[wellylug] USB 3.0 via PCI-e, & SATA HDD enclosures/docks

[David Antliff]

Hello,

Has anyone had any success with accessing an external SATA-2 or SATA-3
HDD via USB 3.0 with Linux? If so, have you achieved real transfer
rates in excess of what you'd get with USB 2.0?

Specifically I'm looking to use an external HDD "dock", so I can
quickly add & remove disks as part of an off-site backup system, but
I'd settle for an enclosure if I have to (can always leave the lid off
and use it like a dock). The host machine has no native USB 3.0
support, although it does have a single 1x PCI-e slot that could be
populated with a suitable PCI-Express USB 3.0 adapter. The set-up
needs to be reliable, and of course it needs to work in Linux.

Believe me when I say that I've spent a good few hours searching
online for information on this. It seems that there's very little
Linux-based information, even though Linux was heralded as being
"first with USB 3.0 support" a few years ago. I've come across several
enclosures and docks that state they are compatible with Linux 2.6.31
or newer, but the only PCI-e card I've found with stated Linux support
is this Astrotek one, with an NEC controller:

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=396140

Also, there are quite a few external interfaces using the JMicron
JMS539 chipset, which is reported to have serious issues (corruption,
disconnection), especially when connected to an NEC controller. So
I've been looking for LucidPort USB300 -based devices, such as
StarTech.com, Plugable and Icy Box. Naturally none of these appear to
be for sale in NZ, but that's not a huge problem in itself.

So if anyone has any experiences with USB 3.0, I'd appreciate hearing
about them please :)

As a note, if necessary I can probably settle for USB 2.0, or perhaps
eSATA, as fast I/O isn't a hard requirement. However when a backup
might take 12 hours, a factor of 2 speed-up saves a significant amount
of time! FireWire800 is perhaps another option as it's considerably
faster than USB 2.0.

-- David.