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Any cases have front-access USB 3.0 port?

post #1 of 11
5/3/10 at 5:38pm
Thread Starter 
I just had a "oh my god this is not going to work" moment.

I plan to backup my future HTPC via a USB 3.0 drive, then periodically rotate the drive in my bank safety deposit box. (I don't plan on doing RAID, though I do schedule Vice-Versa Pro for file syncing daily. Related to this question, I am more concerned about fire / natural disaster / theft risk that would take out everything vs mere local disk failure.)

Currently I'm doing my backups with a USB 2.0 drive, and it takes forever - > 1 day total elapsed...

Do any cases support USB 3.0 front port access?

I really like the Zalman HD503 recommended by ReneTHX, and was on the verge of purchasing it. I think I understand why he recommended it after looking at other cases (my #2 is the Silverstone LC13-E for its beautiful totally smooth front panel that flips down.)

However, when I was looking at Zalman HD503's close-up pics I had a "oh-no.." moment because:

I definitely will not want to rotate the case around every time I do a backup to access a rear-only USB 3.0 port.

I've been careful about looking only at motherboards that support USB 3.0, but forgot about the case front-access part of the equation.
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post #2 of 11
5/3/10 at 9:13pm
Just an idea, how about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...E16812200670&T

Then you could just tuck the cable under the case when you don't need to back it up. Then you plug your HD into that.
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post #3 of 11
5/3/10 at 10:13pm
I doubt you'll find any cases with USB3.0 on the front in the near future.

Right now there's only a couple of motherboards that even offer USB3.0 and they only have a couple of 3.0 ports because a single 3.0 port can saturate two PCIe lanes. Since they only have a couple of ports they all end up on the back.

I think trginter already mentioned the cheapest solution. Before I read his post, I was thinking you could get a USB3.0 hub and place it out front or mount it in a drive bay. But it would be a lot cheaper to take that cable trginter found and use it directly.

If you want to get really fancy, you might be able to take that extension cable, route it back into the chassis and replace one of the USB2.0 ports on the front of the chassis with the end of that cable.
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post #4 of 11
5/4/10 at 12:21am
Thread Starter 
Thank you for finding that cable trginter.

re: Mac the Knife
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac The Knife View Post

If you want to get really fancy, you might be able to take that extension cable, route it back into the chassis and replace one of the USB2.0 ports on the front of the chassis with the end of that cable.

Yea - why not?

So I would:

1) Remove and tape the front mounted USB 2.0 port to the side somewhere inside the case

2) Connect the USB 3 extension cable to the USB port outside the case. Then snake it back inside the case towards the front where the USB 2 port was.

3) Mount it to the port using...

For 3), What will keep the frontside USB 3 port "still" when I plug in the external USB 3 hard drive ?
Would I need to buy some kind of bracket?
Or remove it from the USB 2 port?
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post #5 of 11
5/4/10 at 2:56am

http://www.lian-li.com.tw/v2/en/prod...25&ss_index=64
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post #6 of 11
5/4/10 at 12:12pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you b-avc. Interesting.

Lian Li PC-V352
(W) 280mm x (H) 275mm x (D) 400mm
(W) 11in x (H) 10.8in x (D) 15.8in

If I reconfig'd my cabinet shelves that would work..

From a symmetry / aesthetics standpoint:
Downside: Form factor looks very different from everything else in the (visible-front) cabinet.
Upside: Side-access ports result in clean front

Downside of sideways Drive trays:
I'd need to keep it positionedwith an air gap always to the RIGHT, so that the drive trays could open. This case effectively takes up more room (5" more??) horizontally than it's spec'd.
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post #7 of 11
5/4/10 at 2:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenThumb View Post

Thank you for finding that cable trginter.

re: Mac the Knife
Yea - why not?

So I would:

1) Remove and tape the front mounted USB 2.0 port to the side somewhere inside the case

2) Connect the USB 3 extension cable to the USB port outside the case. Then snake it back inside the case towards the front where the USB 2 port was.

3) Mount it to the port using...

For 3), What will keep the frontside USB 3 port "still" when I plug in the external USB 3 hard drive ?
Would I need to buy some kind of bracket?
Or remove it from the USB 2 port?

Case modding always requires some improvisation.

If you're really lucky, it might be as simply as loosening a screw removing the 2.0 connector slipping in the 3.0 connector and tightening the screw.

OTOH, it might involve grinding out the old 2.0 connector with a dremel tool and jerry rigging the mounting of the 3.0 connector, perhaps using superglue if the fit is nice and tight and there's a good amount of surface contact or maybe epoxy with microballons mixed in if you need to build up the mount around some gaps. Or whatever other clever mounting scheme you can come up with.

BTW, have you considered using a drive dock like this one:

Sharkoon USB 3.0 SATA Dock


If you don't care about the aesthetics of having the dock sitting out in front of your case then it would solve your problem very nicely. And there are companies that sell storage cases for bare drives, so you could just pop a bare drive into the dock, do your backup, pull the drive out stick it in a storage case (or just an anti-static bag if you're not worried about the drive getting banged around) and then take it to the bank and drop it in the safe deposit box.
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post #8 of 11
5/4/10 at 4:51pm
FYI :
WD black HDD speed is 124 Mb/s and USB 3.0 speed almost 4 Gb/s
you have to RAID0 your HDD's, i recommend FlexRAID program .

I recommend you read more, there are lots of information in this area .
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post #9 of 11
5/4/10 at 6:17pm
FYI, assuming you make full use of the hard drive speed and you have a fast hard drive you probably will not even see a 2x speed increase. New hard drives are hitting 120Mbps on the inside of the platters but still slow down well below that at the outside as they fill. USB2.0 should be capable of about 50Mbps. So, the drive on average can barely run at 2x the speed of USB2.0.
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post #10 of 11
5/4/10 at 8:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDorhyke View Post

FYI, assuming you make full use of the hard drive speed and you have a fast hard drive you probably will not even see a 2x speed increase. New hard drives are hitting 120Mbps on the inside of the platters but still slow down well below that at the outside as they fill. USB2.0 should be capable of about 50Mbps. So, the drive on average can barely run at 2x the speed of USB2.0.

I think you have it backwards...the outside of the platter is faster than the inside at the same rotational speed. Also, on my RaptorX, the drive used the outside first as I visually verified that.

Also, I don't see what the big deal is about USB3. eSATA will be faster for hard drives that use the SATA interface. There's no way that USB3 will somehow make it faster. Flash drives might be faster using USB3, though. I still think USB3 is going to take a long time to supplant USB2 entirely as the needs for one port are extremely high as it takes more than one lane to feed it, even if it is PCI-E 2.0 (500MB/s versus 600MB/s).

Is USB3 isochronous? USB and USB2 are not. USB3 has more pins, but I'm not sure if it is isochronous or not. BTW, that means it can transfer to/from on the same cycle.
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post #11 of 11
5/4/10 at 8:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by steven975 View Post

I think you have it backwards...the outside of the platter is faster than the inside at the same rotational speed. Also, on my RaptorX, the drive used the outside first as I visually verified that.

You're probably right. Assuming so much data per inch of track, the outside would pass the head quicker than the inside so it could move more data per second. Doesn't really matter because the OP still probably won't see the dramatic improvement he's expecting from USB3 in this appication.He's not going to see >1 day to a few hours unless there is something besides the hard drive or the USB2.0 port holding back the data rate. Something like a crappy USB implimentation dropping back to USB1.1 speed or the software crunching the data much slower than the hardware could move it.

You're going to have to be more careful with USB3.0 regarding cable quality and length because the cable used at that high of a data rate will be much more important than the 2.0 stuff.

A front eSATA port with eSATA drive enclosures would keep up to drives for quite some time to come, considering non-SSD drives won't reach 300Mbps speeds for a while.

And I think you're trying to describe full-duplex. I have no idea how isochronous would have anything to do with full-duplex or not.

Peter
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