ioSafe N2 review

The ioSafe N2 runs the excellent Synology DSM 4.3 operating system

To test the data transfer speed of the ioSafe N2 we installed two 3TB Western Digital Red disks and transferred files between it and a test PC. As this is a two-bay enclosure, you can choose between a number of different RAID types, including JBOD, RAID1, RAID0 and Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR), although SHR defaults to what is effectively a RAID1 volume.

It’s incredibly important to use RAID1 or similar to keep a redundant copy of the data you store on the ioSafe N2. If you instead opt for a configuration without redundancy, such as JBOD or RAID0, you’ll get more space, but all the fire and flood protection in the world can’t protect you against data loss through drive failure.

With the drives configured as SHR, the N2 produced a large file write speed of 65.6MB/s and read speed of 59.4MB/s in our SMB throughput test, making an average of 62.5MB/s. The small file test produced a write speed of 15MB/s, read of 18.8MB/s, making an average of 16.9MB/s.

We also configured the N2 as an iSCSI target, which lets a user use the device as if it’s a local disk, but it made little impact on our large file transfer speeds. In fact, they were a little slower, with a write speed of 58MB/s and read of 60MB/s. Small files copied across much more quickly, though, with a write speed of 45.9MB/s and read speed of 33.2MBs.

The ioSafe N2 is seems expensive when compared to a device such as the Synology DS213j, but if you store critical financial, design or corporate data, the N2’s disaster-proofing and recovery service could be the difference between life and death for your business. If data is your company’s lifeblood, then this the perfect Business Buy.