[clug] USB storage on USB2 with hubs

[E.]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-bounces+kane=areujoking.com at lists.samba.org 
> [mailto:linux-bounces+kane=areujoking.com at lists.samba.org] On 
> Behalf Of Rodney Peters
> Sent: Saturday, 28 January 2006 10:32 AM
> To: linux at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Re: [clug] USB storage on USB2 with hubs
> 
> 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

A warning about firewire: a number of the firewire drive cases I have
encountered do not fully initialize when hot-swapped or plugged into a
running machine and require a reboot to use the drive. 
Cheers,
E.