Can I use USB-C to USB-C to access a storage array (PC-to-PC)?

[fritzman]

OK... need a bit of help please team...

I've arrived in the Philippines to deploy an X299 setup to replace an X99 setup that was used for video encoding. When I set it up Feb-2016, deployed in the same box an LSI 9341-8i raidcard and 8 x ST6000NM0014 drives in a raid5 arry.

It is looking like the LSI card doesn't wanna play with the X299 board... (Code 10 error) I suspect it's got something to do with the memory deployment methodology, but anyway, I don't have too much time to experiment with sorting it out, suffce to say, on Windows 10 fully updated to 1703 & latest patching.

Say all that to ask a fairly simple (I hope) question concerning getting access to the array on another PC which I'd set up just so the storage was available...

Can I add a USB-C PCI-E card to each PC, and use this cable (http://www.belkin.com/ph/p/P-F2CU030/) to link them, and thereby get really fast access to the 40Tb array?

Hoping to find someone who is doing this sort of thing, as it at least seems in theory, to be very doable.

 

[EarthDog]

Not sure how you would get access to the drive that way...why nit via LAN?

 

[fritzman]

Thanks... doing it via LAN as I type... very consistent 130mb/s but looking for USB-C 3.1 speeds if they are available.

edit... Seriously... has no-one tried this yet? Potentially 10Gb speeds there for the taking...

To quote the Belkin blurb...

"The Belkin 3.1 USB-C to USB-C Cable allows you to experience up to 10 Gbps transfer speeds, up to 20X faster than USB 2.0 (480Mbps), 12x faster than FireWire 800, and 2X faster than USB 3.0 (5Gbps). "

If that's right, with USB 3.0 giving around 130Mb/s we should be seeing around 250Mb/s with USB-C 3.1

Surely someone has given it a shot.

 

[HankB]

That's assuming that the USB connection is the bottleneck. It probably is not. If the drives are the bottleneck, faster USB or faster LAN is not going to help.

Also... MB => megabytes, Mb => megabits. Which is it?

How are you getting 130MB/s on USB3? I'm assuming this is from a USB drive enclosure. That sounds fairly typical. Looking at a data sheet for a WD drive (http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800012.pdf) The row for "Host to/from drive (sustained)" shows speeds from 110 to 210 MB/s.

Ordinarily USB is computer <-> peripheral though I can't rule out the possibility that someone has implemented a LAN over USB.

I think your best bet to access data from an array on one PC from another PC is share via LAN as EarthDog suggested.

 

[fritzman]

Cheers for the reply... it's presently (that's the 8 x 6Tb raid5-array) being accessed via LAN and returning the figures mentioned. I haven't tested the I/O of the array, but they are SAS drives on a SAS controller, so I don't imagine it's slow.

I'm happy with access via LAN, except that from what I read about USB0C 3.1, it offers a whole lot more speed via direct PC-to-PC, and that's what I am wanting to confirm before buying the adapters and cables. The end-user is generating and working with video footage, intending to work with 4k footage, and we simply want to be able to provide speedy access to the array so all the data (raw and completed) is backed up and readily available for further work if required.