[DC LoCo] Some Device Questions

[Michael Haney]

We have a Ubuntu Server which we've been using on our own network. It was
an old Pentium 4 desktop. Recently we replaced it with an Acer Aspire X1
series desktop which has USB3. We use two multi-disk enclosures, an 8x
Mediasonic Probox and a 4x Mediasonic Probox. Both support USB3 and eSATA,
but we connected them via USB3.

Almost immediately the 8x enclosure starting having problems. It would get
randomly disconnected from the bus, causing I/O errors in the kernel, and
when it was remounted AFP/Nettalk would remount the file system read-only.
We're using AFP/Nettalk because we use Macs and the 4x enclosure stores our
Time Machine backups. The 8x enclosure is for DLNA media storage. We have a
massive DVD collection, the bulk of which is anime, that we're converting
to an MP4 format the plays nice with the Playstation 3 and our Samsung
SmartTV. All eight 2TB drives in the enclosure are part of a single LVM
volume. Yes, we need that much room.

After using Google-Fu and trial and error we narrowed down the disconnect
issue to the firmware in the USB3 controller on the PC. This appears to be
a common problem in Linux based on the sheer number of complaints and bug
reports we found. We saw a lot of people had similar configurations to our
own and had this issue. They fix it by updating the firmware of the USB3
controller on the motherboard, or switching to eSATA. Updating the firmware
is not only risky but also would entire a massive amount of work on our
part because the installer requires Windows, and we deleted the recovery
partition on the hard drive. So, we have an alternative. This desktop has
an available 1x and 16x PCI-e slot.

So, the questions I have are this...

1. Are there any Linux friendly USB3 controllers that don't have this
disconnect issue?
2. Are there any Linux friendly eSATA controllers with two external ports
that can do at least 8x multiplexing per port?

Any suggestions?

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
https://sites.google.com/site/thezorch/

"When religion rather than reason dictates legislation, do not expect logic
with your law."
--Hugh Hefner

Break some Windows, bring freedom to your PC. www.ubuntu.com
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