will a USB 3 card make a difference with drive back up on thislaptop?

Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it
would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the Expresscard
slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual port adapters
like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B

Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3 to
USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive? I
just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across, so
it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it
would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the Expresscard
slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual port adapters
like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B


Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3 to
USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive? I
just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across, so
it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042

http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0

ASM1042A

http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B


Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0


ASM1042A

http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B



Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0



ASM1042A

http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S

I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul

On 12/05/2016 12:23 PM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B



Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0



ASM1042A

http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S

I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul


Thanks for the info, Paul. Next paycheck that rolls around, I think
I'll pick up one of those cards. I checked most of my portable HDs and
they seem to be USB 3, so it will be to advantage. One final question
if I may: what about recommendations for my aging Win 7 desktop? I
never have upgraded to USB 3 in that one and it has always taken way too
long to back up the thing due to USB 2 limits. So, while picking up a
card for the laptop, I might as well for the desktop too if you have
some Amazon recommendations. Thanks in advance, once again.

John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 12:23 PM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B




Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0




ASM1042A


http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S

I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul


Thanks for the info, Paul. Next paycheck that rolls around, I think
I'll pick up one of those cards. I checked most of my portable HDs and
they seem to be USB 3, so it will be to advantage. One final question
if I may: what about recommendations for my aging Win 7 desktop? I
never have upgraded to USB 3 in that one and it has always taken way too
long to back up the thing due to USB 2 limits. So, while picking up a
card for the laptop, I might as well for the desktop too if you have
some Amazon recommendations. Thanks in advance, once again.

First you have to check what slot types are open
and available in the desktop.

Typically, you'd want to use a PCI Express x1 lane board,
which has a single chip on it for USB3. Now, this one
looked reasonably cheap, but checking the description,
it has an ETron chip on it. You would check reviewer
comments to see if that mattered or not.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-PCI-e-Ca.../dp/B008MIMPL4

This one is a Renesas chip. Three external ports, one internal blue port.
Some cards have the 2x10 expansion header, which is a defacto standard
for front panel USB3. So if a computer case has two blue connectors
on the front, you use an expansion card with the 2x10 connector, and
the cable from the front panel of the computer plugs into that connector.
This card doesn't have that connector. Some of the others do. THis one
has a single blue connector inside, so would be paired with a 5.25"
tray product having a single blue connector on the back of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Controll.../dp/B00965J5T2

The PCI Express slot has +3.3V and +12V but no +5V.
The Molex connector on the end of the card, allows
connecting +5V/+12V power to the end of the card.
With some card designs, the documentation will say
"connect if you need more power", without going into
details. If the blue ports are powered by +5V, they
can't be used for charging when the computer sleeps.
Only motherboard ports powered by +5VSB can be used
for charging, as that source (at least) is operational
when the computer sleeps. I just wouldn't count on the
card charging anything for you.

*******

If the machine is really old, then the open slots will
be PCI slots. Which are limited on a typical desktop,
to around 133MB/sec on the edge connector. When burst
length and time between transfers is taken into
account, the interface manages around 110MB/sec or so.

Since there are no USB3 chips for the PCI bus, they
used a PCI Express x1 chip and then use a bus bridge,
to convert PCI protocol to PCI Express protocol.
The typical cost adder for this second chip, is
around $25. Whereas the chip itself might cost
a fraction of that. When bridged card designs
of this type are created, the slightly higher price
ensures not many are sold, and the manufacturer then
stops making them.

The price on this is absurd. At least $25 more than it should be.
Some of the other cards that used to be built this way,
aren't listed any more.

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapt...wer~PCIUSB3S22

The front of the card has the USB3 chip. They won't show us
a back view of the card.

https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/me...IUSB3S22.B.jpg

The PCI to PCI Express bridge chip is on the back of
the card. I can tell the rough location. If you look
on the front of the card, there is a 4x4 matrix of gold
colored contacts. That would be the via grid for the heat
slug on the bridge chip on the back. It's not documented
what bridge chip is used. It's not really important, if
it works. I haven't run into any negative comments about
bridge chips in some number of years so they've become
almost invisible. Bridge chips are used on motherboards
now, when the Southbridge lacks a PCI bus. They fake a
PCI bus in some cases, because Intel doesn't want to put
it on the Southbridge any more.

*******

So you generally want an available PCI Express slot
of some sort. The PCI version could get around 110MB/sec
over USB3 if you used it. The PCI Express one could
be 200MB/sec or higher. It would depend on whether
the x1 slot in your motherboard was Rev1.1 or Rev2.
Generally the x1 slots are not Rev.3 like a video
card slot might be. Rev.2 slots require a low-jitter
clock. Some chipsets were a bit cheesy with the
clock outputs, and that's why more Rev.2 slots
are not available when they might be. Buffering up
a low jitter clock adds jitter to it, so conventional
buffering strategies would not be a good idea.
So when I promise "200MB/sec" on a PCI Express
product of this nature, my assumption is the worst
slot possible is available :-)

That didn't stop me adding one of the PCI Express
cards to my current machine. It doesn't have any
USB3 native on the motherboard, so I added a NEC
chip for maybe $30 or so. Purchased locally. And
I've never bothered to benchmark it. Just too lazy.
I now have the materials to benchmark it, whereas
when I got the USB3 card I didn't have any test
materials. The original purpose of getting one,
was for USB3 Flash sticks.

I think the fastest my peripherals will go, is
200MB/sec with the best possible USB3. When I paid
maybe $35 for my USB enclosure, it had the "wrong"
chip on it. Asmedia makes at least two different
USB3 to SATA chips, and I got the slow one. But
my purchase was an impulse buy while I was in
the computer store. And my intuition at the
time was that I would be getting "last years chip"
and I wasn't disappointed or surprised when
I got home and opened it up. But, it's fast
enough and I'm not complaining.

I mainly want materials so I can get the performance
from my hard drives. Making pretty benchmark
graphs is a secondary concern. There's really nothing
much to be learned in a case like this. I already
have the specs for my Asmedia USB3 to SATA, so
actually testing it - who cares... It's 6x faster
than my USB2 stuff so it's all good.

Paul

On 12/06/2016 11:03 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 12:23 PM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2 hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3 dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B




Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0




ASM1042A


http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S

I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul


Thanks for the info, Paul. Next paycheck that rolls around, I think
I'll pick up one of those cards. I checked most of my portable HDs
and they seem to be USB 3, so it will be to advantage. One final
question if I may: what about recommendations for my aging Win 7
desktop? I never have upgraded to USB 3 in that one and it has always
taken way too long to back up the thing due to USB 2 limits. So,
while picking up a card for the laptop, I might as well for the
desktop too if you have some Amazon recommendations. Thanks in
advance, once again.

First you have to check what slot types are open
and available in the desktop.

Typically, you'd want to use a PCI Express x1 lane board,
which has a single chip on it for USB3. Now, this one
looked reasonably cheap, but checking the description,
it has an ETron chip on it. You would check reviewer
comments to see if that mattered or not.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-PCI-e-Ca.../dp/B008MIMPL4

This one is a Renesas chip. Three external ports, one internal blue port.
Some cards have the 2x10 expansion header, which is a defacto standard
for front panel USB3. So if a computer case has two blue connectors
on the front, you use an expansion card with the 2x10 connector, and
the cable from the front panel of the computer plugs into that connector.
This card doesn't have that connector. Some of the others do. THis one
has a single blue connector inside, so would be paired with a 5.25"
tray product having a single blue connector on the back of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Controll.../dp/B00965J5T2


The PCI Express slot has +3.3V and +12V but no +5V.
The Molex connector on the end of the card, allows
connecting +5V/+12V power to the end of the card.
With some card designs, the documentation will say
"connect if you need more power", without going into
details. If the blue ports are powered by +5V, they
can't be used for charging when the computer sleeps.
Only motherboard ports powered by +5VSB can be used
for charging, as that source (at least) is operational
when the computer sleeps. I just wouldn't count on the
card charging anything for you.

*******

If the machine is really old, then the open slots will
be PCI slots. Which are limited on a typical desktop,
to around 133MB/sec on the edge connector. When burst
length and time between transfers is taken into
account, the interface manages around 110MB/sec or so.

Since there are no USB3 chips for the PCI bus, they
used a PCI Express x1 chip and then use a bus bridge,
to convert PCI protocol to PCI Express protocol.
The typical cost adder for this second chip, is
around $25. Whereas the chip itself might cost
a fraction of that. When bridged card designs
of this type are created, the slightly higher price
ensures not many are sold, and the manufacturer then
stops making them.

The price on this is absurd. At least $25 more than it should be.
Some of the other cards that used to be built this way,
aren't listed any more.

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapt...wer~PCIUSB3S22


The front of the card has the USB3 chip. They won't show us
a back view of the card.

https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/me...IUSB3S22.B.jpg


The PCI to PCI Express bridge chip is on the back of
the card. I can tell the rough location. If you look
on the front of the card, there is a 4x4 matrix of gold
colored contacts. That would be the via grid for the heat
slug on the bridge chip on the back. It's not documented
what bridge chip is used. It's not really important, if
it works. I haven't run into any negative comments about
bridge chips in some number of years so they've become
almost invisible. Bridge chips are used on motherboards
now, when the Southbridge lacks a PCI bus. They fake a
PCI bus in some cases, because Intel doesn't want to put
it on the Southbridge any more.

*******

So you generally want an available PCI Express slot
of some sort. The PCI version could get around 110MB/sec
over USB3 if you used it. The PCI Express one could
be 200MB/sec or higher. It would depend on whether
the x1 slot in your motherboard was Rev1.1 or Rev2.
Generally the x1 slots are not Rev.3 like a video
card slot might be. Rev.2 slots require a low-jitter
clock. Some chipsets were a bit cheesy with the
clock outputs, and that's why more Rev.2 slots
are not available when they might be. Buffering up
a low jitter clock adds jitter to it, so conventional
buffering strategies would not be a good idea.
So when I promise "200MB/sec" on a PCI Express
product of this nature, my assumption is the worst
slot possible is available :-)

That didn't stop me adding one of the PCI Express
cards to my current machine. It doesn't have any
USB3 native on the motherboard, so I added a NEC
chip for maybe $30 or so. Purchased locally. And
I've never bothered to benchmark it. Just too lazy.
I now have the materials to benchmark it, whereas
when I got the USB3 card I didn't have any test
materials. The original purpose of getting one,
was for USB3 Flash sticks.

I think the fastest my peripherals will go, is
200MB/sec with the best possible USB3. When I paid
maybe $35 for my USB enclosure, it had the "wrong"
chip on it. Asmedia makes at least two different
USB3 to SATA chips, and I got the slow one. But
my purchase was an impulse buy while I was in
the computer store. And my intuition at the
time was that I would be getting "last years chip"
and I wasn't disappointed or surprised when
I got home and opened it up. But, it's fast
enough and I'm not complaining.

I mainly want materials so I can get the performance
from my hard drives. Making pretty benchmark
graphs is a secondary concern. There's really nothing
much to be learned in a case like this. I already
have the specs for my Asmedia USB3 to SATA, so
actually testing it - who cares... It's 6x faster
than my USB2 stuff so it's all good.

Paul


Thanks, Paul. Well, I was on my way home from work and picked up a USB
3 card at Best Buy: Insignia NS-PCCUP53. The plan was to place it in my
primary desktop, but wouldn't you know that there are no PCI express
slots, so gutted that plan. My alternative desktop, a Dell XPS420, does
have the PCI express, so installed it in that. First problem turned out
to be that the one and only "floppy" 4 pin power connector the card
requires wouldn't even begin to reach the card, so I did some old
fashioned soldering and heat shrink tube insulation to the extension
wires, so problem solved. Next step was installing the drivers upon
reboot, and all went smoothly. First testing though isn't going very
well as I'm trying to do a USB 3 hard drive to hard drive transfer of
697 GB of like 66,000 files. Both drives are USB 3, but speed is only
on the order of 25MB/s, although it started off around 50MB/s. Not sure
of the problem, but so far no better really than when I used USB 2.

I picked up this card on a whim and long before I got home and read your
response. I'll return it if it's not going to do well.

On 12/06/2016 07:03 PM, John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/06/2016 11:03 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 12:23 PM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2
hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I
thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3
dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B





Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a
USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too
expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came
across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0





ASM1042A


http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0

The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S


I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul


Thanks for the info, Paul. Next paycheck that rolls around, I think
I'll pick up one of those cards. I checked most of my portable HDs
and they seem to be USB 3, so it will be to advantage. One final
question if I may: what about recommendations for my aging Win 7
desktop? I never have upgraded to USB 3 in that one and it has always
taken way too long to back up the thing due to USB 2 limits. So,
while picking up a card for the laptop, I might as well for the
desktop too if you have some Amazon recommendations. Thanks in
advance, once again.

First you have to check what slot types are open
and available in the desktop.

Typically, you'd want to use a PCI Express x1 lane board,
which has a single chip on it for USB3. Now, this one
looked reasonably cheap, but checking the description,
it has an ETron chip on it. You would check reviewer
comments to see if that mattered or not.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-PCI-e-Ca.../dp/B008MIMPL4


This one is a Renesas chip. Three external ports, one internal blue port.
Some cards have the 2x10 expansion header, which is a defacto standard
for front panel USB3. So if a computer case has two blue connectors
on the front, you use an expansion card with the 2x10 connector, and
the cable from the front panel of the computer plugs into that connector.
This card doesn't have that connector. Some of the others do. THis one
has a single blue connector inside, so would be paired with a 5.25"
tray product having a single blue connector on the back of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Controll.../dp/B00965J5T2



The PCI Express slot has +3.3V and +12V but no +5V.
The Molex connector on the end of the card, allows
connecting +5V/+12V power to the end of the card.
With some card designs, the documentation will say
"connect if you need more power", without going into
details. If the blue ports are powered by +5V, they
can't be used for charging when the computer sleeps.
Only motherboard ports powered by +5VSB can be used
for charging, as that source (at least) is operational
when the computer sleeps. I just wouldn't count on the
card charging anything for you.

*******

If the machine is really old, then the open slots will
be PCI slots. Which are limited on a typical desktop,
to around 133MB/sec on the edge connector. When burst
length and time between transfers is taken into
account, the interface manages around 110MB/sec or so.

Since there are no USB3 chips for the PCI bus, they
used a PCI Express x1 chip and then use a bus bridge,
to convert PCI protocol to PCI Express protocol.
The typical cost adder for this second chip, is
around $25. Whereas the chip itself might cost
a fraction of that. When bridged card designs
of this type are created, the slightly higher price
ensures not many are sold, and the manufacturer then
stops making them.

The price on this is absurd. At least $25 more than it should be.
Some of the other cards that used to be built this way,
aren't listed any more.

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapt...wer~PCIUSB3S22



The front of the card has the USB3 chip. They won't show us
a back view of the card.

https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/me...IUSB3S22.B.jpg



The PCI to PCI Express bridge chip is on the back of
the card. I can tell the rough location. If you look
on the front of the card, there is a 4x4 matrix of gold
colored contacts. That would be the via grid for the heat
slug on the bridge chip on the back. It's not documented
what bridge chip is used. It's not really important, if
it works. I haven't run into any negative comments about
bridge chips in some number of years so they've become
almost invisible. Bridge chips are used on motherboards
now, when the Southbridge lacks a PCI bus. They fake a
PCI bus in some cases, because Intel doesn't want to put
it on the Southbridge any more.

*******

So you generally want an available PCI Express slot
of some sort. The PCI version could get around 110MB/sec
over USB3 if you used it. The PCI Express one could
be 200MB/sec or higher. It would depend on whether
the x1 slot in your motherboard was Rev1.1 or Rev2.
Generally the x1 slots are not Rev.3 like a video
card slot might be. Rev.2 slots require a low-jitter
clock. Some chipsets were a bit cheesy with the
clock outputs, and that's why more Rev.2 slots
are not available when they might be. Buffering up
a low jitter clock adds jitter to it, so conventional
buffering strategies would not be a good idea.
So when I promise "200MB/sec" on a PCI Express
product of this nature, my assumption is the worst
slot possible is available :-)

That didn't stop me adding one of the PCI Express
cards to my current machine. It doesn't have any
USB3 native on the motherboard, so I added a NEC
chip for maybe $30 or so. Purchased locally. And
I've never bothered to benchmark it. Just too lazy.
I now have the materials to benchmark it, whereas
when I got the USB3 card I didn't have any test
materials. The original purpose of getting one,
was for USB3 Flash sticks.

I think the fastest my peripherals will go, is
200MB/sec with the best possible USB3. When I paid
maybe $35 for my USB enclosure, it had the "wrong"
chip on it. Asmedia makes at least two different
USB3 to SATA chips, and I got the slow one. But
my purchase was an impulse buy while I was in
the computer store. And my intuition at the
time was that I would be getting "last years chip"
and I wasn't disappointed or surprised when
I got home and opened it up. But, it's fast
enough and I'm not complaining.

I mainly want materials so I can get the performance
from my hard drives. Making pretty benchmark
graphs is a secondary concern. There's really nothing
much to be learned in a case like this. I already
have the specs for my Asmedia USB3 to SATA, so
actually testing it - who cares... It's 6x faster
than my USB2 stuff so it's all good.

Paul


Thanks, Paul. Well, I was on my way home from work and picked up a USB
3 card at Best Buy: Insignia NS-PCCUP53. The plan was to place it in my
primary desktop, but wouldn't you know that there are no PCI express
slots, so gutted that plan. My alternative desktop, a Dell XPS420, does
have the PCI express, so installed it in that. First problem turned out
to be that the one and only "floppy" 4 pin power connector the card
requires wouldn't even begin to reach the card, so I did some old
fashioned soldering and heat shrink tube insulation to the extension
wires, so problem solved. Next step was installing the drivers upon
reboot, and all went smoothly. First testing though isn't going very
well as I'm trying to do a USB 3 hard drive to hard drive transfer of
697 GB of like 66,000 files. Both drives are USB 3, but speed is only
on the order of 25MB/s, although it started off around 50MB/s. Not sure
of the problem, but so far no better really than when I used USB 2.

I picked up this card on a whim and long before I got home and read your
response. I'll return it if it's not going to do well.

I used some software to do a benchmark test on both connected drives. I
found the reason for the slowness: on one of the drives, I had a 3 foot
USB cable extension. Once that was removed, speeds for each individual
drive ranged around 100 MB/s; when transferring drive to drive, around
50 MB/s, which is double the 25 MB/s I was getting with the 3' extension
to one of the USB drives. I suppose 50 MB/s might then be the limit for
transferring from drive to drive. Both drives are USB 3, but are
standard, not SSD drives, so I suppose that and other factors may slow
things down a bit. Still, at 50 MB/s I won't complain-- that will still
be several times faster than what I had been getting. One thing I'm
going to do though is return this PCEex card and get one of the ones you
recommended. I'd like to get one with the plug so I can add two front
ports too, feeling around in the back each time isn't going to cut it
for me for where I have the desktops placed.

John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/06/2016 07:03 PM, John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/06/2016 11:03 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 12:23 PM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/05/2016 09:04 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
Ok, I've been recently backing up several of my portable USB 3/2
hard
drives onto a larger hard drive, also USB 3/2. Most of the
portable
HD's have USB 3, but my laptop's have USB 2. When I'm doing copy
transfers of say 0.5-1 TB, this is taking a lot longer than I
thought
it would. The laptop is the Inspiron 1545. Since I have the
Expresscard slot free, I was thinking of adding one of the USB 3
dual
port adapters like shown he

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express...NMJ0JH C2903B






Two questions:
1) Would this card really make the speed difference if doing a
USB 3
to USB 3 drive transfer utilizing both of its ports?

2) If so, what would be a recommended card that isn't too
expensive?
I just linked to that one because it was the first one I came
across,
so it may or may not be suitable.

Thank you.

1) Yes.

2) ASM1042


http://web.archive.org/web/201405020...9&cate_index=0






ASM1042A


http://www.asmedia.com.tw/cht/produc...9&cate_index=0


The newer one has UASP protocol, the previous one doesn't. Your
item for $13 is the older one.

Compliant with PCI Express Rev.2.0

Your ExpressCard slot could be Rev.1.1 (250MB/sec).
Or it could be Rev.2.0 (500MB/sec).

These numbers place a limit on transfer rate.

The protocol has some overhead, so in round
numbers, you'd expect 200MB/sec.

And that happens to be suitable for modern hard
drives. Some modern drives can manage as much
as 220MB/sec on a good day. So you're not
losing much and both items are in the same
ballpark.

The ExpressCard only has a single PCI Express lane.
The host chips, like the ASM1042, are also limited
in the number of lanes they are equipped with. And this
means, for "record setting" purposes, you'd rather have
a Southbridge USB3 port, than any add-in USB3 host chip.

Still, this is not a benchmarking contest. Your
USB2 port limits you to around 35MB/sec. Using
a USB3 port on the laptop, could raise that to
the 200MB;sec region. The controller inside
the USB hard drive enclosure also has limits,
and for many of them, 200MB/sec is ballpark.

There is one review article, where the reviewer
picked some UASP equipment, Southbridge USB3 port,
SSD drive for the housing, and got more heroic numbers.
But for this job, getting 200MB/sec is perfectly
acceptable. Even the backup software itself
may be limited to around 125MB/sec, as it picks
selected clusters from the disk for backup.
There are still bottlenecks in the process, and
you hardly get screaming performance anyway.
If you wanted a better transfer rate, you could
try turning off compression in the backup software.
(You also need to turn on "system file cache" in the
preferences, to hide the NTFS TXF activity.)
My other machine, the compression probably limits
the transfer rate. And the compression helps by
saving some space on the destination drive.

If you connect two USB3 drives to the two ports on
the ExpressCard, what happens is one port is "receiving",
one port if "transmitting", while you do a disk to
disk transfer. The PCI Express lane interface is
full duplex, and has separate transmit and receive
busses. For that particular pattern, both interfaces
get used to the max, so it's a "good pattern". You
could do 200MB/sec to 200MB/sec transfers.

If you did Dynamic Disk, set up striping, and put
the two disks on USB ports, then that's a "bad pattern".
But nobody does something idiotic like that. In that
case, of the TX and RX pair, one is going to be
overworked, and the disks get 100MB/sec each. And the
stripe runs no faster than a single disk might run
(given good, modern hard drives).

You should be pleasantly surprised in any case.

It's important to remember, that add-in solutions
might not have a lot of USB bus power to squander.
On a desktop with built-in port, the port will be
connected to +5VSB on the ATX power supply. In the
case of this ExpressCard solution, the incoming power
might be 3.3V, and need conversion via a switcher
to +5V for the port power. If you were planning
on charging an iPad off that port, forget it.
But if you're using a 3.5" USB drive with its own
external power adapter, the ExpressCard port will only
need to supply on the order of a milliamp or so. Which
should be well within its capabilities. Just don't
expect to run a USB coffee warmer off it :-)

If you can find a user manual for the product,
it would be prudent to check what kind of bus
current it can source.

USB3 consists of two sets of wires. There is a
group of four contacts, a group of five contact.
The USB3 rates are on the five contact section.
Devices having just four contacts still work on
the USB3 port, but at USB2 rates. The software
will not run both interfaces in parallel, and
the bus negotiation picks one of the two interfaces.

If selecting USB devices, you want peripherals with
*metal* barrels for interconnect. If you buy a USB3
flash drive, it should have a metal barrel. I had
one with a plastic barrel, where a pin on the USB3
flash snapped off (so now it can only do 30MB/sec or so).
And that's because a plastic barrel doesn't control
capture well enough for practical work. Your hard
drive will be fine, because you'll be using a separate
extension cable for it.

Paul

Thanks, Paul, but I'm finding your card suggestions a bit
difficult to
track down on Amazon, for example. Can you offer any Amazon specific
suggestions? Thanks.

You picked a sample product. This link.

https://www.amazon.com/GMYLE-Express.../dp/B0045BLP1S



I checked which chip it is. It uses
an Asmedia ASM1042, which is perfectly
good for the job.

The only chip I might have questions about
would be ETron. And there is another brand
that's relatively new to the market, where
drivers can be a problem (just finding them).
The Asmedia one should be OK. The original
USB3 chip was NEC/Renesas, but they don't seem to
be in circulation any more. There might be
five or six brands of chips. Asmedia is
related to Asus, the motherboard maker.

VIA brand chips are likely cheaper.

But at that price point, the above item is
cheap enough to buy it anyway.

*******

So what I go by, is not the brand of the
ExpressCard itself, but what kind of chip
is inside.

If the mechanicals look particularly shabby,
or if the brand is one of the "companies
that can never do anything right", then that
would count against the purchase.

*******

I have two USB disk enclosures with Asmedia chips
and they're fine. And good for maybe 200MB/sec.
Brand-wise, I haven't had any reason to regret
using chips of that brand. There are lots of
brands and examples out there, with spotty
reputations. The problem with the ETron chips
was the initial drivers. It took quite a while
to work the bugs out of them. Drivers matter
on WinXP and Win7, because the OS doesn't have USB3
drivers. You use the manufacturer drivers. On Win8/10,
the Microsoft "class" driver is used instead.

So if you're buying for a Win7 machine, you want
to check that a CD or a mini-CD is included in
the packaging. As that's your proof they have
drivers for WinXP/Vista/Win7.

Paul


Thanks for the info, Paul. Next paycheck that rolls around, I think
I'll pick up one of those cards. I checked most of my portable HDs
and they seem to be USB 3, so it will be to advantage. One final
question if I may: what about recommendations for my aging Win 7
desktop? I never have upgraded to USB 3 in that one and it has always
taken way too long to back up the thing due to USB 2 limits. So,
while picking up a card for the laptop, I might as well for the
desktop too if you have some Amazon recommendations. Thanks in
advance, once again.

First you have to check what slot types are open
and available in the desktop.

Typically, you'd want to use a PCI Express x1 lane board,
which has a single chip on it for USB3. Now, this one
looked reasonably cheap, but checking the description,
it has an ETron chip on it. You would check reviewer
comments to see if that mattered or not.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-PCI-e-Ca.../dp/B008MIMPL4



This one is a Renesas chip. Three external ports, one internal blue
port.
Some cards have the 2x10 expansion header, which is a defacto standard
for front panel USB3. So if a computer case has two blue connectors
on the front, you use an expansion card with the 2x10 connector, and
the cable from the front panel of the computer plugs into that
connector.
This card doesn't have that connector. Some of the others do. THis one
has a single blue connector inside, so would be paired with a 5.25"
tray product having a single blue connector on the back of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Syba-Controll.../dp/B00965J5T2




The PCI Express slot has +3.3V and +12V but no +5V.
The Molex connector on the end of the card, allows
connecting +5V/+12V power to the end of the card.
With some card designs, the documentation will say
"connect if you need more power", without going into
details. If the blue ports are powered by +5V, they
can't be used for charging when the computer sleeps.
Only motherboard ports powered by +5VSB can be used
for charging, as that source (at least) is operational
when the computer sleeps. I just wouldn't count on the
card charging anything for you.

*******

If the machine is really old, then the open slots will
be PCI slots. Which are limited on a typical desktop,
to around 133MB/sec on the edge connector. When burst
length and time between transfers is taken into
account, the interface manages around 110MB/sec or so.

Since there are no USB3 chips for the PCI bus, they
used a PCI Express x1 chip and then use a bus bridge,
to convert PCI protocol to PCI Express protocol.
The typical cost adder for this second chip, is
around $25. Whereas the chip itself might cost
a fraction of that. When bridged card designs
of this type are created, the slightly higher price
ensures not many are sold, and the manufacturer then
stops making them.

The price on this is absurd. At least $25 more than it should be.
Some of the other cards that used to be built this way,
aren't listed any more.

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapt...wer~PCIUSB3S22




The front of the card has the USB3 chip. They won't show us
a back view of the card.

https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/me...IUSB3S22.B.jpg




The PCI to PCI Express bridge chip is on the back of
the card. I can tell the rough location. If you look
on the front of the card, there is a 4x4 matrix of gold
colored contacts. That would be the via grid for the heat
slug on the bridge chip on the back. It's not documented
what bridge chip is used. It's not really important, if
it works. I haven't run into any negative comments about
bridge chips in some number of years so they've become
almost invisible. Bridge chips are used on motherboards
now, when the Southbridge lacks a PCI bus. They fake a
PCI bus in some cases, because Intel doesn't want to put
it on the Southbridge any more.

*******

So you generally want an available PCI Express slot
of some sort. The PCI version could get around 110MB/sec
over USB3 if you used it. The PCI Express one could
be 200MB/sec or higher. It would depend on whether
the x1 slot in your motherboard was Rev1.1 or Rev2.
Generally the x1 slots are not Rev.3 like a video
card slot might be. Rev.2 slots require a low-jitter
clock. Some chipsets were a bit cheesy with the
clock outputs, and that's why more Rev.2 slots
are not available when they might be. Buffering up
a low jitter clock adds jitter to it, so conventional
buffering strategies would not be a good idea.
So when I promise "200MB/sec" on a PCI Express
product of this nature, my assumption is the worst
slot possible is available :-)

That didn't stop me adding one of the PCI Express
cards to my current machine. It doesn't have any
USB3 native on the motherboard, so I added a NEC
chip for maybe $30 or so. Purchased locally. And
I've never bothered to benchmark it. Just too lazy.
I now have the materials to benchmark it, whereas
when I got the USB3 card I didn't have any test
materials. The original purpose of getting one,
was for USB3 Flash sticks.

I think the fastest my peripherals will go, is
200MB/sec with the best possible USB3. When I paid
maybe $35 for my USB enclosure, it had the "wrong"
chip on it. Asmedia makes at least two different
USB3 to SATA chips, and I got the slow one. But
my purchase was an impulse buy while I was in
the computer store. And my intuition at the
time was that I would be getting "last years chip"
and I wasn't disappointed or surprised when
I got home and opened it up. But, it's fast
enough and I'm not complaining.

I mainly want materials so I can get the performance
from my hard drives. Making pretty benchmark
graphs is a secondary concern. There's really nothing
much to be learned in a case like this. I already
have the specs for my Asmedia USB3 to SATA, so
actually testing it - who cares... It's 6x faster
than my USB2 stuff so it's all good.

Paul


Thanks, Paul. Well, I was on my way home from work and picked up a USB
3 card at Best Buy: Insignia NS-PCCUP53. The plan was to place it in my
primary desktop, but wouldn't you know that there are no PCI express
slots, so gutted that plan. My alternative desktop, a Dell XPS420, does
have the PCI express, so installed it in that. First problem turned out
to be that the one and only "floppy" 4 pin power connector the card
requires wouldn't even begin to reach the card, so I did some old
fashioned soldering and heat shrink tube insulation to the extension
wires, so problem solved. Next step was installing the drivers upon
reboot, and all went smoothly. First testing though isn't going very
well as I'm trying to do a USB 3 hard drive to hard drive transfer of
697 GB of like 66,000 files. Both drives are USB 3, but speed is only
on the order of 25MB/s, although it started off around 50MB/s. Not sure
of the problem, but so far no better really than when I used USB 2.

I picked up this card on a whim and long before I got home and read your
response. I'll return it if it's not going to do well.

I used some software to do a benchmark test on both connected drives. I
found the reason for the slowness: on one of the drives, I had a 3 foot
USB cable extension. Once that was removed, speeds for each individual
drive ranged around 100 MB/s; when transferring drive to drive, around
50 MB/s, which is double the 25 MB/s I was getting with the 3' extension
to one of the USB drives. I suppose 50 MB/s might then be the limit for
transferring from drive to drive. Both drives are USB 3, but are
standard, not SSD drives, so I suppose that and other factors may slow
things down a bit. Still, at 50 MB/s I won't complain-- that will still
be several times faster than what I had been getting. One thing I'm
going to do though is return this PCEex card and get one of the ones you
recommended. I'd like to get one with the plug so I can add two front
ports too, feeling around in the back each time isn't going to cut it
for me for where I have the desktops placed.


I would check the chip brand and see what it is.

If it's an ETron and you're on Windows 7, then you
would begin the search for an up-to-date driver.

You can try benching with HDTune if you want.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

The window rendering is a bit flaky on HDTune.
It's fine as long as it stays in the foreground.
Obviously, any utility that wants block level access
to drives, will be asking for UAC, so you should
see a UAC prompt when it starts.

This is my enclosure, tested with a Renesas USB3 host.
Only gets 150MB/sec. This might be a PCI Express Rev.1.1 lane.
This really should be higher.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif

The Asmedia 1042A host on the other machine, might be on
a Rev.2 lane. In Win7 I get 235MB/sec average.

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png

This is the same hardware only with Win10. The Microsoft
driver is driving it this time. Averages 227MB/sec.
Win10 was quiet at the time.

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png

The first benchmark really should have been closer
to 200MB/sec, so I don't know what's going on there.

So no records set today :-)

*******

On page 3 here, you can get some idea of the more
heroic efforts.

http://www.myce.com/review/beyond-us...ntroduction-1/

SSD on SATA III port 519.8 MB/sec
SSD on USB3 mass storage 423.3 MB/sec
SSD on USB3 UASP protocol 417.9 MB/sec

I don't think I'll be hitting that level,
any time soon.

Paul

Paul wrote:

I added one more test result.

In the second link here, I've moved the card on the WinXP machine
from a Rev1.1 slot to a Rev2.0 slot, and that brought the speed up.
So now the limit is either inside the enclosure chip, or due
to SATA II limit on the SATA interface of the chip. The SSD
should go faster than this and not be the limit.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif Rev1.1 150MB/sec

https://s27.postimg.org/zd2y6ev9v/Wi...2_Lane_SSD.gif Rev2.0 228MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png Rev2.0 235MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png Rev2.0 227MB/sec

Paul

On 12/07/2016 10:14 AM, Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:

I added one more test result.

In the second link here, I've moved the card on the WinXP machine
from a Rev1.1 slot to a Rev2.0 slot, and that brought the speed up.
So now the limit is either inside the enclosure chip, or due
to SATA II limit on the SATA interface of the chip. The SSD
should go faster than this and not be the limit.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif
Rev1.1 150MB/sec

https://s27.postimg.org/zd2y6ev9v/Wi...2_Lane_SSD.gif
Rev2.0 228MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 235MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 227MB/sec

Paul

Well, to my surprise, wouldn't you know that I actually DID have a PCIe
x1 slot. I was thrown off because my video card has been inhabiting the
slot for a couple of years, but I really didn't need it as it didn't
fulfill the original purpose anyway, so I pulled it, went back to the
onboard VGA connector for video and installed the Insignia card. Once
the correct drivers were installed, I did a test using the program you
suggested earlier and got 100MB/s, so I am now trying a True Image
backup now to this drive. So far, so good, seems a lot faster backing
up than with USB 2.

My only issue right now is the video card pull. I uninstalled its
drivers before shut down and then pulled the card. Upon boot up, I'm
getting an error that my monitor driver isn't correctly installed now,
the yellow exclamation point in device manager. So, I'm going to have
to see what's going on there. It's working, but Win reporting not
correctly installed. I haven't done this in a long time, but I'm
guessing I need to find the correct monitor drivers online.

John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/07/2016 10:14 AM, Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:

I added one more test result.

In the second link here, I've moved the card on the WinXP machine
from a Rev1.1 slot to a Rev2.0 slot, and that brought the speed up.
So now the limit is either inside the enclosure chip, or due
to SATA II limit on the SATA interface of the chip. The SSD
should go faster than this and not be the limit.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif
Rev1.1 150MB/sec

https://s27.postimg.org/zd2y6ev9v/Wi...2_Lane_SSD.gif
Rev2.0 228MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 235MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 227MB/sec

Paul

Well, to my surprise, wouldn't you know that I actually DID have a PCIe
x1 slot. I was thrown off because my video card has been inhabiting the
slot for a couple of years, but I really didn't need it as it didn't
fulfill the original purpose anyway, so I pulled it, went back to the
onboard VGA connector for video and installed the Insignia card. Once
the correct drivers were installed, I did a test using the program you
suggested earlier and got 100MB/s, so I am now trying a True Image
backup now to this drive. So far, so good, seems a lot faster backing
up than with USB 2.

My only issue right now is the video card pull. I uninstalled its
drivers before shut down and then pulled the card. Upon boot up, I'm
getting an error that my monitor driver isn't correctly installed now,
the yellow exclamation point in device manager. So, I'm going to have
to see what's going on there. It's working, but Win reporting not
correctly installed. I haven't done this in a long time, but I'm
guessing I need to find the correct monitor drivers online.

When that happened to my monitor a couple days ago,
it told me what ICM file it was looking for. It
said "I need a copy of NL1765.ICM" or words to that
effect. Using Agent Ransack, I could find the folder
I originally used to install, pointed Windows to it,
and it was identified just fine.

nl1765.cat --- Security catalog.
nl1765.icm --- The generic color map. Could be replaced
with a calibrated ICM from a Spyder.
nl1765.inf --- Can right click and install

On mine, this happened because I changed video drivers.
(Went from 175.xx to 306.xx or so.) And so the monitor
ends up "rediscovered" when you do that. Even though the
PNP info coming from the monitor should make this
entirely unnecessary.

Monitor drivers are *sometimes* available on line, but
not always. Westinghouse LCD panels claim they don't
need a monitor driver. So no ICM file is available for
them. Mine happened to have a file, and it was
buried in a larger jumbo ZIP.

At some point, Windows acquired the ability to use separate
ICM files on dual monitor setups. So two monitors
could have calibrated colors. That's to give some idea
why these things exist. The "generic" color file
basically contains an average mapping which should
make the colors look reasonable. With my monitor, I
don't think I can tell the difference :-) On some
blue-tinted monitors (high color temperature), maybe
it helps ? Dunno.

And I don't think there is any guarantee the driver
is on Windows Update. But you can ask the updating
process to check there. With the Westinghouse situation,
you would not expect to find one.

Paul

On 12/08/2016 03:10 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/07/2016 10:14 AM, Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:

I added one more test result.

In the second link here, I've moved the card on the WinXP machine
from a Rev1.1 slot to a Rev2.0 slot, and that brought the speed up.
So now the limit is either inside the enclosure chip, or due
to SATA II limit on the SATA interface of the chip. The SSD
should go faster than this and not be the limit.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif
Rev1.1 150MB/sec

https://s27.postimg.org/zd2y6ev9v/Wi...2_Lane_SSD.gif
Rev2.0 228MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 235MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 227MB/sec

Paul

Well, to my surprise, wouldn't you know that I actually DID have a
PCIe x1 slot. I was thrown off because my video card has been
inhabiting the slot for a couple of years, but I really didn't need it
as it didn't fulfill the original purpose anyway, so I pulled it, went
back to the onboard VGA connector for video and installed the Insignia
card. Once the correct drivers were installed, I did a test using the
program you suggested earlier and got 100MB/s, so I am now trying a
True Image backup now to this drive. So far, so good, seems a lot
faster backing up than with USB 2.

My only issue right now is the video card pull. I uninstalled its
drivers before shut down and then pulled the card. Upon boot up, I'm
getting an error that my monitor driver isn't correctly installed now,
the yellow exclamation point in device manager. So, I'm going to have
to see what's going on there. It's working, but Win reporting not
correctly installed. I haven't done this in a long time, but I'm
guessing I need to find the correct monitor drivers online.

When that happened to my monitor a couple days ago,
it told me what ICM file it was looking for. It
said "I need a copy of NL1765.ICM" or words to that
effect. Using Agent Ransack, I could find the folder
I originally used to install, pointed Windows to it,
and it was identified just fine.

nl1765.cat --- Security catalog.
nl1765.icm --- The generic color map. Could be replaced
with a calibrated ICM from a Spyder.
nl1765.inf --- Can right click and install

On mine, this happened because I changed video drivers.
(Went from 175.xx to 306.xx or so.) And so the monitor
ends up "rediscovered" when you do that. Even though the
PNP info coming from the monitor should make this
entirely unnecessary.

Monitor drivers are *sometimes* available on line, but
not always. Westinghouse LCD panels claim they don't
need a monitor driver. So no ICM file is available for
them. Mine happened to have a file, and it was
buried in a larger jumbo ZIP.

At some point, Windows acquired the ability to use separate
ICM files on dual monitor setups. So two monitors
could have calibrated colors. That's to give some idea
why these things exist. The "generic" color file
basically contains an average mapping which should
make the colors look reasonable. With my monitor, I
don't think I can tell the difference :-) On some
blue-tinted monitors (high color temperature), maybe
it helps ? Dunno.

And I don't think there is any guarantee the driver
is on Windows Update. But you can ask the updating
process to check there. With the Westinghouse situation,
you would not expect to find one.

Paul

Well, the TI back up was a success and took just a tad over 4 hours with
the new USB 3 card. That includes standard compression and verification
of image. With my USB 2, it used to take at least 15 hours for the same
job.

For the monitor, I had forgotten that originally, before I upgraded to
the GEForce card, there was an issue with the drivers not working
correctly in XP, which is what I use in that system. It is an AOC
123467 monitor. Since I removed the card to replace with the USB 3
card, the issue returned, even when trying to use the AOC recommended
driver, so I just went back to the Win generic driver and the INF
warnings and such at boot up went away. Soon, once everything is back
to normal, I'll have to recalibrate using my Spyder. I can use the
Imenu program to adjust monitor settings during calibration and then
just save the config file.

I have another question for you. I have several external HDs lying
around, just 5.25" size with both SATA and even IDE connections. In the
past, I used a Thermaltake? cradle to couple these via the Thermaltake's
USB 2 interface to the PC's, but now of course I'm using USB 3. I'd
like to switch cradles now to USB 3 also, but I'd to find a reasonably
priced one that will have both the SATA and IDE interfaces. Care to
recommend any? Thanks in advance..

John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/08/2016 03:10 AM, Paul wrote:
John Abnarthy wrote:
On 12/07/2016 10:14 AM, Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:

I added one more test result.

In the second link here, I've moved the card on the WinXP machine
from a Rev1.1 slot to a Rev2.0 slot, and that brought the speed up.
So now the limit is either inside the enclosure chip, or due
to SATA II limit on the SATA interface of the chip. The SSD
should go faster than this and not be the limit.

https://s15.postimg.org/6yrcu1xtn/Wi...enesas_SSD.gif
Rev1.1 150MB/sec

https://s27.postimg.org/zd2y6ev9v/Wi...2_Lane_SSD.gif
Rev2.0 228MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/f5ov21itp/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 235MB/sec

https://s12.postimg.org/vt3jjx2p9/Wi..._Ahost_SSD.png
Rev2.0 227MB/sec

Paul

Well, to my surprise, wouldn't you know that I actually DID have a
PCIe x1 slot. I was thrown off because my video card has been
inhabiting the slot for a couple of years, but I really didn't need it
as it didn't fulfill the original purpose anyway, so I pulled it, went
back to the onboard VGA connector for video and installed the Insignia
card. Once the correct drivers were installed, I did a test using the
program you suggested earlier and got 100MB/s, so I am now trying a
True Image backup now to this drive. So far, so good, seems a lot
faster backing up than with USB 2.

My only issue right now is the video card pull. I uninstalled its
drivers before shut down and then pulled the card. Upon boot up, I'm
getting an error that my monitor driver isn't correctly installed now,
the yellow exclamation point in device manager. So, I'm going to have
to see what's going on there. It's working, but Win reporting not
correctly installed. I haven't done this in a long time, but I'm
guessing I need to find the correct monitor drivers online.

When that happened to my monitor a couple days ago,
it told me what ICM file it was looking for. It
said "I need a copy of NL1765.ICM" or words to that
effect. Using Agent Ransack, I could find the folder
I originally used to install, pointed Windows to it,
and it was identified just fine.

nl1765.cat --- Security catalog.
nl1765.icm --- The generic color map. Could be replaced
with a calibrated ICM from a Spyder.
nl1765.inf --- Can right click and install

On mine, this happened because I changed video drivers.
(Went from 175.xx to 306.xx or so.) And so the monitor
ends up "rediscovered" when you do that. Even though the
PNP info coming from the monitor should make this
entirely unnecessary.

Monitor drivers are *sometimes* available on line, but
not always. Westinghouse LCD panels claim they don't
need a monitor driver. So no ICM file is available for
them. Mine happened to have a file, and it was
buried in a larger jumbo ZIP.

At some point, Windows acquired the ability to use separate
ICM files on dual monitor setups. So two monitors
could have calibrated colors. That's to give some idea
why these things exist. The "generic" color file
basically contains an average mapping which should
make the colors look reasonable. With my monitor, I
don't think I can tell the difference :-) On some
blue-tinted monitors (high color temperature), maybe
it helps ? Dunno.

And I don't think there is any guarantee the driver
is on Windows Update. But you can ask the updating
process to check there. With the Westinghouse situation,
you would not expect to find one.

Paul

Well, the TI back up was a success and took just a tad over 4 hours with
the new USB 3 card. That includes standard compression and verification
of image. With my USB 2, it used to take at least 15 hours for the same
job.

For the monitor, I had forgotten that originally, before I upgraded to
the GEForce card, there was an issue with the drivers not working
correctly in XP, which is what I use in that system. It is an AOC
123467 monitor. Since I removed the card to replace with the USB 3
card, the issue returned, even when trying to use the AOC recommended
driver, so I just went back to the Win generic driver and the INF
warnings and such at boot up went away. Soon, once everything is back
to normal, I'll have to recalibrate using my Spyder. I can use the
Imenu program to adjust monitor settings during calibration and then
just save the config file.

I have another question for you. I have several external HDs lying
around, just 5.25" size with both SATA and even IDE connections. In the
past, I used a Thermaltake? cradle to couple these via the Thermaltake's
USB 2 interface to the PC's, but now of course I'm using USB 3. I'd
like to switch cradles now to USB 3 also, but I'd to find a reasonably
priced one that will have both the SATA and IDE interfaces. Care to
recommend any? Thanks in advance..


I'll be the usual thing. Some using SATA II chips, some using
SATA III chips. Some having UASP protocol support. And all connected
to USB3.

I don't have any here, and use a couple enclosures instead. I have
an old IDE enclosure for IDE drives. And a couple SATA II enclosures
with USB3. And no cradles. I was initially interested,
but couldn't find a physical cradle design I liked. I don't want
a drive falling over or anything, so whatever scheme is used,
it can't fall over and should not be something I can easily
bump.

Search for them on Newegg and sort by review rating, to get
some idea which ones are bad. There have been some in the past
where the complaint was they were too lightweight.

Paul