Plugable UGA-2K-A $57.50 (through July 4th)

Posted on 23. Jun, 2011 by in Windows

We’re sorry, the UGA-2K-A has gone out of stock. ETA July 15, 2011

Through July 4th 2011, we’re temporarily lowering the price of our Plugable UGA-2K-A USB Graphics Adapter to $57.50 (normally $64.50).

If you know how great 2 or 3 monitors are, and have wanted to add another (up to 6 on Windows; 4 on Mac), this is a great time to do it.

More independent USB-attached displays for Independence Day. Yea!

Reading the firmware version of a LucidPort SATA dock on Windows

Posted on 15. Jun, 2011 by in Windows

The Plugable USB3-SATA-U3 Hard Drive Docking Station supports updating the firmware for its LucidPort USB300 chipset, so any new USB 3.0 enhancements can be applied even to existing docking stations.

How to determine your firmware version

Go to Windows start menu and search for Windows’ “Device Manager” utility. Expand the “Universal Serial Bus controllers” section.

The Plugable SATA dock will be one of potentially several “USB Mass Storage Device”s. They all share a common name, because it’s actually Microsoft’s own built-in USB Mass Storage driver that controls the device (which is why no driver disk is needed for the Plugable SATA drive docking station).

So we need to open each one to check which is actually the Plugable SATA dock. To check the ids on each one, right click “USB Mass Storage Device”, selecting “Properties”, then selecting the “Details” tab, and then finally selecting “Hardware IDs” from the dropdown list (it’s the 2nd item on the list).

The Plugable Docking Station will be the one with VID_1759 (which is the identifier of LucidPort, Inc). The PID is usually 5000 or 5002. And the REV_ shows the firmware version currently flashed on the dock. In the case of the screenshot above, it’s verison 2580.

If you don’t find the Plugable device, try connecting with USB 2.0 (instead of USB 3) and make sure both power and USB are connected.

Our most recent update is to upgrade all older Plugable USB3-SATA-U3 docking stations to firmware version 2580, to improve USB 3.0 error tolerance and support 3TB+ drives.

Newer Plugable USB3-SATA-U3 docking stations (those purchased now) are already up to date with this firmware version.

You can see the fixes and features introduced in each LucidPort firmware version in their USB300 firmware change history.

And please contact us at http://support.plugable.com/ or support@plugable.com anytime for help. Thanks!

USB 2.0 vs. USB 3.0 SATA Dock Performance

Posted on 14. Jun, 2011 by in Windows

The theoretical speed of a bus like USB is different from what devices are able to achieve in practice. USB 2.0′s theoretical max is 480Mbps, while USB 3.0 jumps that up to 4.8Gbps.

Today we’re benchmarking the Plugable USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station, which is capable of running on either USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 systems, to show what to expect in terms of performance.

While the low-level Windows drivers are different for USB 2.0 (Microsoft EHCI) and USB 3.0 (NEC/Renesas XHCI), above that layer, everything is common, using the drivers already present in Windows. This includes the existing Microsoft USB Mass Storage class driver that does much of the heavy lifting for USB-attached disks.

About the test platform:

Programs used:

HDTune (USB 2.0)

HDTune (USB 2.0)

HDTune (USB 3.0)

HDTune (USB 3.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 2.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 2.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 3.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 3.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 2.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 2.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 3.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 3.0)

Conclusion:

HDTune reports an Average Transfer Rate increase from 36.4MB/sec to 97.9MB/sec. This is about 168% faster than USB 2.0

CrystalDiskMark reports a sequential Read increase from 38.43MB/s to 107.6MB/s and a Write increase from 36.61MB/s to 88.75MB/s. That’s a 179.9% increase for Reading and a 149.2% increase for Writing.

ATTO Disk Benchmark reports a Read increase from 38402 to 105268 (KBytes/sec) and a Write increase from 35696 to 85762 (KBytes/sec) . Those are  174.12% increases for Reading and 140.25% increases for Writing accordingly.

Summary of Results

Summary of Results

If we were to get the average of the 3 tests we would get an average speed increase of 162.2%. A transfer that would take about 5 minutes on USB 2.0, would complete in roughly 2 minutes on USB 3.0.

These numbers may increase slightly in the future with USB-attached SCSI support, USB 3.0 streams, and other driver/firmware updates. But 2-3 times faster in practice is a good baseline for expectations.

We welcome any comments, corrections, or your own benchmark results.

Plugable USB 3.0/2.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station (LucidPort chipset) Product Details $28.95
Page 4 of 27« First...23456...1020...Last »