovered that the husband of our host had a passion for classic cars.  We had an impromptu tour of his private collection, what a treat! 

After breakfast, we stopped in at Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Company and Black River Cheese Company.  Amazing cheeses.  We'll be making some day trips in the future to get some more!  For lunch, we went to Blumen.  We lucked out and had their gazebo area all to ourselves.  Our final stop before heading back to Toronto was at Sandbanks Estate Winery.  They had a self-guided vineyard tour that allowed us to explore their grounds.  We purchased our final bottles, and finally headed home.

Matt feedback on the wines:  It was a hit and miss; there were some decent stuff but overall at a higher price than Niagara equivalents.

So what did we have for dinner that night?  Why, a platter of fine cheeses and a variety of meats along with a bottle of wine.  ;)

Indianapolis GP: Race Day!

On race day, we got to the Speedway while the 125cc race was underway.  Cess and I immediately headed for our seats, while our friends checked out vendors row.  Our seats worked out extremely well as they were high enough that we could see (and take pictures) of the action without having any of the safety barriers and fences in the line of sight.  The 125cc race was very competitive right to the end where one of the riders crashed in the last turn of the race.  He was obviously fine as he hopped up, picked up his bike and finished the race, but we still felt bad for him.  Lousy way to lose a few spots right at the end.

Next up was the 250cc race, which while still good, wasn't quite as competitive.  The top 2 riders remained 1-2 the entire race.  But hey, at least Aprilia had a strong showing taking 3 of the top 4 spots!

Before the main GP race started, Kevin Schwantz did a few parade laps around the track on his '93 championship bike.  Itwas awesome to see a racing legend of the past on the track.  Despite being in his 50s, he was still moving at a pretty brisk pace. He wheelied down the straight!!

By about 3pm it was time for the GP bikes to hit the track.  The race itself was decided pretty early with both Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa crashing in the first few laps, basically handing the race to Jorge Lorenzo.  Rossi's bike was damaged and he was unable to continue, while Pedrosa eventually got back into the race... in last place.  Over the remaining 20 or so laps, we were treated to an absolutely incredible show by Pedrosa.  He was clearly the fastest man on the track and lap by lap we watched him closing in and passing other riders.  When everything was said and done he managed to move up 7 spots to finish 10th.  Knowing how far back he was, it was an incredible feat.

The overall atmosphere was great, the sights and sounds intoxicating.  The one thing I found quite odd was that there were only about 60-70,000 people at the race.  Hundreds of thousands attend boring NASCAR races at the same venue.  I just don't get it.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  We hit the road to head home right after the race, and walked in through the door at about 3am on Monday morning. 

Indianapolis GP: Qualifying

One thing that we worked in during our trip planning was meeting up with one of our World of Warcraft guild members, Kallesto.  He drove 3 hours to come and spend the day with us and experience some of our motorcycle culture.  Thanks for coming out!   

We got to the Indianapolis Speedway at about 1pm, just as the 125cc bikes were finishing up qualifying.  The MotoGP bikes were up next.  Cess and I watched a portion of the qualifying from the inside of the track around turns 2 and 3 before moving to our assigned seats, section J, located just before the main straight.

The weather was great the whole day and hearing the bikes up close was quite an experience.  You can totally distinguish each of the bikes based on sound alone.  While the roar is pretty loud, we haven't felt the need to break out the earplugs just yet.  We'll see if that changes today on race day.

One quick pic from yesterday:

Motorcycle gear galore

Before heading on to Indianapolis, we stopped off at Iron Pony Motorsports, the largest motorcycle gear shop in this part of the US.  The store is absolutely huge, and there are some really good deals to be had.  We spent about 4 hours at the store and between the 5 of us, we purchased 2 large cartloads worth of gear.  Cess and I got some super deals on:

• Dainese perforated leather jacket (for me)
• Dainese textile pants (for me)
• 2 MotoGP jackets (for Cess); one leather, one textile
• Fieldsheer mesh textile pants (for Cess)

With these buys, we'll be able to replace some gear that we've had for a few years and is now in need of replacing.

Iron Pony Motorsports:

Gear:

On the way to the Indy GP

We're spending this weekend at the Indianapolis Grand Prix, one of the races on the MotoGP circuit (the premier motorcycle racing class in the world).  There are 5 of us going to the races, so we all met at a friend's house in Mississauga.  We'll be in his car the entire trip, so we get to be backseat drivers, woowoo!  We crossed into the U.S. with no incidents at the border.  After nearly 700 kilometres, we arrived at our hotel just outside Columbus, Ohio.

We're not dead yet!

Matt makes it sound like we died on our trip (re: Matt's postmortem).  Of course, that's somewhat fitting as it looks like I'm a corpse on a picnic bench.  Thanks, Matt!  ;)  So let's see.  What sort of trip summary can I come up with?  My apologies in advance; mine won't be as neatly organized as Matt's.  And certainly more long-winded.

It was somewhat amusing that we decided to do this trip after replacing our bikes and not before.  Suddenly we had "high performance bikes" that were new and unfamiliar to us.  They had bigger engines, but smaller gas tanks and demanded high-octane fuel.  And then there was Matt's little "incident" with my new bike that resulted in road-testing my newly installed frame sliders and bar ends and a trip to Mount Sinai's emergency room.  Yes, life got very exciting, very fast.

Prep work and pre-planning were certainly made less tedious because we split up the work.  Matt worked on the route while I worked on researching accommodations and sightseeing.  Matt gets all the credit for making sure our bikes were prepped (how sexy are those windscreens and frame sliders!) along with researching and acquiring the majority of our bike luggage.  I must say, having luggage on the bikes was a bit of an eye-opening experience.  It probably took us easily 45 minutes the very first time we loaded up the bikes.  By the end of our trip that came down to 5 minutes or less.  Where did I fail with the luggage?  I over packed!  But that's not unexpected if you know me.  I have a much better idea of how to pack less and pack more efficiently for next time.  Really!  I mean it! 

I have absolutely no doubt our Frogg Toggs and H2Out gloves made our rain days far less disgusting than they could have been.  Although we weren't 100% dry, they offered us far greater comfort than if we were without these items.  Our Scala units were absolutely fantastic.  The only time they let us down was on the two really long days (Gananoque to Portland, and Trois-Rivières to Toronto) when they ran out of juice, and really, that was our own fault.  The second long day wasn't so bad because we were on our way home and riding on familiar roads.  That first long day?  Wow.  We were riding in the dark, in heavy rain, at the end of a really long day, in the silence of our own helmets, on unfamiliar roads.  I found it to be mentally exhausting.  In future, we'll know to figure in some riding time with the intercom turned off to ensure that we'll be able to use them throughout the day.

Oh right!  The trip: I had a wonderful time.  Despite all the rain, the construction zones, and our impromtu off-roading moments.  It was an awesome experience.  Touring on a Ducati Monster was pretty comfortable.  Of course, I think I have a bit more padding on my seat and my butt than Matt.  Hahaha.  =)

Will we go to Nova Scotia again?  Yes!  Will we go on more multi-day bike rides?  Yes!  Hmm.  When and where?  Give us some ideas! =)