[lug] UAS and USB 3 Disks

[mad.scientist.at.large at tutanota.com]

USB connectors age badly, I've had the same issues using sata drives over usb, connector lubricant helps.  The connectors are poorly designed, the end that wind up on cases winds up with the contacts facing up, thus collecting dust+debris which scratch it and prevent direct metal-metal contact, the contacts are too large without enough normal force to maintain contact due to the large surface area of the contacts.  The small connectors on phones etc. are somewhat better, but they get put in pockets (along with thumb drives) and add their' own contamination.  I know this from working on many, many old machines.  

The usb connectors wear so badly you wind up using the ps/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard, they are well protected and well designed and always work.  I'm seriously considering using short USB cords to try and save the connectors on the older machines i'm using and especially on the newer ones.  It's easy to carefully replace a sacrificial cable, it's difficult to replace connectors soldered to boards and you risk damaging the board.

Large usb connectors are one of the great unsung failures of modern design.  It's unfortunate this wasn't changed for usb3, then again it's pathetic that rca connectors are used for digital audio, or really anything on modern equipment.

"Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?   All you have to do is follow the worms."  Pink Floyd, The Wall, Waiting for the worms




Jun 24, 2019, 4:57 PM by blug-mail at duboulder.com:

> Has anybody had success using UAS (usb attached scsi) with sata-to-USB3 bridges for internal or external disks/ssds?
>
> Over various kernel versions, different bridges/docks/disks/ssds, I keep seeing lots of usb bus resets and for some disks, complete lockups. This gets triggered by doing large volume transfers (100G+, read or write).
>
> I at the point I am going configure UAS out my kernels so I can get snapshot backups to complete.
>
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