usb 3.0 compatibilty...

[carlos28355]

Hey I just wanted to find out if usb 3.0 is compatible with unraid system. i current have the free edition but i want to get pro. and when i do i want to get a usb 3.0 to help future safe me only one i can find right now is pqi on new egg. ive had their ram and havent had problem with it dont know how their flash drives are. can anyone shed some light on this? thanks much!

[kizer]

Is your motherboard USB 3.0 certified? Even if you pickup a USB 3.0 memory stick its not going to run at full speed unless your motherboard can support it.

 

As for unRAID being USB 3.0 I wouldn't personally know.

[WeeboTech]

From what I'm reading linux has USB 3.0 support in kernel 2.6.31

unraid is at 2.6.32.9-unRAID

 

It still depends on your motherboard and usb key.  As long as they are @ usb 3.0 you'll be ok.

if the key is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 your ok too.

 

Don't go crazy and spend all kinds of extra money on USB 3.0.

it's only going to be in heavy use for a few moments when it loads the kernel and bzImage.

If speed is your concern there are ways to boot off the hard drive or even an SSD.

[carlos28355]

hey guys thanks for the response. well heres my situation. i put together an unraid system using old comp parts. im just learning bout all this stuff...i havent purchased my motherboard or what i want to consider my final setup...the board i am looking at is usb 3.0. and yes i would like to make this as fast as possible. i do not want any type of lag or anything when im watching my blu-ray movies off of this. plus im trying to help future safe my self so i dont have to upgrade anything for several years unless of course it dies.

 

if the key is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 your ok too.

 

are you referring to the key i get from lime-tech? my guid key or whatever? sorry new to this and to linux lol

 

i didnt realize the usb was only used during bootup i thought it helped convert stuff on the fly..convert is not the word im looking for ha...

 

so what would u do to make it as fast as possible...lets assume money is not really an option...although it will be ha

 

of course my mother board would be gigabit and i have gigabit all through out my network(and not that it should make much of a difference from cat5w...would you buy the smallest most price affordable ssd drive?

[purko]

   

...lets assume money is not really an option...

 

For cases where "money is not an option" we have the "Ultimate Unraid Server" thread. 

 

[WeeboTech]

hey guys thanks for the response. well heres my situation. i put together an unraid system using old comp parts. im just learning bout all this stuff...i havent purchased my motherboard or what i want to consider my final setup...the board i am looking at is usb 3.0. and yes i would like to make this as fast as possible. i do not want any type of lag or anything when im watching my blu-ray movies off of this. plus im trying to help future safe my self so i dont have to upgrade anything for several years unless of course it dies.

 

if the key is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 your ok too.

 

are you referring to the key i get from lime-tech? my guid key or whatever? sorry new to this and to linux lol

 

i didnt realize the usb was only used during bootup i thought it helped convert stuff on the fly..convert is not the word im looking for ha...

 

so what would u do to make it as fast as possible...lets assume money is not really an option...although it will be ha

 

of course my mother board would be gigabit and i have gigabit all through out my network(and not that it should make much of a difference from cat5w...would you buy the smallest most price affordable ssd drive?

 

Use a basic and affordable USB Flash key (your own or the one from limetech). If you find that boot up time is unsatisfactory, we can help you by installing grub and use one of your hard drives to boot.

 

The flash is written to whenever you change the device layout or stop the array (for the superblock).

Other then that it is for configuration changes.  Going all out to make the boot flash the highest possible speed is something to consider later on if you think it needs to be faster.

[carlos28355]

thanks for responses again! ill check out the ultimate unraid sever lol

 

i know im probably being annoying and ignorant but i like to go with the pedal to the metal. i want to make it as fast as possible to begin with lol thats just how i am sorry (=

 

i was confused when u said flash key i didnt know u meant the flash drive.

 

again this is probably dumb of me but i want to assume the basic unraid setup without any tweaking is not fast enough. would u then recommend to install on an ssd or other hdd? thanks again !! (=

[theone]

The main deal with unRAID or any file server it to keep it on constantly and have the drives spindown to save energy.

Isn't it?

 

So why worry about the boot time which is done maybe once a month or even less -after everything is configured and stable.

 

[carlos28355]

im not so much interested in just the boot time i want to make sure that im getting the fastest read/write i can this also includes reading it from my htpc when i stream a movie from it. so i am making sure i have the best possible sata cables a mother board with gigabit ethernet fast hard drives. and if usb 3.0 helps to contribute to all this or at least make me a little more future safe or if booting from a hard drive makes helps towards all this too then thats what im looking to do. i cant stand knowing or not knowing if theres something i can do to make it faster or not. and since im going to be buying parts for this i want to consider what will be fast now and what will be fast later...~(=

[prostuff1]

USB 3.0 will do almost nothing for you, except during boot up.  And even for that USB 3.0 is probably overkill.  I boot of a USB 2.0 drive and my server is up fairly quick.  I have not done any boot time tests but I am also running a modified version of unRAID so it takes a little longer to boot then stock unRAID.

[carlos28355]

alright sounds good. if u dont mind me asking what kind of modifications did you do?

[WeeboTech]

I would surmise that even with a USB 3.0 you will not see that much improvement.

The OS fits in approx 64MB. I expanded mine also.

The real issue is USB is not designed to move data the same way as IDE or SATA. It will always be slower booting off USB from the BIOS. Once the OS is up, then system cache comes into play.

 

Playing movies from your flash is probably not worth the effort and time in trying to get the most for your money in this area.

 

A fast hard drive will.

As mentioned, the way unRAID works is, it spins down the hard drives, but the machine stays running.

If you want to turn the machine totally off, an boot like lightening, then just work with grub after you have a stable machine and boot from your cache drive.

[prostuff1]

alright sounds good. if u dont mind me asking what kind of modifications did you do?

 

On my stable system I am still running 4.4.2 and BubbaRAID.  I have a test system set up that that is running 4.5.4 and has a lot of additional programs installed.

[carlos28355]

hey sounds good ill take a look at this grub stuff u speak of ha ha and ill consider just booting from my hard driver rather than investing in usb 3.0 or any usb for that matter since ill be trying from hdd...i dont plan on turning my system off unless i have to for hardware changes but for the most part i never want to touch it. and ill check out the apps for unraid again im completely new to this its probably a little over my head so thanks for being patient and willing to help me out!

[WeeboTech]

i dont plan on turning my system off unless i have to for hardware changes but for the most part i never want to touch it.

Then there is no need to go any further unless it is so excruciatingly slow.

For me I reboot many times in a sitting when I'm doing tests, so I want to boot as fast as possible. But for the normal system usage, usb 2.0 will be fine.

Some people use IDE to CF adapters to help, with grub4dos on the boot flash, it can access the reiserfs disks and find /boot/bzimage and /boot/bzroot then boot from there.

[carlos28355]

alright thanks just for my piece of mind...lol lets say i had some average hardware that obviously was compatible with unraid. do you think i will be fine streaming my blu-ray .iso files onto my htpc? ive heard that unraid is a lot slower than a nas thats why im so worried and im currently putting all my dvds and blu-rays onto hard drives and dont want to lose my work so far thats why i thought an unraid system would be great for me. so if u tell me ill be fine streaming them then thats all i care about and i will be satisfied with your answer (=

[WeeboTech]

alright thanks just for my piece of mind...lol lets say i had some average hardware that obviously was compatible with unraid. do you think i will be fine streaming my blu-ray .iso files onto my htpc? ive heard that unraid is a lot slower than a nas thats why im so worried and im currently putting all my dvds and blu-rays onto hard drives and dont want to lose my work so far thats why i thought an unraid system would be great for me. so if u tell me ill be fine streaming them then thats all i care about and i will be satisfied with your answer (=

For reads unRAID is as fast as any other NAS. You can great over 60MB/s reads.

For writes unRAID is slower due to the nature of a single parity drive and single filesystem drive. The average is around 30MB/s write. I get somewhere between 20 & 35 depending on what I do. Sometimes up to 43MB/s on the local machine but that is only because I have a highly specialized parity arrangement.

For media reads, unRAID will be fine.

[carlos28355]

simplest explanation ive come across u have helped me out alot my main focus was read speeds but those seem like some decent write speeds to! lol thanks again! take care! (=

[smino]

Not trying to revive a thread here, but can you setup a tcpip network over usb 3.0? With 4.8 Gbps vs 1Gbps, assuming you have an ssd cache drive like OCZ Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express 8x SSD, this could seriously shorten transfer times. I only have three boxes close together to connect, although one can be on regular GigE.

 

Yes there are much faster drives out there, just out of the price range.

OCZ Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express 8x SSD

979$

256GB Max Performance

Read: Up to 700 MB/s

Write: Up to 500 MB/s