USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ilovezfs » Sun Apr 28, 2013 12:27 pm

ferebee wrote:I did consider using an external PCIe chassis, though I wonder how much difference that would make, as the various Thunderbolt docks presumably do the same type of Thunderbolt-to-PCIe conversion internally.

I think it would make a big difference because the components are likely much higher quality in a PCIe chassis than in a consumer-oriented Thunderbolt dock. Also, I don't think the PCIe chassis + PCI express card will be subject to the same bugs as the Thunderbolt docks. The docks are not necessarily doing the same type of conversion internally. They are probably using some new fangled boards that convert from Thunderbolt to USB and then put all of the other dock connections onto the USB bus. The PCIe chassis is going to explicitly go through full-on PCIe, with the Thunderbolt specific parts of the board only having to do a Thunderbolt to PCIe mapping, which should be straightforward because Thunderbolt is PCIe. Then the well understood PCIe to PCI express card connection will be made, and at that point you're relying on the PCI express card to do the heavy lifting. The key will be whether the PCI express card can handle all of the sleep/wake issues, etc. well.

The Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter Pro does look like a pretty good option, too. Note that it only has one Thunderbolt port, whereas the OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Expansion Chassis has two Thunderbolt ports, so that it doesn't have to be the last node on the daisy chain. Also, it looks like the Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter Pro does NOT have its own power supply (uh oh), whereas the OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Expansion Chassis DOES have its own power supply.

Power can be a really big part of the Thunderbolt reliability puzzle. Check out this fascinating post to see what I'm thinking of in particular:

http://wolfgangtechnology.blogspot.com/ ... apter.html

ferebee wrote:Regarding the hypothetical $29 Thunderbolt-to-USB3 adapter - that should be a straightforward derivative of the TB-to-GigE and TB-to-FireWire800 adapters, don't you think?

No, I don't think it would be a straightforward derivative at all. 800Mbps for Firewire and 1000Mbps for Gigabit Ethernet are very different from 5000Mbps for USB 3.0, of which about 1000Mbps is involved in encoding alone. Also, Firewire is a direct memory mapping technology like PCIe and Thunderbolt, whereas USB is a completely different technology.
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ferebee » Sun Apr 28, 2013 3:04 pm

@ilovezfs Looks like we got a great argument going here. ;-)
The docks are not necessarily doing the same type of conversion internally. They are probably using some new fangled boards that convert from Thunderbolt to USB and then put all of the other dock connections onto the USB bus.

On the contrary, I think all the docks are undoubtedly based off PCIe internally, which is a well-understood, easily available and, last but not least, cheap technology. The USB controller in the Matrox DS1 (FL1100) is a PCIe part. You're probably right, though, that the DS1's audio is routed through USB. That would explain why the people who are complaining about dropped USB 3.0 connections on the DS1 are also complaining about audio problems.
No, I don't think it would be a straightforward derivative at all. 800Mbps for Firewire and 1000Mbps for Gigabit Ethernet are very different from 5000Mbps for USB 3.0, of which about 1000Mbps is involved in encoding alone. Also, Firewire is a direct memory mapping technology like PCIe and Thunderbolt, whereas USB is a completely different technology.

Well, the Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet Adapter is actually little more than a Broadcom BCM57762 PCIe GigE controller connected directly to the Thunderbolt interface: http://www.hardmac.com/news/2012/06/21/ ... et-adapter. A single lane of PCIe 2.0 gives you 5 Gbit/s, conveniently matching the bandwidth of one USB 3.0 bus. It may be that the BCM57762 is specific to Thunderbolt, but it would be no more far-fetched to have a similarly modified version of one of the USB 3.0 PCIe controllers.
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ilovezfs » Sun Apr 28, 2013 3:37 pm

ferebee wrote:@ilovezfs Looks like we got a great argument going here. ;-)

Hahaha. I will be very happy to be proven wrong. Please let me know when Apple is taking orders for $29 Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapters! (Not holding breath.)

The hardmac article you linked to says, "The Ethernet side is a miniaturized version of a PCI-Express Ethernet card." So one question is how difficult is it to make a miniaturized PCI-Express USB 3.0 card? Apparently not so easy yet.

Any thoughts on the power issues?
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ferebee » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:27 am

Obviously we all don't know what we're talking about, but I will gladly continue to speculate. :-)

I still think the biggest problem holding back USB 3.0 over Thunderbolt is probably the drivers. As far as I can tell, nobody has solved that yet, though Apple is getting close with the FL1100 drivers that power the Matrox DS1.

As for the power issues you refer to with the Seagate GoFlex 2.5" Thunderbolt adapter, I think that's probably just bad design by Seagate. The fact that the adapter gets so hot shows that it's burning more power than it's able to dissipate, and combined with the power draw of the drive itself, maybe it's just too much.

By comparison, I currently have a LaCie Rugged FireWire/USB3 bus-powered 1 TB drive connected to my Retina MacBook Pro 15" via FireWire 800 through Apple's Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter. It's been running for over an hour under load (DiskTester), no issues so far, and the Thunderbolt adapter is just a little warm to the touch. So power is shouldn't be an insurmountable problem.

Unfortunately, my tests with a 4-disk raidz over USB 3.0, connected via the GL3520 hub to my Mac mini 2012, were not terribly successful. I'll write a new post about that.
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ilovezfs » Mon Apr 29, 2013 8:04 am

My specific concern was that Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt Adapter Pro is bus powered, which I think is inherently less reliable.

If you think the problem is with Apple and their drivers, perhaps the 3rd party drivers for CalDigit SuperSpeed PCI Express Card aren't such a bad idea after all, at least for the time being?
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ilovezfs » Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:09 am

ferebee wrote:Considering Belkin announced its dock in September 2011 and promised in February to ship "next week", I'm not holding my breath.


Turns out you could have held your breath. The Belkin is now shipping:
http://www.belkin.com/us/F4U055/p/P-F4U ... nouncement
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ferebee » Fri May 03, 2013 6:29 am

Heh. I guess I will wait for that to come to Europe, then...
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ismails » Thu Aug 01, 2013 10:45 pm

good post....
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ilovezfs » Thu Aug 01, 2013 11:03 pm

ismails wrote:good post....

Here it is in Europe:
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00CIO8NT6/ref= ... -rb1FA59WX
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Re: USB 3.0 hub recommendations?

Post by ferebee » Fri Aug 02, 2013 5:27 am

It depends on your definition of "is" - they currently show availability "in 1 to 4 months". :-)

Right now I'm back on a Mac mini with native USB 3.0 after getting an offer I couldn't refuse for my last 2011 iMac.

It turns out that the Belkin Thunderbolt Dock uses the same Fresco Logic FL1100 USB controller as the Matrox DS1, so it's equally limited to 2.5 Gbps total USB throughput over all three ports. After browsing the Hackintosh forums, I suspect that most Mac USB 3.0 upgrade solutions use the FL1100 because it's the only USB 3.0 controller chip that OS X supports reliably out of the box. I think I'll skip the current generation of docks. The Belkin does have Thunderbolt pass-through going for it, which makes it attractive relative to the Matrox.

Meanwhile, I may have found an inexpensive 4-port USB 3.0 hub with VIA 812 chip that actually works.

The importer (MAG) tells me that they tested many hubs before finding this one, and I have a demo unit that has run I/O load tests for several days over ZFS and completed a scrub with no errors. Still need to load it up with drives on all four ports.

It does have one issue: it doesn't ship with a power supply by default, and in bus-powered configuration it will specify 900 mA draw from the Mac and offer 900 mA on its ports, but a bus-powered SSD drops off the bus under load. Well, don't run bus-powered devices off a bus-powered hub, I guess, but it shouldn't offer power it can't supply. (The same SSD works fine when its own optional power supply is connected.)

MAG only sells wholesale AFAIK.
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