External USB 3.x RAID enclosure?

[Diggs]

I am soooooo tired of NAS speeds for large drive images. I'm looking to pick up a couple of USB/eSATA external 4-bay drive RAID enclosures like the one in this link. I don't see them talked about much and am trying to figure out what's hot and what's not....... Comments? Suggestions? Stay away?

@edit - Ublock Origin is blocking the above link that worked fine a few hours ago.

 

[lcoughey]

Sometimes these enclosures don't do the RAID themselves, but just allow you to do the RAID with the OS. In such cases, the eSATA support will only work if you have an eSATA port that will allow for multiple drive communication via a single SATA port. I had a client supply a similar product a couple weeks ago so we could transfer the 11TB of data to his 2 x 8TB drives. Because it was a Mac recovery, our mac would not see all the drives in the unit via the eSATA port, which forced us to use the USB interface.

I don't know if this is the same for the product you linked to, but thought it was worth the warning.

 

[Diggs]

I don't know if this is the same for the product you linked to, but thought it was worth the warning.

(Note - I linked to something generic I found.) Your details are what I'm trying to figure out. Thanks much.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Perhaps you just need a different way to talk to your NAS.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255668/how_to_speed_up_your_nas_with_iscsi.html

 

[Diggs]

Perhaps you just need a different way to talk to your NAS.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255668/how_to_speed_up_your_nas_with_iscsi.html

Cool! Never seen that before.
Unfortunately, they are offering 30-40% increases where I am hoping for a 5x+ increase.

 

[SAFCasper]

I have a 2-bay unit from Icy Box which was fairly cheap works well for fast storage. Got two 1TB drives in RAID0 and it's certainly much faster than backing up to my NAS or a standard external drive.

The RAID is managed by the hardware and they do have a 4-bay version (IB-RD3640SU3E2)

 

[skdmaster]

Check out https://www.high-rely.com/products/1-bay-raidframe/ I have used the Netswap products from them. They also have a reseller program for decent discounts off of list.

 

[Diggs]

I have a 2-bay unit from Icy Box which was fairly cheap works well for fast storage. Got two 1TB drives in RAID0 and it's certainly much faster than backing up to my NAS or a standard external drive.

The RAID is managed by the hardware and they do have a 4-bay version (IB-RD3640SU3E2)

Uh-oh! Be very tentative with RAID 0. I've repeatedly seen it break its stripe set without any drive failure and all data is lost. It's not like a regular HDD where you can have errors and still recover. One bad sector or broken stripe and everything is gone. I'll never run RAID 0 again. Way too flakey (IMHO).

 

[Diggs]

Check out https://www.high-rely.com/products/1-bay-raidframe/ I have used the Netswap products from them. They also have a reseller program for decent discounts off of list.

I like their stuff but their pricing is scary and aimed at corporate, not small operations like mine. I have allot of NAS patience at those prices.

 

[HCHTech]

I am soooooo tired of NAS speeds for large drive images.

How is your NAS connected? - How fast are the drives in the NAS? Are you able to get anywhere near 1gb speeds? Also, client machines will be all over the map. I usually like to pull the drive and image/copy from my bench machine ('s SATA dock) to the NAS. I rewired my shop last year, and I was amazed at the improvement in speed after I got a good PCIe gb card for my bench machine, a decent gb switch and a new NAS w/gb.

I briefly looked at a 10gb NAS (I think it was a QNAP) & a switch with a couple of 10gb ports, but sticker shock made me stay at 1gb.

 

[Diggs]

My main NAS is a Netgear Ready NAS NV+ with 4 x 2TB WD RE-4 drives. It runs through an 8-port gigabit switch to the workstations that all have esata docks. The 8-port is connected upstream to a 24-port 10/100 switch that connects to a 10/100 Cisco RV110W router WiFi combo. Upstream 10/100 activities are not supposed to bother gigabit traffic on the local switch but I only get 100Mbs speeds to the NAS (actual average ~ 10 MBs sustained). All the 1,000 Mbs lights are lit on the workstation, switch and NAS adapters. No 100 lights are lit at all. I can pull everything from the little 8-port switch except a workstation and the NAS and see what happens but then I'm losing DHCP also which can be a problem without static assignments. Hmmm.......

 

[DataMedics]

I am hoping for a 5x+ increase.

Keep in mind that most single HDDs are capable of maxing out USB 3.0, so a RAID enclosure that uses USB will only be as fast as a single external drive really. To get full RAID speed, you should use a hardware RAID controller and just build yourself a bonafide RAID. You can use an external enclosure and connect using an SAS card with external SFF-8088 port / cable.

A kit like this will do it: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HIGHPOINT-T...811235?hash=item41be6edea3:g:DEkAAOSwWxNYq0UV

Or if you've got thunderbolt you can get one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Areca-ARC-8...704887?hash=item3609fb6737:g:ASwAAOSw8w1X6Y16

Areca controllers are really fast. I've got an Areca RAID controller in my system that I do data recoveries and I can get a sustained 700Mb/s+ read and write speed using RAID 6.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I have limited experience with these esata / usb raid enclosures but from what i've experienced and what i've read you should be prepared to return it because its unlikely to meet your expectations.

 

[SAFCasper]

Uh-oh! Be very tentative with RAID 0. I've repeatedly seen it break its stripe set without any drive failure and all data is lost. It's not like a regular HDD where you can have errors and still recover. One bad sector or broken stripe and everything is gone. I'll never run RAID 0 again. Way too flakey (IMHO).

I only use it as a temporary backup / transfer space when moving data around between systems. If the data gets lost I would barely be inconvenienced... so RAID0 isn't a serious risk for me.

 

[SAFCasper]

Keep in mind that most single HDDs are capable of maxing out USB 3.0.

Care to elaborate on this? My understanding is USB3 handles up to 5Gbps... which equates to 640MBps. Of course there is going to be some overheads but even the fastest 7,200rpm drives barely break 200MBps read/write. How can they max out a USB3 port?

 

[Larry Sabo]

I was reading this article the other day and found it very helpful.

The USB 3 spec calls for transfer rates of up to 500MB/s. Connected to a PCIe 2.0 interface, you get 500MB/s up and down, more than enough bandwidth for the controller. However if you connect the controller to a PCIe 1.0 interface, you only get half that (and even less in practice). It’s not a problem today but eventually, with a fast enough USB 3 device, you’d run into a bottleneck.

 

[DataMedics]

are to elaborate on this? My understanding is USB3 handles up to 5Gbps... which equates to 640MBps. Of course there is going to be some overheads but even the fastest 7,200rpm drives barely break 200MBps read/write.

Ratings and reality are two different things. Try USB 3 connecting a hard drive and run a benchmark test, then SATA connect the same drive and run the same test. The issue is mostly related to latency of having to wait for ATA commands to be tunneled through the USB and back again. Having a bunch of drives in RAID won't make it any faster either.

Now, there is an exception to this. Some newer 3.0 docks and controllers support UASP which allows stacking of ATA commands using a SCSI protocol and will result in much faster reads. However, most people's motherboards aren't going to support it and even less USB enclosures support it. So if you're building a system from scratch you can ensure you use all UASP supporting devices. However, if either the motherboard or enclosure doesn't support it, you're back a slightly under single drive speed.

 

[SAFCasper]

Ratings and reality are two different things. Try USB 3 connecting a hard drive and run a benchmark test, then SATA connect the same drive and run the same test. The issue is mostly related to latency of having to wait for ATA commands to be tunneled through the USB and back again. Having a bunch of drives in RAID won't make it any faster either.

Now, there is an exception to this. Some newer 3.0 docks and controllers support UASP which allows stacking of ATA commands using a SCSI protocol and will result in much faster reads. However, most people's motherboards aren't going to support it and even less USB enclosures support it. So if you're building a system from scratch you can ensure you use all UASP supporting devices. However, if either the motherboard or enclosure doesn't support it, you're back a slightly under single drive speed.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

UASP support is listed in the specifications of my enclosure so that might explain why I'm getting much faster speeds.

 

[Diggs]

While were are on the discussion, although I find the speeds similar between USB 3 and esata, esata does it with low/no CPU overhead while USB 3 usually pegs the CPU during the transfers. .....and from what I understand, esata allows better data recovery as it allows the controller to work with the drive directly.

 

[Blues]

Just to add .02 some reading I had done also pointed that eSATA will provide a constant speed vs USB being a more variable speed if that impacts your setup any.