Go Flex Home - improvement or additions?

[dangermouse]

Hello. First post, don't hate me....

I recently bought a Seagate 2TB Go Flex Home (clearance priced). I haven't done anything like this before and I"m trying to figure out...
Does using these modified firmware(s) actually increase the native sluggish performance, or is it just to add extra features?

I looked but can't seem to find any comparisons to before and after performance... so I'm guessing it's just adding extra feature, but I"m not sure.

[moonman]

This isn't really a firmware, but rather a full blown OS. And by performance you mean network throughput? I don't know what the stock firmware is like since as soon as brought it home I put arch on it, but with arch i get around 30mB/s read and write over samba.

[dangermouse]

Sure, sure... I just think of any code that gets loaded right from a chip as firmware pretty much... probably just showing my age.

Yes, my prime concern is just basic file access over the network, for backups and home 'cloud' storage. I might be interested in messing with video file streaming, but that's secondary to just best overall performance. So if the community OS doesn't do much anything to improve speed/connectivity, I think I might just avoid the project and use the Go Flex Home as is.

[moonman]

There isn't much you can do since most of the time the throughput is limited by the CPU. Usually you will find newer versions of the software with the ARCH ARM (samba 2/3 vs 4 here for example). I did notice a speed improvement with samba 4, also you have the ability to tune the performance with different options while with stock you are stuck with what it comes with.