Have a similar - but single CPU only - X58 chipset, USB 2, PCIe 2.x, SATA II system.

Added a USB 3.0 card (PCIe 2 x1) when they became reasonably cheap years back, but was considering upgrading to USB 3.1 Gen 2 in a USB 3 / SATA III combo card until I skipped over an upgrade to SATA III and went straight for M.2 NVMe.

I mention the following because you're dealing with video files and a M.2 NVMe SSD could potentially help with processing speed there...  My system only has one PCIe 2 x8 slot, all the rest are PCIe 1 x1, which have little bandwidth.  Was quite frustrated with constrained upgrade options until a PCIe switch card became available, which allowed me to bifurcate/switch the x8 PCIe lanes to (4) x4 M.2 NVMe ports.  This allowed me to jump from SATA II performance of ~280 MB/s to half of M.2 NVMe SSD performance of ~1700 MB/s and, with one of a handful of SSDs with a Legacy Option ROM, boot and run Windows 10 on one of the M.2 NVMe SSDs.  The T5500 probably has more PCIe slot options, but on my machine I'll need an adapter to go from M.2 NVMe back to a traditional PCIe x4 slot to add USB 3.1 Gen 2 (or USB 3.2 when it comes out next year).  Haven't gotten around to that yet...

If you're starting with USB 2, the easiest, although not universal, option may be to get a 2.5 or 3.5" enclosure with a [e]SATA external interface combined with a 2.5/3.5" drive since you've already got an eSATA port on the T5500.  The enclosure will likely run at the same speed as your internal SATA II interface - so, no bottleneck at all.  I'd get an enclosure that's separately powered.  (Note you can usually go SATA to eSATA as long as the cable is short - ideally 2' or less, but 3' might be ok.)  Personally, I run an all-SSD setup, otherwise copying small files takes forever - but, whether this is advantageous depends on how you do your backups.  Note I believe there are enclosures with both eSATA and USB external interfaces.

If you go USB 3, I'd consider the following:

USB 3 thumb drives usually get sufficient power, but enclosures often don't.  They can be fine until doing heavy writes, then the power is insufficient, and they fail.  With SSDs, data and device can be lost.  I bricked a number of SSDs this way when testing enclosures.  Hard drives might be recoverable, but in any case not good.  General solution for this is additional power connector beyond USB or a USB "Y" Connector (device gets power from 2 USB ports).  Newer USB-A ports and USB-C may not have this issue, but generally with USB-A ports I don't chance it and always use additional power when connecting an enclosure.

Unless you're upgrading your internal drives beyond SATA II, the original USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 Gen 1, aka USB 3.2 Gen 1x1) is likely sufficient.  There are lots of inexpensive USB 3.0 add-in PCIe cards.  Key thing to look for is UASP support in the driver for your OS.  UASP is built-in to Windows 10, but may not be there if you're on Windows 7 or XP.  Whether you want/can boot from USB 3 may also be a consideration.

To go beyond the original USB 3.0, you'll need a card with more than one PCIe lane and have to pay attention as to whether you'll really get better performance since slots in T5500 are PCIe 2.  As you go up in USB 3.x support, cards become more expensive.  Also, with 3.x cards, some attention needs to be paid to power each USB port can supply - should at least be up to new specs and maybe over.

Thanks, Techgee, for your indepth knowledge and suggestions.

Yes, I'm considering the eSata enclosure. There's a hotswap version with 4 bays that would be fine. I'd have to make a RAID of it, though, because for backing up, I like it all to go onto the one volume.

Currently I'm using a Drobo FS, 5 bays x 2TB. It appears as one volume, and very cleverly operates that way, but it's on a network and very slow. The non-network Drobo model, 5C, is USB-C. I suppose I could connect by USB 2, but USB 3 is so tempting to try. And yes, the Drobo would be a hefty enclosure to write to, so the USB 3 has to be working properly.

As far as I know, my T5500 has a 4 pin internal Molex power connector. Is that the white one in the image below? I got this picture off the internet.

I've read, too, that this Ankar USB 3 PCI card should work well...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SJGGAE

Whether Windows 7 Professional 64 bit can produce USB 3.0 efficiently out of combining the two is something I have to figure out before I do any damage!

I'd appreciate any further thoughts you have on the above,

Many thanks,

Seamus

Thanks, Techgee. I'll have a go at analyzing the drives to see what's happening.

Seamus

I assume you can directly read/write to your existing Drobo FS, NAS setup.  I'd start with some analysis with something like CrystalDiskMark or equivalent if you haven't already.  That will tell you where your bottleneck is and where you're currently at.  What results are you seeing now?  With Gigabit Ethernet you should be seeing up to 100 MB/s on large file transfers.  With hard drives, small file performance will be horrible, but may not matter for your use case.

What drives are in the T5500?  I'd do the same analysis of them as well.  What's the results on them?  There's no need of backup storage that's faster than your main drives.

For USB, I'd get a card with physical PCIe x4, meaning 4 lanes.  It makes no sense to put a single lane x1 card in the T5500 with its x8/x16 slots.  Especially since you've got PCIe 2.0, not 3.0.

USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gpbs) cards with 2 USB ports and PCIe x4 (at least physically, might be x2 electrically - but better than x1) are available for $25 or less.  Some explicitly support 10 Gpbs on PCIe 2.0, which is what the T5500 has.  This is faster than SATA III.  There's no way to get this speed with a PCIe 2.0 x1 single lane card.

Just looking through some cards on the internet.

When you say 'single lane', are you referring to the 'Ankar' card in the link I mentioned in previous post? I see it says 'The PCI-E Port support PCI-E X1/X16 slots'. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SJGGAE

I found this PCI-E 2 4 lane card... https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2-port-lycom-usb-31-type-a-compliant-with-x4-x8-or-x16-pci-express-up-to-10gbps

However, I notice it's not connected via the Molex 4 pin cable, like the Ankar card. Can the T5500 run it?

A tech guy said the T5500 doesn't have a 'header' on the motherboard to run USB 3.0, therefore USB 3.0 cards I purchase can't be guaranteed to run on my PC, so I'm not sure what to think after that!

Sorry, a lot of obvious tech ignorance here on my part!

Seamus

Seamus

Hi Techgee,

Here are the MB/s (Seq Q32T1 only) results of my CrystalDiskMark 6 tests...
C Drive   Read 103.2   Write 95.18
D Drive   Read 130.9   Write 125.9
F Drive   Read 139.1   Write 136.9
Drobo     Read 11.46   Write 11.69
Firewire  Read 42.44   Write 31.56
USB ext  Read 29.91   Write 25.11

I attached a Lacie Drive by eSATA and got  Read 1.18GB/s   Write 150 MB/s

The Drobo is dead slow and the eSATA is fast!

So, I could install an eSATA external hard drive system. But I like the Drobo 5C's functionality and security.

Can you tell me from the PCIe slot information and photos below which slot to put a 4 lane PCIe2 USB 3 or 3.1 card into and how to attach it?

This is how the Slots are populated inside the T5500...
Slot 1 PCIe2 x8   FREE
Slot 2 PCIe2 x16  75W   Motherboard
Slot 3 PCIe2 x8   SDI/HDMI Card
Slot 4 PCIe2 x16  75W   FREE
Slot 5 Firewire
Slot 6 M-Audio Card

Additionally, the free, useable cables I can see are (see photos)...
Molex 4 pin, with a smaller FDD 4 pin piggybacking the Molex.
And a Black 6 pin cable.

Molex 4 pinMolex FDD 4 pinBlack 6 pin cable

---

@Manach wrote:

[...]

When you say 'single lane', are you referring to the 'Ankar' card in the link I mentioned in previous post? I see it says 'The PCI-E Port support PCI-E X1/X16 slots'. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SJGGAE

---

Exactly - the Ankar card above is a single lane x1 card.  Compare the width of the Ankar PCIe gold connector tabs with that of the Lycom, which is a 4 lane (x4) card (physically, anyway).  (x8 and x16 cards would be wider still, of course.  In general, the more lanes, the higher the bandwidth capacity.  Graphic cards are x16 for a reason.)

---

I found this PCI-E 2 4 lane card... https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2-port-lycom-usb-31-type-a-compliant-with-x4-x8-or-x16-pci-express-up-to-10gbps

---

That's exactly the kind of card you want.  It's also capable of a good amount of power (2A) to each port.

---

However, I notice it's not connected via the Molex 4 pin cable, like the Ankar card. Can the T5500 run it?

---

The extra power connecter on the Lycom card is a SATA power connecter.  They're the black connecters in the first photo you posted.  So, you've got what you need there, as long as one of them will reach.

---

A tech guy said the T5500 doesn't have a 'header' on the motherboard to run USB 3.0, therefore USB 3.0 cards I purchase can't be guaranteed to run on my PC, so I'm not sure what to think after that!

 

---

I have no idea what this 'tech guy' is talking about (and I don't think he does either).

Thanks for that, Techgee! I'm nearly there!

Hopefully the final point... those black SATA connectors are from a photo I got on the internet. The only free black connector I can find in my T5500 is the 6 pin one (the last photo in my last post).

I'll look around again inside the PC some more. If I can't find a free SATA connector, perhaps I can get a Molex to SATA adapter cable that will do the same job?

Alternatively, can my free Slot 4 PCIe2 x16  75W power the card without needing a connected SATA cable? ie does power come to it straight from the 'bus'?

Additional thought: I read that some cards go faster/need UASP. Do you know where Windows 7 Pro 64 bit stands re. UASP?

Seamus

---

@Manach wrote:

[...]

Here are the MB/s (Seq Q32T1 only) results of my CrystalDiskMark 6 tests...
C Drive   Read 103.2   Write 95.18
D Drive   Read 130.9   Write 125.9
F Drive   Read 139.1   Write 136.9
Drobo     Read 11.46   Write 11.69
Firewire  Read 42.44   Write 31.56
USB ext  Read 29.91   Write 25.11

[...]
The Drobo is dead slow [...]

---

Internally, the Drobo FS running RAID 5 is likely easily doing over 200 MB/s, and probably over 400 MB/s with good hard drives.  Reasons it might not be are fragmentation (I doubt it's that bad) or a failing drive (reads/write succeed, but have to be repeated several times before they do, which slows things down). 

But, I suspect that's not the reason it's slow, especially since read and write speeds are about the same (11.46 / 11.69).  11 MB/s corresponds roughly to 100 Mbps Ethernet.  

Both Drobo FS and the T5500 are capable of Gigabit Ethernet.  You should be seeing 100 MB/s if the Drobo FS wired Ethernet connectivity is Gigabit end-to-end.  How are you connecting the Drobo to the T5500?  What are the model numbers of the router/switch/wifi devices the Drobo and T5500 connect through?  I suspect one of them is only 100 Mbps speed.

Can you tell me from the PCIe slot information and photos below which slot to put a 4 lane PCIe2 USB 3 or 3.1 card into and how to attach it?

This is how the Slots are populated inside the T5500...
Slot 1 PCIe2 x8   FREE
Slot 2 PCIe2 x16  75W   Motherboard
Slot 3 PCIe2 x8   SDI/HDMI Card
Slot 4 PCIe2 x16  75W   FREE
Slot 5 Firewire
Slot 6 M-Audio Card 

---

I'd put it in "Slot 1  PCIe2 x8".  No need to put it in a x16 slot.