Gigabit Ethernet vs. USB 2.0

I imagine this must have been discussed before, but searching on obvious keywords turned up nothing.

Currently I have a USB 2.0 external hard disk for backup purposes. I will soon upgrade and I have been wondering whether I should go eSATA or USB 3.0. Then I realized that a Gigabit Ethernet disk is also a possibility. It's slower than eSATA or USB 3.0 but as long as it's significantly faster than USB 2.0, I'm okay with that. Plus, I have three networked computers (1 desktop + 2 laptops), so an Ethernet disk is a modest additional convenience.

Are there people who have actual experience with 1000BaseT-connected drives? I can see that the theoretical maximum is a little over double the theoretical maximum of USB 2.0 and if this ratio holds then that would be satisfactory even if I never come close to either max. But are there hidden issues with an Ethernet-connected disk that I should know about?

 

Search Network attached storage (NAS).

 

To get anything close to good from a NAS you can't buy the little cheap ones and expect anything more than 8MB/s - your USB 2.0 drive gets you 25-30MB/s now. So yeah that's tons slower. If you want good speeds you need something like Synology or QNAP NAS boxes - those however costs say $400-????? !!

The benefits of a NAS though in most cases is not speed but accessibility. You already said you have 3 computers so being able to access the files from anywhere without doing anything is the major benefit for me. Local will be faster though still, eSATA/USB 3.0 will definitely be faster than the great NAS boxes anyways.

 

Well, I was looking at the Iomega 1TB NAS 34337. 8 MB/sec??? Is that right?

 

There's also the poor man's NAS with gigabit, if you've got a desktop with USB3.0 and or eSATA and a gig ethernet connection, you'll get faster copies than USB2.0 by quite a bit just copying across the network to the PC. I found that with my two laptops, it's faster to copy data across the network from one to the other than to try putting it on a USB 2.0 and then move it.

 

Well, something alone these lines was the original plan. According to SHoTTa35 above a crappy Gigabit NAS disk will get you sub-USB2.0 performance. But one would think it would be the same as a fast (eSATA or USB3.0) external disk directly attached to a PC communicating to my laptops via 1000BaseT -- the bottleneck in both cases should be 1000BaseT. If SHoTTa35 is right, then manufacturers of Gigabit NAS disks must be doing something wrong.

 

I have a Freenas home built nas system and over gigabit, my minimum speed is 40MB/s doing an average of 55-60MB/s. I have 1.5tb on it at the moment and it rocks. Data transfers over gigabit is a great improvement over doing them with usb2.0...

 

Any ethernet is generally better than USB 2.0. If you're looking for a way to quickly move data across a network/between computers, you have several options.

First, and likely cheapest, is building your own NAS (network attached storage) using a Linux distro called FreeNAS. It is pretty easy to set up but requires a bit of googling and computer smarts to set it up the way you'd like it.

I went with a DroboFS, which, while more expensive, is a pretty fantastic system that allows you to drop in up to 4 hard drives at a time and they will automatically create a redundant backup. If a drive fails, you will be notified but your data is likely to be not lost. All you do is plug in a new hard drive, of any size, into the system, and it will begin rebuilding the database. At the end of that process, your data will be accessible again. It's pretty snazzy and works very well for most users.

 

GbE is 1Gbps, eSATA(assuming II) would be 3Gbps. There is no way GbE can beat eSATA unless there is something that cripple it.

A 10GbE or FC is more like it but the network adaptor alone is in the 5K range if I am not mistaken.

Most consumer oriented GbE NAS is using a slow processor(ARM? or may be Atom) and limited memory.

Try to find a server chasis on cragslist and build your own with linux, freenas or if you are ambitious, opensolaris.

 

In theory yes but afaik while it's quite easy to obtain the full potential of a Gbe this isn't exactly the case with eSATA.

 

FreeNAS, eh. I'll give it a look. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

That is something I don't quite understand(from the rare 'benchmark' I can find on google). eSATA is supposed to be just a form factor thing. IOW, there is no extra translation involved between say SATA vs eSATA. So why would it not have the same speed as an internal SATA port ?

And SATA is very efficient, I believe not much different from ethernet(if not better). The fastest SSD can reach 285MB/s that is close to the theoretical limit of SATA II.

And even for the mysterious degrade seen in those eSATA benchmarks, they would still be faster than GbE as 3Gbps @ 50%(which even USB 2.0 can reach) would still be 1.5Gbps, 50% faster than GbE.

 

Speed Comparisons via a Desktop using Gigabit Ethernet to the following

Time Capsule Internal Hard Disk (Gigabit Ethernet) 15MB/s
Another PC via Time Capsule (Gigabit Ethernet) 45MB/s
Buffalo 320GB NAS (Gigabit Ethernet) 25MB/s

If you want a fast NAS you need to check up on the specs, the ones above $200 should give you 40MB/s at least, QNAP TS-119 should be a start...

 

The problem with the cheapie NAS is not the Gigabit port it's the crappy processors/memory they're built with.

They list gigabit ports in the specs because people associate gigabit eithernet with fast. But if the box itself can't process the data fast enough that's where your bottleneck is.

You are better off with USB 3.0 than getting a cheapie NAS.

If you have a PC Card slot in your laptops you can get flush USB 3.0 cards that won't stick out of the laptop.

NEW Express Card 54mm To USB 3.0 Port X 2 Adapter 5Gbps - eBay (item 150578853766 end time Apr-17-11 09:23:02 PDT)

Also you can get a PCI-E USB 3.0 for your desktop.


FreeNas is another decent solution. I personally built a Server 2008 box with a Raid 5 set that I use as a NAS.

I alsohave a Drobo S connected via USB 3.0 or eSata depending on the machine I hook it up to.

Drobo also makes a NAS. If you've never heard of them check out drobo.com

 

I don't know any desktop with USB3.0 or eSATA that is slow at copying data. I wasn't talking about CHEAP NAS boxes, I was talking about using your desktop etc to copy to as it's faster than connecting to USB2 on the laptop. I have no experience with cheap gigabit NAS disks

 

What was the outcome? What solution did you end up with?

 

I'm afraid the answer is anticlimactic. I decided that I didn't really need a NAS setup. It would be for backup purposes, so instead of NAS I have a "two-stage" backup procedure. I sync my laptop to my desktop over the wireless network, and then from the desktop to a directly attached USB 3.0 external drive. My laptop goes to work, but when I'm home I pretty much strictly use the desktop. So I sync with the laptop once before leaving for work and then immediately upon returning. Works smoothly enough. Plus, with a direct-attached USB 3.0 disk, it's a lot less painful to backup large multimedia files.

Still, it was interesting researching NAS solutions.