HDD connection Speeds?

[Justin Passing]

I need a backup drive around 8-10TB
What's the speed difference between using an external on USB3, versus internally?


I have a caddy with a 4tb b-u-d in it so could use that space for another drive instead/swap.
The prices seem to be much the same, some externals are qite cheap (<£200)
Thanks


Oh there are different USB3's - I only have USB 3.0.

 

[Captain Nemesis]

USB 3.0 Up to 5Gb/s
USB 3.1 Up to 10Gb/s
SATA 3 Up to 6Gb/s
SAS-4 Up to 22.5Gb/s
Thunderbolt 3 Up to 40Gbs

No 8TB HDD known to man can get anywhere near being able to take advantage of any of those.

 

[Justin Passing]

Oh right, thanks. Makes no difference then.
USB2, ~half a Gb/s, would be too slow though, right?

I'm short of USBs, even though one of the card readers has a few

It says this, which I don't understand particularly...:

 

[mattylad]

External is always slower than internal.

 

[IT Minion]

Oh right, thanks. Makes no difference then.
USB2, ~half a Gb/s, would be too slow though, right?

I'm short of USBs, even though one of the card readers has a few

It says this, which I don't understand particularly...:

View attachment 233131

It's not meant to be understood, if that happened how would Desktop engineers make a living?

The throughput rates are useful but a bit misleading at the same time. USB was primarily designed for small chunks of data, not for huge continuous streams. That means it performs a bit worse in practice than you'd think.

Your typical HDD around 8TB can probably manage up to 200MB/s read/write sustained. Some are slower, not many are faster. That is a cap to your transfer speed, nothing can make it faster.

USB2 is too slow, USB3 is fine, the rest might show a slight performance boost because they're better storage protocols, but probably not worth the effort. 3.1 and 3.2 are even faster but your disk will limit you well before then.

Things get complicated and difficult when you're trying to maximize speed. Good luck.

 

[Justin Passing]

Thanks ITM


What it seems I could do with then, is a doodah to give me some more USB3's.
One of these?
https://www.ebuyer.com/709033-start...ard-standard-and-low-profile-design-pexusb3s7

The (internal) faster card reader I have needed a usb3 wired through from the back of the pc so I assume I could use this card's internal connection for that.

Am I gonna have a spare pcie slot?
Mobo is this:
https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/All-series/PRIME-Z270-P/


There's 2x m.2, 1 x HDD , 1 x caddy , 1 x dvd, and the 2 card readers, one of which is connected to that USB3 at the back.


I can't find much difference between the lower priced Seagate and WD external drives.

 

[IT Minion]

When you say you're short on USB 3 ports, you should have 8 on your motherboard, 4 on the back panel and 4 headers on the motherboard that you can connect using a usb module (no need for an all up PCIE card).

This only has 2 ports but something similar might work.
https://www.ebuyer.com/312933-start...u7JMOd_h4ehHl8tfXJrpdej2yoiP7sSQaApzbEALw_wcB

Or if you've got a 5.25" bay free something like this:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/akas...HgyPcV-GrY5y3l4FfO-R-EbjYWO3enN89nCYAeA8G2gp1

 

[Justin Passing]

Well I can't reach the rear panel easily - there may be one spare usb I think. 7 on the front are all in use. Mouse, Wacom tablet, keyboard, 2 printers, 2-3 usb Hdrives, a wifi dongle for when Virgin fails, and one for reading usb sticks and charging the phone etc.
No spare bays - dvd, caddy, 2 x card readers (0ne has the extra usb's)

For item 1 where does the "1 x 20 pin IDC - female" go?. IDC was insulation displacement conn when I was a lectronics engr. Maybe I could drill a hole and hang it out of the front.

Before you ask, 2 card readers because the normal ones were very slow. Tiff from latest camera is 344.6MB. So still slow. Latest card reader needs USB 3.2.
I haven't done a 1000 image focus stack on that camera, yet.

Option:
https://www.ebuyer.com/1052146-qnap-qxp-10g2u3a-usb-3-2-gen-2-expansion-card-qxp-10g2u3a

Guess I could use an external 7? socket usb2 for slow things.

 

[IT Minion]

Well I can't reach the rear panel easily - there may be one spare usb I think. 7 on the front are all in use. Mouse, Wacom tablet, keyboard, 2 printers, 2-3 usb Hdrives, a wifi dongle for when Virgin fails, and one for reading usb sticks and charging the phone etc.
No spare bays - dvd, caddy, 2 x card readers (0ne has the extra usb's)

For item 1 where does the "1 x 20 pin IDC - female" go?. IDC was insulation displacement conn when I was a lectronics engr. Maybe I could drill a hole and hang it out of the front.

Before you ask, 2 card readers because the normal ones were very slow. Tiff from latest camera is 344.6MB. So still slow. Latest card reader needs USB 3.2.
I haven't done a 1000 image focus stack on that camera, yet.

Option:
https://www.ebuyer.com/1052146-qnap-qxp-10g2u3a-usb-3-2-gen-2-expansion-card-qxp-10g2u3a

Guess I could use an external 7? socket usb2 for slow things.

Yes, if it's a powered hub then you can use it for the phone and slow things. Or if it's connected to a fast enough port, lots of fast things at the same time. If you only ever use one of your printers at a time for example they could share a single port with minimal congestion.

The first step would be plugging a hub into a port on the back and freeing up some ports.

Theres some headers on the motherboard to provide front USB ports, but it sounds like you're already using them. Half your front connectors will be on USB 2 by the way, unless you've got a PCIE card supplying them already rather than the built in motherboard, that could be why one of your card readers is sluggish.

USB 3.2 is fully backward compatible to 3.0. If you're using high end SD cards you can get up to 300MB/s off them (they're just tiny SSDs), which is just at the point where 3.1 or 3.2 might conceivably give some benefit to your card reader. But anything less than top of the range wouldnt be able to see any difference between 3.0 and 3.2.

 

[Captain Nemesis]

I need a backup drive around 8-10TB
What's the speed difference between using an external on USB3, versus internally?

If internal is an option, and you want high speed, and you have a spare PCIe slot, what about a PCIe SSD?

 

[Justin Passing]

THis is for backup so doesn't need super speed, but if you ever back up a couple of TB you will query the hours it can take and want to avoid something which is significantly slow. I knew Internal had the potential to be faster but not how it would pan out in reality.

Internal /external are equally available for SSDs.

SSDs cost about tent times as much as spinning rust discs. Check the price for an 8TB. Theyere aren't any 10 TB.

I have unlimited storage with Google (academic a/c) but I think it worked out at 3 weeks per TB.

 

[Captain Nemesis]

Another question is why do you want to take backups?

The fact that another internal device would be OK shows that its not to guard against some major external event, like flood/fire/theft.

So is your concern data corruption or media failure?

 

[Justin Passing]

Hence the caddy.

 

[Captain Nemesis]

Thatll learn me to pay attention - sorry.

 

[fixitflav]

Well I can't reach the rear panel easily - there may be one spare usb I think. 7 on the front are all in use. Mouse, Wacom tablet, keyboard, 2 printers, 2-3 usb Hdrives, a wifi dongle for when Virgin fails, and one for reading usb sticks and charging the phone etc.
No spare bays - dvd, caddy, 2 x card readers (0ne has the extra usb's)

For item 1 where does the "1 x 20 pin IDC - female" go?. IDC was insulation displacement conn when I was a lectronics engr. Maybe I could drill a hole and hang it out of the front.

Before you ask, 2 card readers because the normal ones were very slow. Tiff from latest camera is 344.6MB. So still slow. Latest card reader needs USB 3.2.
I haven't done a 1000 image focus stack on that camera, yet.

Option:
https://www.ebuyer.com/1052146-qnap-qxp-10g2u3a-usb-3-2-gen-2-expansion-card-qxp-10g2u3a

Guess I could use an external 7? socket usb2 for slow things.

If it's any help, my desktop (but on the floor!) only has ports on the front and I was getting tired of bending down to plug/unplug things, so I recently bought a USB hub. RSH, made in China naturally, but it works fine and I'm pleased with it. Powered model, with switch and LED for each of the 7 ports. Cost about £30.