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When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:03 pm
by derek324
With many USB3 adapters, motherboards and external storage disks available on the market for good few months now it appears that QNAP is a bit behind by not offering USB3 interface in their NAS-es (I have had manufacturing samples of USB3 disk controller in my hand over half a year ago). USB3 will soon replace USB2 in the same way as not so long ago USB2 replaced the original USB1 standard.

Any indication when we can expect first updated USB3 model(s)?

Regards, Derek

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 5:05 pm
by petur
derek324 wrote:With many USB3 adapters, motherboards and external storage disks available on the market for good few months now it appears that QNAP is a bit behind by not offering USB3 interface in their NAS-es (I have had manufacturing samples of USB3 disk controller in my hand over half a year ago). USB3 will soon replace USB2 in the same way as not so long ago USB2 replaced the original USB1 standard.
Pfffff....

the first USB3 products are only just coming on the market. Name me 10 brands that have a USB3 external enclosure. No? OK, name me 5. Still no?

and why use USB3 when you have eSata, the real standard for external drives. Been using it for years....

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:15 pm
by schumaku
derek324 wrote:Any indication when we can expect first updated USB3 model(s)?
Certainly when with a next hardware revision round USB 3.0 becomes available standard with future chipsets deployed, USB 3.0 will be considered. As of now, neither the ICH9 (actual ARM models) nor Marvell Orion SoC (ARM) do directly support USB 3.0.

A demo seen on the CES 2010 showed just sharp twice the performance of USB 3.0 for file copy operation to external drives on a HP notebook sample. Questionable if the effort for driving external storage is worth adding another bottleneck named USB 3.0 - nominal USB 3.0 peak data rates are around 400 Mb/s, and Serial-ATA II is on 3.0 Gb/s, and SATA-III is on 6.0 Gb/s with products readily available in the market. In any case, the limiting factor is the core system design anyway.

-Kurt.

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:18 pm
by derek324
What is your point? For someone with 3746 posts you have very little to say, petur.

For my amusement below I listed of 11 external USB 3.0 enclosures (8 brands) from a few of my local mail order computer distributors. I got bored listing, so I stopped, but this should tell you something, yes?.

Name me 10 brands that currently have a USB 1.0 external enclosure, and not USB 2.0. No? OK, name me 5. Still no? Well, "pfffff...." to you then.

Regards, Derek

* Bufallo DriveStation™ USB 3.0 HD-HXU3 (2 Nov 2009)
(also USB 3.0 PCI Express Interface Card and USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter for laptops)
* Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 USB 3.0
* Welland USB3.0 enclosures: ME-740S, ME-601S, ME-752S
(also Dual Port USB3.0 Host Controller)
* Ineo I-NA318U+ External Hard Drive Enclosure with USB3.0
* Sunbeamtech USB 3.0 Airbox” 3.5” external enclosure
(also USB 3.0 HDDPAL Docking Station)
* Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed
* VPI (Aurora, OH) USB 3.0 2.5in and 3.5in Hard Disk Drive Enclosures (and host controllers)
* Western Digital My Book 3.0 1TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:22 pm
by schumaku
Bean counting does not make any sense. It is much easier to solder some ready-made chips to a converter enclosure (certainly many Asian manufacturers will pop-up daily with new enclosures), other than doing a perfectly performing system with an integration worth the expected USB 3.0 performance. As of now, just gluing a USB 3.0 controller does not make much sense - especially when we are facing Serial-ATA developments, too.

A good posting by Q is in the forum already.

-Kurt.

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:41 pm
by derek324
Kurt,

Bean counting shows that USB 3.o devices arrived already, and that in some future point in time, not very far away, a device not supporting USB 3.0 is going to have the same value as today a device not supporting USB 2.0.

The "good posting by Q" is over 4 month old. Many things may happen in computer technology in four months. New Intel H57 and H55 Express Chipsets based motherboards (mATX form factor) are surprisingly different to what we could buy in Nov 2009. But I appreciate your point.

Regards, Derek
schumaku wrote:Bean counting does not make any sense. It is much easier to solder some ready-made chips to a converter enclosure (certainly many Asian manufacturers will pop-up daily with new enclosures), other than doing a perfectly performing system with an integration worth the expected USB 3.0 performance. As of now, just gluing a USB 3.0 controller does not make much sense - especially when we are facing Serial-ATA developments, too.

A good posting by Q is in the forum already.

-Kurt.

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:07 pm
by petur
derek324 wrote:Bean counting shows that USB 3.o devices arrived already, and that in some future point in time, not very far away, a device not supporting USB 3.0 is going to have the same value as today a device not supporting USB 2.0.
Well, USB was unusably slow and not suited for mass storage before it hit 2.0, so things are different now.... I only use USB for storage if I really have to, because it is always there. eSata has been giving me high speeds for quite some time, way before USB 3.0. And QNAP has always supported that.

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:31 pm
by schumaku
Dear Derek,

Both HM55 and HM57 Express are designed to run with LGA 1156 socketed Intel Core i7, Intel Core i5, and Intel Core i3 processors - and come with <= 14 USB 2.0 and <= 6 SATA-II only. Same interface specs (but smaller numbers) on the Atom counterpart NM10 Express.

What you see on these mATX boards e.g. made by Asus, Giga, or MSI (again not for Atom...) are SATA-III by e.g. by additional Marvell 88SE6111 and USB 3.0 by NEC controllers. No doubt, HM55/HM57 are potential candidates for future bigger TS, e.g. for replacing the TS-809 with SATA and SAS disks - but certainly not for a 20W platform.

All are in the US$ 200 range without a CPU - too much for replacing the actual Intel Atom Dx10 / ICH9 combinations. So please let's stick and compare apples to apples (lowercase intentional).

There are eSATA ports on the existing products, so there is no hurry.

-Kurt.

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 12:33 am
by QNAPIvan
Thanks for the suggestions. All the ideas & commets are helpful.
We will evaluate the possibility, there is no clear plan at the moment.

Cheers,

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:33 am
by Don
I would much rather see support for eSata port multipliers.

all clear now, thanks

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 7:15 pm
by derek324
Thank you all for responding, I appreciate that. I now understand my confusion. I come from the environment where all electronics is manufactured in small runs, but is custom designed. It appears that QNAP is using largely COTS (commercial off the shelf) components; when I realized that all my questions disappeared.

Regards, Derek

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 3:33 pm
by Moogle Stiltzkin
I don't think anyone is saying don't do it, but give it a while when the usb 3 controller is not ripe. Maybe 2011 or 2012 will be the usb 3 nas year :mrgreen:

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:12 am
by qnapsum
Still not USB3 in a near future?

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:57 am
by three_pineapples
I'd like to add my support for USB3 on a qnap NAS.

eSATA is great, but it never seems to work quite as well as USB on laptops and desktops, which is important if you are going to move a HDD from a qnap to a PC regularly. Also, USB3 is rated to 5Gbps, compared to esata2 @ 3Gbps and esata3 at 6gbps. Could be a nice way to expand your qnap storage by adding on a USB3 capable RAID enclosure (new raid enclosure handles RAID side, qnap handles sharing it with the network). You can buy a Lian Li USB3 5-bay raid enclosure for around $250.

Regardless of someones personal preference, I hope to see USB3 on a qnap (along with eSATA) in the near future! Because if there is one thing we should all be able to agree on, it is that USB2 is crap, and choice is good!

Re: When can we expect USB3 QNAP NAS?

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 5:31 pm
by petur
Unless you're dealing with SSD, you don't even need 3gbps (Sata-2). Why do you need 5gbps when your disk will only do 1gbps (if you're lucky).
And eSata never failed on me, it works great and as a bonus has a MUCH lower CPU load than USB.

Yes, USB3 should come to QNAP because USB2 is too slow for the currently available disks, but right now eSata (even sata-1) is plenty of fast enough.