I came across this interesting Xeon motherboard with 20 native USB ports. This would be absolutely ideal solution for future looking highly expandable PC with external DAS as primary design criteria.
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=PEB-9783G2AR I kid you not, -T On Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 00:58 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 22:02:34 -0700 > Ben Koenig <[email protected]> dijo: > > >You are opening a can of worms looking at NVMe drives for this use > >case. NVMe and PCIe storage in general is still in a state of flux and > >subject to change. Hotplug support hasn't even been standardized yet > >so there are things that just don't exist yet for end users. There's > >also a mess of compliance issues with different drives. Many SSD's > >don't behave as you expect from the advertising material. > > You make a good point about NVMe drives, but it's what I need. I should > add that my laptop has a 1TB NVMe drive for / and /home, and I recently > installed another NVMe drive. My desktop also has only NVMe drives. And > I've never had a problem with any of them. Yes, the world of NVMe > is a tricky one because of all the varying standards, but I'm in no > rush and I will always buy from someone where I can return the product > if it doesn't work. I don't know how long it will take, but spinning > disks are eventually going to go away. > > I don't mind occasionally being on the cutting edge. I bought my > vehicle brand new 24 years ago and it still runs the same as it did > then. I don't feel a need to buy a new one because it wouldn't get me > where I'm going any faster or more comfortably. (Although I do keep > eyeing electrics and self-driving cars.) But my computers are a > different matter. Just five years ago I had a few files of over 1GB > size, and today I have probably close to a hundred that are over 20GB. > Moving those things on and off of spinning disks takes a lot of time. > > >Thunderbolt is also an issue in and of itself. Generally speaking, > >Thunderbolt is considered a dead protocol and will probably end up in > >the same place as firewire and eSATA. I recommend against it. > > Thunderbolt 3 is the best speed I can get at the moment, and it will > not be surpassed easily for some time to come. Yeah, there's 10G > ethernet, but I don't want to re-wire my house, and Thunderbolt 3 is > still faster. My computer came with a Thunderbolt 3 port that I have > connected to a dock that has ports for ethernet, multiple video, and > even various USB3 ports. In three to five years I'll probably be ready > to move on to something else, so I just need Thunderbolt to work for > that long. By then I'll probably be buying a new computer with who knows > what kind of connections. You're welcome to dislike Thunderbolt 3 if > you like, but is hard to beat for DAS. > > >You probably just need a 2 or 4 bay SATA enclosure that implements > >RAID. Either Direct Attached (DAS) or Network Attached (NAS) depending > >on how you intend to use it. If you want I could make a recommendation > >but full disclosure - I work for one of the companies that sells this > >type of gear so I'm going to be biased ;-) > > I have a SATA3 RAID0 DAS in a Mediasonic enclosure now, and it's too > slow. Why should I replace it with something that's just as slow? Oh > wait ... slow stuff is cheap. Well, I can afford it. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
