Precision T5500 - fastest possible data transfer speeds to external hard drive

Well, I use eSATA external drives for backup, this seems to be the most reliable and fastest data transfers. Now then with USB 3.1 Gen 2, you could have faster data transfers provided you also have faster Drives internally to match the actual transfer speeds of the device. Still, the fastest transfer from internal Hard drives to external hard drives is eSATA it eliminates the USB 2 bottleneck. USB 3.1 Gen 2  SSD to SSD transfer will exceed HD to HD eSATA transfer speeds Generally USB 3.1 gen 1 exceeds SATA Bandwith however I have not found it reliable for scheduled backups, that's just my experience also it seems with large transfer of data USB 3 seems to start out fast the get bogged down to a much slower transfer of data. USB 3.1 gen 2 doesn't seem to have that issue. And Thunderbolt also is very fast and reliable.

What about NAS? Is this what you mean by eSATA? Some of the newer ones are pretty zippy!

I would purchase and install a USB 3.1 card into one of your PCIe ports.

This will allow you to use any modern off the shelf USB storage device at full speed.

@JamesJAB1 Do you know of any good USB 3.1 Gen2 cards? USB 3.1 Gen1, apart from the new type C plugs, is simply USB 3.0 when it comes to speed.

No eSATA is External SATA, the drive connected are just the same as your internal drives Including being bootable. This is an old standard that is going away since USB 3.1 Gen 2 has arrived. Still the most stable of all of the external hard drive connections only limited by the SATA 3 standard 6 GBS but only 550 MBs in actual bandwidth no HD or SSD can get more than 550 Gbs on SATA 3 To go faster we have to go through the PCIe bus which is where m.2 NVME SSD resides also a USB 3.1 Gen 2 adapter card or a TB adapter card so either can be faster than SATA Bus.

Because your T5500 only has PCIe 2.0 slots, any USB 3.0 or better card will max out at 500MB per second in your system...  That is unless you can find one that uses more than one PCIe lane.

USB 3.0 = 500MB/s effective transfer rate
USB 3.1 = 1.21GB/s effective transfer rate
USB 3.2 = 2.42GB/s effective transfer rate

PCIe 2.0 1x = 500MB/s
PCIe 2.0 2x = 1GB/s
PCIe 2.0 4x = 2GB/s

Of course, after typing to above statement, I looked online and found a reasonably priced (under $30) PCIe 2.0 4x card that does USB 3.1 with one USB a and one USB c port.

Vantec 2-Port USB 3.1 Gen II Type-A/C PCIe Host Card (UGT-PC371AC)

Yes the 3.1 gen 1 is incorporated in the 3.0 standard and is what 3.0 was supposed to be to start with.  Still, there is 3.0 equipment around so one needs to pay attention. As far a USB C connector and Type-A connectors there are adapters that work quite well if you intend to purchase just keep looking until you find the USB .3.1 Gen 2 10 Gbs quality.  Same with cables don't settle for anything less than the 10 Gbs technology. You really have to pay attention as there are a lot of products that are just for charging cell phones not what we want for Heavy bandwidth data transfers.

Amazon is show this one and several othersAmazon.com: Ableconn PEX-UB152 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) 2-Port Type-C Internal 20Pin Key-A Header PCI Express (PCIe) x4 Host Adapter Card (ASMedia ASM2142 Chipset): Computers & Accessories

I can't really recommend any brand or model right now since all my units came with Gen 2 ports. You also might want to look at a Thunderbolt card TB is backward compatible with USB and is capable of 20 Gbs transfer speeds double what USB 3.1 Gen 2 can do. Also supplies more power so more units can be attached in daisy chain setups.

Those figures are theoretical only.....right? I get nowhere near those speeds, when writing to a USB 3.0 (or a 3.1 Gen1) stick.

It is painfully slow, especially with large files of around 25GB. Untill recently, I used to image my system directly to USB, but I gave up on that idea quicksmart.

From memory a 25GB file took around 30+ minutes to USB, compared to about 10m to SSD, and 5m to NVME.

I suppose that the OP is in a similar situation, which is why I wouldn't recommend the USB option to him (or her)!

I'm surprised that Dell hasn't adopted the use of fast USB (or Thunderbolt) more. The flagship T7920, for example, is still limited to USB 3.1 Gen1, which is surprising. Perhaps the next generation of precision workstations will correct this?

Hi @COVItarD ,

What GPU in your T5500 excatly? Most of the Nvidia RTX series comes with an USB-C Virtual Link port which not only for VR device connection but also can act as a normal type-C port for high speed external storage device.

You need to keep in mind that this is a 10 year old system.  The USB 3.0 specification was released less than 6 months before Intel started selling the Processor family and Motherboard Chipset that are in this system.  
While this is a nice system it does have some shortcomings that can be remedied through the use of add-in cards in most cases.

USB 3 was not integrated onto anyone's motherboards yet.
          - Add in a PCIe USB 3.x card to suit your needs.
The integrated SAS controller only supports drives up to 2TB
          - Add in a newer generation PCIe 4x or 8x SAS card (I did this on my Precision T7500)
No NVME drive support.
           - Add in a m.2 PCIe adapter.... This will not work as the OS boot drive.
PCIe 2.0 was the fastest spec at the time.
           - be mindful of the per lane speed limit when purchasing high bandwidth usage add-in cards.  luckily for us PCIe cards are backwards compatible, they will just run at the lower speed for each lane. (For example do not install a PCIe 3.0 1x card and expect full speed USB 3.2 transfer speed...)

Yes, my 3440 came with USB 3.1 Gen 2 front and back If I remember right TB was an Option I declined that option as this workstation just doesn't need it for any of its tasks. The main thing holding USB 3.1 Gen 1 or Gen 2 is hard drive speeds the technology support m.2 NVME bandwidth full speed m.2 NVME to m.2 NVME all on the same port using a USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB hub. I tested this on my Inspiron 7386 as well as having 5 of 7 ports transferring data all between internal SSD and External SSD and Hard Drives. They all maxed out Hard Drive speeds and SSD Speeds including the m.2 NVME ext to m.2 NVME Internal. It really an amazing technology held back by the manufactures of computers and Hubs Cables, Cables are everything is you're going to use this technology charging cables just are not going to work period so be careful the cable manufacture are selling charging cables for 10 Gbs data transfer and what you will find that during large file transfer they will lock up and data loss will happen. The correct cables are thick and very stiff due to the heaver coating and thicker wires.