[clug] USB storage on USB2 with hubs

[Rodney Peters]

Agreed, it's an innovative idea.

AFAIK, performance will be constrained by all the ports on a hub (including 
those festooning the rear of a PC) fanning into the same 480 Mb/s bottleneck. 
My USB devices never approach that, but I've not investigated whether it's 
the VIA controller or bridge chips in the devices.  That translates to 60 
MB/s less USB overhead, less USB/ATA bridge overhead, less RAID overhead, 
less ATA overhead z..z..z....

I've run into this problem trying to burn a CD image from a USB drive to a USB 
burner.  

Any chance of adding a Firewire card or second USB card to spread the load 
around a bit ?


Rod

On Friday 27 January 2006 23:00, linux-request at lists.samba.org wrote:
> Re: [clug] USB storage on USB2 with hubs
>  Date: Yesterday 02:18:10
>  From: Michael Still <mikal at stillhq.com>
>  To: Steve Jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au>
>  CC: CLUG List <linux at lists.samba.org>
>
> Steve Jenkin wrote:
> > Mikal - a great heads up! Thanks.  some pricing for others interested...
> > A great alternative to Mini-ITX - especially if they are hackable!!
> > [$364 no-ram http://www.elx.com.au/item/ELS1002 ]
> >
> > Linksys on their site have 4 Australian retailers.  One in Brisbane.
> > The NSLU2 is:
> > $161 @ Harris Technology
> > $198 @ Dick Smith
> > $179 @ CX Superstore (Sydney)
> > $146 online at 'Instant IT' [a bunch others there too]
>
> They're $99 here at Frys, so they're reasonable prices when you take
> into account shipping, tax and so forth (most US prices don't include
> the 8.2 percent tax).
>
> > It's a brilliant idea - especially if it does disk mirroring.  Put your
> > disk storage in a cupboard (locked!) and you've got a chance against
> > burglars and maybe fire... Trivial upgrades, backup by 'broken mirror',
> > quick-n-easy
>
> Well, they run Linux, so I guess they do whatever. I am considering
> moving my 4 * 250gb disc RAID 10 to one, but that means using a hub,
> hence the question.
>
> Mikal