UB 3.0 Interface card

[Silent54]

I'm adding an external USB 3.0 backup drive to send snapshot to as an added safeguard. My current MB only has USB 2.0. If it's possible, how do I add the 3.0 drivers to Freenas to get the interface card to work? Thanks

 

[joeschmuck]

Currently FreeNAS 8.3 does not support USB 3.0 at all. To add the drivers you would need to rebuild the source code with the driver code.

 

[Silent54]

Thanks joeschmuck. I hope there's a plan to add USB 3.0 down the road. I guess no big deal for now as snapshots will be on a schedule and however long it it takes.

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not sure if joeschmuck has inside info, but the FreeNAS manual says that some USB3 controllers are supported but USB3 support is disabled by default. The manual explains how to enable it if you want to use it.

 

[Silent54]

That's good news then. I'll look through the guide further. Thanks for the info.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm not sure if joeschmuck has inside info, but the FreeNAS manual says that some USB3 controllers are supported but USB3 support is disabled by default. The manual explains how to enable it if you want to use it.

Nope, no inside info, maybe my misunderstanding. I guess I didn't RTFM :)

I also haven't heard of anyone using it but then again I don't read these forums all the time, looking for USB3 comments.

So it looks like I'm wrong but if USB 3.0 is supported, I'd like to know if anyone has gotten it to work just for my own knowledge.

 

[cyberjock]

Nope, no inside info, maybe my misunderstanding. I guess I didn't RTFM :)

I also haven't heard of anyone using it but then again I don't read these forums all the time, looking for USB3 comments.

So it looks like I'm wrong but if USB 3.0 is supported, I'd like to know if anyone has gotten it to work just for my own knowledge.

Personally, on a test machine I had FreeNAS on it had USB3. I enabled it and used a USB3 thumbdrive on the USB3 card. It booted and was less than 5 seconds faster. The only reason I can think that someone would intentionally use USB3 regularly is:

1. For backups to a USB3 drive
2. If they were dumb enough to do a zpool over a bunch of USB3 drives.

If you do #1 then your zpool isn't likely to be very big. ZFS really shines for huge zpools, so I'm thinking there's relatively few people that will fit this option.
If you are option #2 I don't really want to know they're doing that. It's just stupid for so many reasons.

So yeah, I think that there are VERY few users that actually use USB3 because it will provide a benefit. I think most people that want USB3 think that it'll make the system so much faster because "their boot drive will be less restricted". The reality is that their argument is completely incorrect.

I do have an Intel External SSD that is USB3. I am now kind of curious to see what kind of performance I could get from it.

 

[joeschmuck]

Eventually I plan to add my 128GB SSD that I'm getting ready to pull out of my main computer. I already have two 256GB SSDs and a 2TB hard drive. But first I need to figure out how to recoup the extra SSD space and use it as a UFS partition. I don't need to do this, I just want to play around a bit more.

 

[Silent54]

I setup USB3.0 in tunables as the guide directed. Fairly easy to do and now it's up and running. Thanks