CalDigit USB 3.0 Products: Info Update
Hey Guys: If you have read any of my previous posts regarding my "Search for Speed" I'm going to take this opportunity to share what I've found out with my usb 3.0 purchases.
Since I'm a Photographer working with large Raw files requiring multiple backups etc. I was drawn to the claims of the usb 3.0 interface! Knowing CalDigits reputation I took the plunge and purchased the VR2 along with their 3.0/esata PCIe card with hopes that this would be the answer. Not that I expected 5Gb/s(625MB/s) I did expect to achieve 180-200MB/s on my backups! Well even those numbers were not achievable on some of the best drives out there such as the Hitachi 2TB 7300K and the WD Black 2TB 64MB 7200RPM!
The only way to come close to those Data Rates were with Raid 0 setup on the VR2 with my best numbers being 174MB/s Read and 167MB/s Write which I'm more than pleased with!
But I still had to contact CalDigit for an explanation as to why they would advertise 5Gb/s when they know it is not possible for anyone to come close to those numbers? See Below for their explanation-
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Dear customer,
The VR2's USB3.0 performance is around 180MB/s ~ 210MB/s, and its read speed is higher than the write speed. If you want the maximum VR2 performance (230~250MB/s), you would need the eSATA connection.
The bottleneck is on the USB3.0 card, which it does not support UAS(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI). However, despite the limitation, the USB3.0 card does provide a relatively close range within the VR2's maximum performance.
- None of the USB3.0 card currently support the UAS (including Lacie/Sonnet/HighTech etc
). The only UAS unlocked USB3.0 connection are the native USB3.0 ports on the 2012 Mac computers with the built-in USB3.0 ports.
Best regards,
CalDigit - Support
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So I guess you guys with the new Macs may be the only ones on the planet with any hopes of achieving the 200 plus MB/s but the real surprise to me was their claim that one could expect even higher speeds with eSATA connections?
PHOTOSHOP TEST RESULTS: 11.2secs
My Mac Pro Workstation:
Mac Pro 3.33GHz 6 Core Intel Xeon
32Gb DDR3 1333 Memory
Accellsior PCIe 240GB SSD "Raid 0" Boot Drive [680MB/s AJA SpeedTest]
Dual 600GB WD VelociRaptor 10,000RPM SATA 6 Gb/s "Raid 0" 1.2TB
CalDigit VR2 4TB External "Raid 0" Drive