2018. január 23., kedd

USB3 disks cannot provide decent performance

Everyone kind of knows and suggest this, but Now I have empirical evidence: I have switched the connection of seven SATA HDDs in two enclosures to my PC
  • from two direct USB3 connections
  • to two eSATA connections of an Akitio (single) ThunderBolt(1)-(dual)eSATA bridge (connected to an Apple ThunderBolt 3 to ThunderBolt 2 converter)
And even in this complicated TB3-TB2-TB1-2xeSATA-7xSATA performs waaaay better than the old 2xUSB3-7xSATA setup:
Screenshot shows 692megbit/sec total active torrent speed that does not even include torrent protocol and TCP/IP overhead and any other traffic on the host. That actually goes though my (gigabit Ethernet) router too. Seems gigabit fiber internet connections are not just a promise.

Before switching the disk access path it never went above 300megabit/sec.

Probable reason is USB3 does not implement DMA (compatible USB3.1 device-host pairs would do) while TB1-2-3 are basically PCIe connections channeled outside the computer case. :)

Rendszeres olvasók