On site backup with USB 3 question

[Al Lougher]

Hi all

I'm looking into a fairly inexpensive on site backup for my personal projects since I currently only have 2x64GB SSD cards. I'm limited to a laptop with one expresscard port and one eSata port. I've been researching the fastest methods which seem to be Redstation with eSata to dual eSata expresscard then out to a RAID1 enclosure, but I was wondering if anyone knows if the below is just as good? I know USB3 is not as fast as eSata but since the SSD is limited to what 250mb/s then USB3 should still keep up, no?

Redstation -> eSata on laptop
Dual USB3.0 Expresscard -> Two external 7200rpm USB3 hard drives.
R3d Data Manager to copy from SSD to both drives. Note I've no idea how r3ddm actually works, can it copy from SSD to drive#1 first then checksum/verify then drive#1->drive#2 while I can re-format the SSD?

Any thoughts on whether this would work? Note, I'm not at the stage where I'm going to be fussing over 30min transfer times, but would be nice to get it under that.

Cheers.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

R3DDM can copy to both external hard drives at the same time. That means a read from the Redstation for the copy and simultaneous writes to both external hard drives, then verification is another read from the Redstation, and simultaneous reads from the external hard drives.
Copying to one drive and then over to the other means a read from the Redstation and write to external hard drive 1, then verification is another read from the Redstation and a read from external hard drive 1, then the copy is a read from external dive 1 and a write to external drive 2 and verification is then a read from drive 1 and drive 2 simultaneously.

You'd have to test to make sure, as I've not done it over USB3, but in my case with Firewire 800 connection for a RED RAM and eSata connection to dual external hard drives, doing a simultaneous copy to both drives is much faster overall rather than to one and then over to the other.

 

[Al Lougher]

Thanks! USB3 is faster than FW800 correct? What approx. times are you getting on 64GB across two hard drives?

 

[Matthew Love]

USB 3.0 is much faster than fw800. USB 3.0 has a data speed of 5gb I believe while fw800 is 800mbs.

 

[Jon Thomasberg]

 

[Al Lougher]

Thanks Jon. My USB 3.0 expresscard will be here in a few days so I'll report back with some real world tests.

 

[Elsie N]

Wow! Always thought either version of eSATA was faster than USB 3.0. Thanks for posting this.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I use a portalbe 3.5" disk reader and Hitachi 3 & 4TB HDD's via E-sata off of my macbook pro via a sonnet PCI card....using ALL esata connections via dual PCI express card....very affordable and fast. Some place i posted with pics and links to my workflow for mobile work like this....been doing for many years and hasn't let me down yet.