Can not find a 24-36 TB Capacity 3.1 USB NAS

[LeftyInSpades13]

Quick summary of my system:
i7 5960x @ 4.63GHz
32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 3000 @ 2,750 MHz
980Ti Asus Strix w/core @ 1,319 MHz and bus @ 2,002 MHz
OS Drive an Intel 400GB 750 PCI-E SSD w/NVMe
2x1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD in Raid0
2x6TB Seagate SATA3 7200 RPM HDD in Raid0
2x4TB Western Digital 7200 RPM HDD in AHCI
2x2TB Seagate 7200 RPM HDD in AHCI
PSU 1200W Corsair AX1200i
10x3.0 USB & 2x3.1 USB
OS Windows 7 Professional

NOW, the little problem; I have 26TB internal and 28TB external, BUT I don't like having 8 external Hard Drives for backup and I just want one big brick. I have a very old 24TB Raid 6 Media server, but it's close to dead and I don't even want to try to rebuild it.

When I saw that my 3.1 USB port can transfer a 50GB file to an external drive at over 1GB/s in like 30 seconds, I got a little excited. So I started NAS searching; this is where the problem arises, on Amazon, NewEgg, Ebay, Tigerdirect, and a couple other places, the largest NAS I can find that's 3.1 is a 1-2 Tray 12TB max or equivalent Thunderbolt using a conversion card. WHY can't a find a 4-6 Tray [24-36TB capacity(using 4 or 6TB drives)] NAS that is 3.1 USB???

Price is not a consideration, I don't care if it's discless, but if it has discs I want 24-36TB capacity. The 2.0 and 3.0 USB versions are anywhere and everywhere, but it seems nothing bigger than 12TB 2 tray with 3.1 USB is available. Does anyone know where I can find what I want or if they've even started making them yet???

 

[why_wolf]

You should get a NAS for that. Something like a Synology 4 bay or more bays if you think your total storage needs is just going to keep increasing. https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS416#spec

 

[LeftyInSpades13]

You should get a NAS for that. Something like a Synology 4 bay or more bays if you think your total storage needs is just going to keep increasing. https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS416#spec

Do you not know how to read or do you not understand what you read?

I SAID I need a fairly large (24-36TB) 3.1 (THREE POINT ONE) USB NAS, not a 3.0 or lower.

 

[TJ Hooker]

"When I saw that my 3.1 USB port can transfer a 50GB file to an external drive at over 1GB/s in like 30 seconds, I got a little excited."

You actually tried this yourself and saw those speeds? What kinds of external drive were you transferring to?

 

[LeftyInSpades13]

"When I saw that my 3.1 USB port can transfer a 50GB file to an external drive at over 1GB/s in like 30 seconds, I got a little excited."

You actually tried this yourself and saw those speeds? What kinds of external drive were you transferring to?

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten excited if I didn't see it. I generally don't read specs on USB ports. The transfer was to a new External I had just bought a TerraMaster that's USB 3.1 with 2x4TB WD NAS drives in RAID 0. The file was just x264 encoded vids. Also, it wasn't exactly a 50GB folder, it was a 47.8GB folder and "like 30 seconds" I just pulled out of my ass, because all I really know is that it was under a minute, because I was looking at my desktop widget clock. Since the transfer speed was bouncing between 980MB/s and 1.3GB/s I figured 30 seconds sounds close enough for a generic description of the situation. Bottom line, though, close to a 50GB file in under a minute.

I know the speed drops significantly when I'm throwing around massive 1TB folders with very mixed content, but there is a HUGE difference between a 70-100MB/s transfer on 3.0 port and 250-300MB/s transfer on a 3.1 port, for the same 1TB. THAT'S exactly why I want a big 3.1 USB NAS. My new PC cost more than 10K and I have more than 14TB of data, that grows by about 1TB every 6-12 months, so I can toss another couple or so K on a good and fast NAS, so I don't have to have a big array of externals fo backup.

I even saw a noticeable benefit on 3.0 externals running on a 3.1 port. When I plugged in a 5TB External, a little popup said it would benefit from using a Super Speed port, because one of them was empty. Same files that were transferred around 100-110 MB/s on a 3.0 port, went to 170-180 MB/s on the 3.1 port.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Umm, not trying to be annoying here, but are you sure you saw speeds as high as 1.3 GB/s? First off, the max theoretical speed of USB 3.1 gen 2 (superspeed+) is only 1.25 GB/s, and it's unlikely that real world performance would be that high. Secondly, the HDDs would have a max interface transfer speed of 600 MB/s each (assuming SATA 3), so even if RAID0 perfectly doubled that, you would still be a 1.2 GB/s max. Lastly, and most importantly, HDDs are slow. Even the fastest ones on the market tend to cap out around 250 MB/s for sequential transfers. So even if you had ideal (doubled) performance from RAID0, you're still at 500 MB/s. Whenever you're using HDDs, read/write speed is probably going to be your bottleneck, not interface/connection speed.

Also, USB 3.1 can refer to two things: USB 3.1 gen 1 (AKA "superspeed") or USB 3.1 gen 2 (AKA "superspeed+"). In my experience, if it doesn't explicitly state which, it's often the former. And USB 3.1 gen 1 is 5 Gb/s, which is the same as USB 3.0.

 

[LeftyInSpades13]

Umm, not trying to be annoying here, but are you sure you saw speeds as high as 1.3 GB/s? First off, the max theoretical speed of USB 3.1 gen 2 (superspeed+) is only 1.25 GB/s, and it's unlikely that real world performance would be that high. Secondly, the HDDs would have a max interface transfer speed of 600 MB/s each (assuming SATA 3), so even if RAID0 perfectly doubled that, you would still be a 1.2 GB/s max. Lastly, and most importantly, HDDs are slow. Even the fastest ones on the market tend to cap out around 250 MB/s for sequential transfers. So even if you had ideal (doubled) performance from RAID0, you're still at 500 MB/s. Whenever you're using HDDs, read/write speed is probably going to be your bottleneck, not interface/connection speed.

Also, USB 3.1 can refer to two things: USB 3.1 gen 1 (AKA "superspeed") or USB 3.1 gen 2 (AKA "superspeed+"). In my experience, if it doesn't explicitly state which, it's often the former. And USB 3.1 gen 1 is 5 Gb/s, which is the same as USB 3.0.

I said "between". I didn't actually see 1.3 and I didn't actually see 980 either. The lowest I saw on that transfer, I think was 985 or 987 and I did see past 1.2, whether it was like 1.21 or 1.25, i didn't really care. The fact that I was seeing speeds that big made my jaw hit the floor.

The USB 3.1 PCI-E card is supposedly gen2 3.1 or at least that's what the techs from Digital Storm told me. Also, the internal drive from which I was transferring was a PCI-E SSD, one of those intel beasts (which I wouldn't reccomend even to an enemy if you plan on running Win 7. GOD the headaches. Took almost 2 months to get clean boots, running 2 Raid 0 arrays and a 4 bay AHCI array, and then to be able to finally clone that drive for backup. NOT a pleasant experience. On paper it should work easy, in application it was the Queen Mother of headaches). Also, it's not like a stock system, I'm pretty sure an i7 5960 clocked to 4.63 and 32GB Dominator Platinum DDR4 3000 clocked at 2,750 MHz, push pretty much everything to the limit.

My main "Warehouse" drive is 2 Seagate 6TB HDDs, that are supposedly 40% faster than any previous gen Seagate HDD and I'm somewhat partial to seagates, because from my experience they're generally at least 10-15% faster than WD's. The TerraMaster just came with WD's and I tossed a couple Cav Black 4TB HDDs internally that were new from the tower that I replaced with this monster.

Regardless of all that though. On all the tests I've run, transfers back and forth, between internal PCI-E SSD, 2 850 Pro SSDs in Raid0, 2 6TB HDDs in Raid0, Seagate and WD HDDs in AHCI to a wide assortment of 3.0 externals a few of which supposedly even supporting super speed ports, the difference is that the 3.1 is two times or more faster than the 3.0, so I really want a big brick NAS that's 3.1. My setup is also the main reason I want good and fast backup. The software based Raid0 arrays and Raid0 itself are not really the most stable and safest methods of storage, BUT they're fast as hell and if you look at my setup, speed is all I'm after.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Hmm, I couldn't find anything with USB 3.1 gen 2, but I did find something with thunderbolt which in theory should offer the same speed.

http://www.drobo.com/storage-products/5d/

What motherboard do you have, does it have thunderbolt? I think you can get thunderbolt add-in cards, if you think this is a viable solution.

 

[LeftyInSpades13]

Hmm, I couldn't find anything with USB 3.1 gen 2, but I did find something with thunderbolt which in theory should offer the same speed.

http://www.drobo.com/storage-products/5d/

What motherboard do you have, does it have thunderbolt? I think you can get thunderbolt add-in cards, if you think this is a viable solution.

The mobo is a RAMPAGE V EXTREME/U3.1, which came with a gen 2 (10Gb/s) Type-A dual port card. (I asked the techs a while back, but since you brought it up, I actually looked into the card itself and yeah it seems to come with the mobo package)

I think I'm just going to wait till they start spitting out multitray NAS that are 3.1. They can't possibly be that far off, since 3.1 seems to be getting more popular and widespread as well as being backwards compatible. I'm not that eager to get a thunderbolt conversion card, but I'll only wait like 6 months or so and if no 4-6 bay NAS 3.1 is out by then, I'll go with an Asus Thunderbolt II or III (if out by then) card. I do have 1 last PCI-E slot left open that's an x8 so it will support the Thunderbolt card. Supposedly according to one of the mods on the Asus ROG forum, some dude named Praz, even though the Rampage V Extreme 3.1 isn't listed as a compatible board for the ThunderboltEX II card, it works great with no problems, so that is an option, I guess.