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A USB2 PCI card for ML310...

 
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Andy Bender
Advisor

A USB2 PCI card for ML310...

Howdy, y'all; we're thinking about using an ML310 as a Web-enabled database server. Performance is adequate, but I'm concerned about backups. The 2 USB ports on the mobo are USB1.1 (I think), and I'd like to add a PCI USB adapter, but the mobo is equipped with 64-bit PCI slots that run @ 3.3V.

I can't find a 64-bit PCI USB adapter. What else would work so that backups to a USB-attached disk would be adequately fast?

TIA,

APJ
San Jose, CA.
3 REPLIES 3
Matti_Kurkela
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: A USB2 PCI card for ML310...

A 32-bit PCI bus should not be a bottleneck for the USB adapter, unless you're driving several high-speed USB2 devices simultaneously or have another high-bandwidth device on the same PCI bus. You can install a 32-bit PCI card to 64-bit bus, if the card can use 3.3V voltage.

The maximum theoretical data rate of USB 2 devices is 480 Mbps (million _bits_ per second), or about 60 million bytes per second.

The capacity of a 32-bit PCI bus is theoretically 1.064 Gbps or about 133 million bytes per second, and normally can perform at about 110 MB/s in practice.

If the external USB2-connected disk is fast enough, the most likely bottleneck is the USB bus itself.

When USB 2 originally appeared, it was compared with Firewire... and although Firewire is nominally slower than High-Speed USB 2, Firewire actually performed better than USB 2 in applications requiring sustained high throughput.

This problem may have been remedied since then, but I'd still recommend Firewire over USB if you need performance.

MK
MK
Andy Bender
Advisor

Re: A USB2 PCI card for ML310...

Thanks for your note, Matti. With a little research, I found a USB2 adapter for universal (5.0 and 3.3V) 32-bit PCI that I installed in the 64-bit socket. Works perfectly and made it easy to install a new higher-capacity disk using Windows 2003 SBS ASR after backup to a USB2 removable disk.

I appreciate your assistance.

APJ
San Jose, CA.
Mark Showacre
Occasional Visitor

Re: A USB2 PCI card for ML310...

Andy,

I'd like to do a usb2 backup also, ran into same problem finding a USB2 controller, What was the controller model you found.

Thanks,
Mark