Which PCI-E USB3 controller cards are supported?


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Anyone using PCI-E add-on cards for USB3 connectivity? Which are supported by unRAID?

Few month ago asking same question I've got this answer from BobPhoenix:

"... getting drivers for USB 3.0 in unRAID would likely require compiling your own kernel since unRAID currently doesn't support USB 3.0 as far as I know."

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30091.msg270376#msg270376

 

Maybe it's different in unRAID 6 , I don't know...

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I should have added USB3 connectivity for external disks not part of the array. You probably mean USB3 disks being part of the array are not supported...

No, I was planning connecting external disks via USB 3.0, for data transfer to unRAID array. However, I ended up drilling walls and laying CAT6 cable, and all transfer eventually went over the network... so I did not actually try any USB 3.0 cards and can not say for sure "USB 3.0 does not work".

 

I'd like to notice, however, that I do copy, occasionally, few hundred gigs to unRAID via USB 2.0., and it does not feel as terribly slow. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the impression is that even USB 2.0 connection saturates, or almost saturates writing to unRAID with parity activated.

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True, USB2 is about 25-30MB/s and this is easily achieved with unRAID and working parity disk.

My need would be for huge data transfers working outside of the array (copying directly to data disks) with turned off parity. I am getting the U3S6 and will post how things go, might take some while though.

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... I am getting the U3S6 and will post how things go ...

That would be very nice of you :-) I'm especially interested in if you will be able to connect, using this card, an HDD at 6.0 Gb/s speed.

 

I'm asking because I've tried to achieve the 6.0 Gb/s SATA link using, in Supermicro X7SBE motherboard, two different PCI-express SATA-III cards, and neither one worked:

 

IOCREST SY-PEX40039 2-port SATA III 6Gb/s card (chipset ASM1061) - BIOS seems to be seeing it, but I couldn't make unRAID even see the drives connected to this card

 

Manhattan 2-port SATA III 6Gb/s card (chipset Marvell 88SE9128) - does connect, but only at 3.0 Gb/sec no matter what I tried...

 

 

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You can't get 6 Gbps from a standard spindle, this is all marketing and interested for a link speed if you use expander (or SATA port multipliers).

What you can get from a disk is roughly 115-130 MB/s, you can saturate the USB3 connection with about 100MB/s.

 

Have you tried the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X controllers with your X7SBE?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-sat2-mv8.cfm

 

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You can't get 6 Gbps from a standard spindle, this is all marketing ...

I know, I was trying it just for viruses the sake of it  ;D

 

Speaking seriously, I was thinking about setting "small but fast" cache drive, or out-of array drive, possibly an SSD or RAID-0 of SSDs, mostly for future tasks, and was researching various options with hardware I had at hand. 

 

Have you tried the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X controllers with your X7SBE?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-sat2-mv8.cfm

Sure, both my servers run on them - see my signature - but they are SATA-II (3.0 Gb/s)  cards.

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  • 1 year later...

Any results in testing this PCIe USB3 card, or any other? Looking to preclear drives before voiding warranty...

 

I second that request...

 

Two more SAMSUNG D3 Station 4TB External Hard Drive STSHX-D401TDB (Seagate ST4000DM000 inside) are in the mail, and, AFAIR, a single pass of preclearing these drives without opening, via unRAIDs USB 2.0 interface, took 192+ hours...

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OKay... report.

 

The PCIe to USB 3.0 card is Vantec UGT-PC341, around $22 at Microcenter. My bad, I forgot to look at it to see what chipset it uses, so it will have to wait until next case opening. Chipset: VIA VL805 (v1.02) (my card), VIA VL800 (v1.01).

 

The card has three USB 3.0 ports outside and one inside. It also has Molex inside, for additional power supply to provide for connected drives, but I did not connect it (will do next time).

 

Motherboard is Supermicro H8DME-2, unRAID Pro 6.0-beta2.

 

I inserted the card, started the server, than connected to USB 3.0 port first SAMSUNG D3 Station 4TB External Hard Drive STSHX-D401TDB (Seagate ST4000DM000 inside).

 

"preclear_disk.sh -l" immediately saw it. No rebooting, no nothing, just saw. I connected another SAMSUNG D3 Station, and, for testing, connected to the third port a Buffalo 1TB USB 3.0 portable (2.5") I had laying around. Despite absence of additional power, Buffalo started OK. "preclear_disk.sh -l" immediately saw all three.

 

Note: unMenu and MyMenu also saw these disks. However, the main page of WebGui saw the (out-of-array) small 2.5" 160 GB Hitachi, connected via SATA, but did not see any of the three disks connected via USB 3.0. I did stop-start the array, no changes. Well, not that it's so important...

 

I've run John Bartlett's speedtest, results are very promising, the resulting HTML (disguised as txt) file attached, see for yourself.

 

I'm damn glad I did this, now I'm going to start preclearing at normal speed  8) , not like last time I did the same SAMSUNG D3 Stations via USB 2.0 and it took 192+ hours for one cycle  :-\

 

Added: the HTML file connects to code.highcharts.com, it's normal, all speedtest.sh results do this, it's the way to provide graphs interactivity. However, if for some reason you don't trust it, I will attach a pdf.

 

Added-2: bad PDF, just one graph, no notes, and I would have to get to other machine to make proper PDF... and that will be tomorrow. Sorry...

 

Added-3: good PDF attached.

diskspeed_results_withUSB3.0_20150209_.html.txt

diskspeed_results_withUSB3.0_20150209-1.pdf

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Few hours ago 3-cycles preclearing of two 4TB drives via USB 3.0 had finished successfully. The PCIe to USB 3.0 card is Vantec UGT-PC341. Motherboard is Supermicro H8DME-2, unRAID Pro 6.0-beta2. Drives are:

 

/dev/sds ST4000DM000-1F2168_S300HPYH * 4.00T

/dev/sdt ST4000DM000-1F2168_S300HQQ0 * 4.00T

 

preclear script reports:

 

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ========================================================================1.13 (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -c 3 /dev/sdt (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ==    (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Disk /dev/sdt has been successfully precleared (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == with a starting sector of 1  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Ran 3 cycles (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Using :Read block size = 1003520 Bytes (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time  : 12:54:45 (86 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Zeroing time  : 12:40:25 (87 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 25:57:55 (42 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Total Time    : 38:39:19 (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Total Elapsed Time 129:58:10 (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  SMART overall-health status =  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == S.M.A.R.T Initial Report for /dev/sdt  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: Disk: /dev/sdt (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.10.24p-unRAID] (local build) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: Copyright © 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: Smartctl: Device Read Identity Failed: Invalid argument (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.  (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

 

 

 

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ========================================================================1.13 (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -c 3 /dev/sds (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ==    (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Disk /dev/sds has been successfully precleared (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == with a starting sector of 1  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Ran 3 cycles (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Using :Read block size = 1003520 Bytes (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time  : 12:58:42 (85 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Last Cycle's Zeroing time  : 13:20:02 (83 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 25:39:49 (43 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Last Cycle's Total Time    : 39:00:50 (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == Total Elapsed Time 131:43:54 (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  SMART overall-health status =  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == S.M.A.R.T Initial Report for /dev/sds  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: Disk: /dev/sds (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.10.24p-unRAID] (local build) (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: Copyright © 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: Smartctl: Device Read Identity Failed: Invalid argument (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]:  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.  (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: == (Misc)

Feb 15 07:20:37 Front preclear_disk-diff[26359]: ============================================================================ (Misc)

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USB 3.0 card is Vantec UGT-PC341

 

Curious if you have tried running unRaid off the internal USB3 port.

I don't see much sense in this, since unRAID only boots from the flash, and after that runs completely in RAM. I might try it, though, just out of curiosity, during next case opening.

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Just want to include an update on my testing. The Vantec UGT-PC341 failed two attempts to preclear three drives at once. But it did successfully complete preclear with one and two drives.

 

This is not a statement of support, just it worked for me (and pkn), with the caveat on the number of drives.

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Heh... just noticed:

 

preclear script reports:

...

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Pre Read Time  : 12:54:45 (86 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Zeroing time  : 12:40:25 (87 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 25:57:55 (42 MB/s) (Misc)

Feb 15 05:35:55 Front preclear_disk-diff[13852]: == Last Cycle's Total Time    : 38:39:19 (Misc)  :o

...

Times don't add up. Will check if latest preclear_disk.sh does this too.... when it finishes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

USB 3.0 card is Vantec UGT-PC341

 

Curious if you have tried running unRaid off the internal USB3 port.

I don't see much sense in this, since unRAID only boots from the flash, and after that runs completely in RAM. I might try it, though, just out of curiosity, during next case opening.

Tried it today - unRAID does not boot when flash drive is in USB 3.0 card. Blank screen with blinking cursor.

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USB 3.0 card is Vantec UGT-PC341

 

Curious if you have tried running unRaid off the internal USB3 port.

I don't see much sense in this, since unRAID only boots from the flash, and after that runs completely in RAM. I might try it, though, just out of curiosity, during next case opening.

Tried it today - unRAID does not boot when flash drive is in USB 3.0 card. Blank screen with blinking cursor.

thanks for trying. :)

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Just to report... tried another USB 3.0 card: Mediasonic HP1-U34F PCIe x1 USB 3.0, from Newegg. Chipset seems to be: FRESCO LOGIC FL1100-1Q0. I've never heard of Fresco Logic before.

 

The card has four USB 3.0 ports outside, none inside. Has SATA power connector inside, for additional power supply.

 

Motherboard is Supermicro H8DME-2, unRAID Pro 6.0-beta2.

 

Works same as Vantec UGT-PC341 - I just inserted it, booted the server up, it immediately saw the three connected via USB 3.0 Seagates 8TB drives.

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And to add... it turned out, that connecting more than one drive to USB 3.0 PCIe card, your are losing connection speed.

Here is little table with read speeds I've got yesterday for various configurations of three drives and two cards:

 

sdasdbsdc

Card1145------

Card2---100100

Card1145------

Card2------145

 

 

Card1100100---

Card2------145

 

Card1707070

Card2---------

 

 

 

 

Numbers are approximate reading speed, in MB/s, during first 2% of prereading.

Card1 is Vantec UGT-PC341 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe x1

Card2 is Mediasonic HP1-U34F 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe x1

 

sda, sdb, sdc are all Seagate 8TB USB 3.0 externals.

 

Mobo is Supermicro H8DME-2.

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One more black mark for Vantec UGT-PC341 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe x1 card.

 

It crashed trying to preclear two 8TB Seagates simultaneously, during the writing phase. Previous attempt - same card, same HDDs, same model motherboard - finished successfully, but not this time. The card, it seems, is unstable under the load.

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