PC-3000 Forum

Using PC3000+DE 4-port version, I've been using a separate 4-port SATA card + SATA-ESATA cables + ESATA Docking stations for many years.
The ESATA docking toasters I've been using all fail after 1.5-2.5 years and I'm tired of cycling them out. Also, I think they might have an 8TB limit for drive sizes in some cases, so I've been considering changing up my destination 4-port setup.

Do USB 3.x cards work as well as SATA/ESATA PCIE cards for destination drives for speed, stability, detection, etc?
If cloning 4 drives full speed in DE to USB drives, will a standard 4-port USB3.0/3.1 gen 1 card become a bottleneck for data speed transfer in real-world experience? There's a ton of things on paper to consider that may or may not have an effect on the real-world situation of cloning from 4 port PC3k+DE on all 4 ports at the same time. I've read about UASP enabled USB cards using less CPU power, though I'm not sure how much that actually would matter.

I was thinking of trying a USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbps 4 port card thinking that should more than accommodate transfer speed needs, but perhaps even a 4 port usb 3.0 / 3.1 gen1 card would too? Or, perhaps 2, 2-port USB 3.0 cards would be better...

Anyone (including ACE) have any recommendations?

Hi there,

I'm using Lindy Docking station for SATA drives destination. This one is very reliable, never failed, rock solid stable, and detects any drives connected, also speed is very good, if you connect ssd it goes well over 100 Mb/s, it's build around ASM1542, ASM1352R chip and it has a rated power supply of 4 Amps. It does support UASP even if it's not advertised. Link: https://www.lindy.co.uk/usb-c4/usb-3-1- ... ion-p10027

I also used Sabrent DS-UB31. This one is advertised as suporting UASP, that's why i took it. This one is build around ASMT2135 chip. Speed is way lower than Lindy, UASP or not. Problem is it does not detect all drives and i suspected because it only has a 2 amp rated power supply, which in parts was true. Using 4 amp power supply helped, and some drives that are not working with 2 amps are now detected. But even if i use a 4 amp power suppply it still has problem detecting some of the drives. On their website it states that it Supports hard drives up to 8TB, but actually it's not the case. Maybe something related to firmware or cheaper controller used. Link: https://www.sabrent.com/product/DS-UB31 ... escription

I use a system board with lots of SATA ports and have a 4 bay hot swap cage installed.

I prefer to use an Areca ARC-1880ix RAID card with three RAID 6 arrays connected using SFF-8087 cables to external enclosures filled with HGST 8Tb SAS drives. But, that's just me. Maybe I'm crazy wanting to be able to run the logical scans afterward at 800Mb/s and store 50-100 cases at once in a single spot, but it sure is handy.

DataMedics wrote:I prefer to use an Areca ARC-1880ix RAID card with three RAID 6 arrays connected using SFF-8087 cables to external enclosures filled with HGST 8Tb SAS drives. But, that's just me. Maybe I'm crazy wanting to be able to run the logical scans afterward at 800Mb/s and store 50-100 cases at once in a single spot, but it sure is handy.

That's exactly whats in my mind since ages. So, which destination format are you using while copying a faulty Drive? VHDX, File Image?

I mainly just use the DE split image format.