Fortysomething Geek

Striping two USB sticks was cool but I wanted to try it further with two fast SSDs.
As many people know, the Samsung 830s are fast, reliable and great SSDs. They make great candidates for a SSD based RAID.


In my search for a super fast consumer grade RAID solution, I figure I try USB 3.0 and see what happens next.

I did tests on both Mac OSX Mountain Lion and Ubuntu 12.04 (off a Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3 motherboard).

On the Mac. Making a stripe software raid-0 is pretty straightforward using Disk Utility.



In Ubuntu 12.04. Setup is almost as easy as the mac.





The results were not that great as the Thunderbolt solutions I've seen. In fact, I now think it is is more economical to get platter based spindle thunderbolt RAID drives instead of trying USB/eSATA with SSDs.

I'm getting 200 MB/s writes on both OSX/Linux and 200-300MB/s reads. Have in mind, these are blazing speeds if you only used to using regular HDDs. However, the results are unimpressive in a RAID-0 array.







In fact, I see no real speed gains striping two SSDs with USB 3.0. Single SSDs are just as fast.
Or simply, the USB 3.0 controllers are not up to speed with the fastest SSDs yet. This may explain why I haven't seen any interesting or worthwhile USB 3.0 RAID enclosures on the market.


I think I'm going to have to spend the cash on a Thunderbolt solution because eSATA and USB 3.0 is not cutting it for a DAS (Direct Attach Storage) solution.

This is a simple guide for those Thinkpad T/W owners with expresscard slots hoping to use USB 3.0 in Ubuntu 12.04.


I wanted to add USB 3.0 to my Thinkpad T420 so I decided to pick up a cheap 34mm NEC controller based expresscard USB3.0 adapter on Amazon.



The NEC based USB controllers have been supported by the Linux kernel since version 2.6.31. However, in Ubuntu 12.04, it isn't quite a plug and play affair. I had to run the following command to get my laptop to recognize the PCI expresscard.

 sudo modprobe acpiphp 

Once you do that, you can check to see if the system sees the device by typing in:

 lspci | grep USB 

Once you see the NEC USB 3.0 controller, you are pretty much good to go. You will need to do this after every reboot unless you modify your GRUB boot loader. Also, I had to disconnect and re-connect a few times before my laptop could see the card.

Next, there is the issue of power. Some portable USB 3.0 devices need power and the particular adapter I have uses a USB pass through cable to connect to a free USB port. Unfortunately, this was a trial-an-error. Certain ports of my laptop did not generate enough power for a 2.5" HDD drive. The only one that worked for me was the lower esata/usb combo port. Furthermore, there is one thing that these expresscard manufacture fails to mention is that you only have enough juice to power one USB 3.0 device. USB 2.0 will only have about 5 volts worth of power so it make sense that only one port will be powered.

Now for some speed benchmarks. The expresscard USB adapter did make a difference.
As you can see below, with a Seagate Go Flex, I got almost twice the read speed using USB 3.0


USB 3.0 w/ 1TB Seagate Go Flex HDD 5400 rpm portable drive. The results are acceptable considering the source is a platter hard drive.




I also wanted to test it with an SSD and I got some decent results.

USB 3.0 w/ 128GB Crucial M4 SSD. These results are almost as a good as plugging a drive to the eSATA port.



I did not test the card in Windows so I can't comment on the Windows performance. However, if you are an Thinkpad Linux user, I strongly suggest getting an expresscard USB 3.0 adapter for your older rig. It is well worth the investment.

Ubuntu needs to fix their multi-monitor capabilities. It is an embarrassment compared to Windows and Mac OSX. I normally dock my Thinkpad T420 to a 30" screen (2560x1600) and there are a few gripes.

First of all, you can't have a different wallpaper on different screens. Okay, this is pretty trivial but the next thing really irks me.

The biggest complaint is the phantom area, the missing void, or the land of no-where.
If you look at my screenshot of my display layout above, the area in red is the phantom zone. Since both monitors are of different sizes (1600x900 and 2560x1600), Ubuntu fails to grasp this. It assumes both have similar workspace sizes so windows and icons float between the two, you can have a browser or terminal window lost in this "phantom zone." More importantly, desktop icons and folders get lost. Since my desktop auto-arranges, all the icons are moved to the top left corner. If you manually move and place the icons, they will get re-shifted back to the phantom zone whenever you dock another screen in.

I don't know who to blame. X11, Canonical, Gnome? It seems to be the same problem with Linux Mint and other distros I've worked with.

Lenovo sells a 9-cell slice battery for their T and W series laptops. I haven't seen many pictures of it online so I figure I share it here. The battery is called the Slice 27 ++. There are other versions for the X220/X230 and older model Thinkpads. It uses the docking port connectors and is a great investment for those who want extended portable power.

On a Thinkpad T420 with the standard 6 cell, the slice gives me a total run time of about 14-15 hours under Ubuntu 12.04. This is with moderate power management.

Since it uses the same dock connectors, you can't use simultaneously with a docking station. You will have to unplug it in order to re-dock with a docking station.

The battery is very hefty and lifts the laptop up quite into a more ergonomic position. I can't really complain about the weight because it gives me an all day power.

Here are some pictures to help those considering this battery.

Right about now, manufactures are releasing a bunch of new Ivy Bridge laptop models. With that said, it is a great time to get major discounts on last generation Sandy Bridge models. Ivy Bridge promises to be 10-20% faster but is it worth the 40% premium when there are significant savings on the last gen core Sandy Bridge?

I recently took advantage of those major discounts during the Memorial Day close-outs and picked out a Thinkpad T420 with a corporate discount. I'm glad I got the T420 over waiting for the newer T430.
Most notable change in the newer models that will infuriate traditional Thinkpad loyalists, Lenovo is abandoning the traditional keyboard for the island chicklet style. With that change and the major discounts (800ドル or so w/ tax and shipping), I could not resist.


I intend to run a Linux workstation with multiple virtual machines so I had the following requirements:

• Higher than 1366x768 resolution screen. Check! The T420 comes with a 1600x900 display.
  
• More than 8GB of RAM. Check! My T420 runs 16GB.
  
• Processor support for advance virtualization. Check! i5-2540M has VT-D/VT-X support for hypervisors.
  
• The ability to run WQHD (2560x1440) monitors or higher. Or the ability to run two FHD(1980x1080). Check! T420 has displayport and I wanted to avoid HDMI and its limitations.
  
• Expansion, docking, and modular drive expansion bays. Check! The Thinkpad can use a docking station that has multiple video outs. The Ultrabay allows me to swap out drive caddies.I intend to run three SSD drives on the machine. 256GB SSD in the main drive bay for the OS, 32GB mSATA in the PCIe slot for swap/VM, 750GB Seagate Momentus Hybrid in the ultraboy.The 34mm express port will allow me to attached a eGPU (external GPU card via express-to-PCIe) to power even bigger and more monitors.

When you look at all my requirements, the Lenovo Thinkpads hit all the right notes. Ultrabooks were out of the question.

The beefier workstation class laptops like the W520 are nice all and with their FHD screens but I explicity wanted the easiest Linux laptop to run multiple 27" and higher displays.
The W520 can run 32GB of RAM in a quad-core configuration but the discreete optimus switching graphics is problematic with Linux and multi-monitor setups involving displayport/dual dvi.
Furthermore, the weight,enormous girth,and bricky 170 watt power supply, and short battery life of the W520 turned me back to the T420. And on a surprising note and unexpected advantage, the T420 is easily hackintoshable if that matters.

So, the T420 or the T520 seems to be the most ideal laptop for my usage. If you are a power user with similar requirements, look no further than the Thinkpads.





What can I say? In a nutshell, it is a "real" Thinkpad. You either like the looks or you don't. If you think the machine looks dated or old school, then this is not the laptop for you.
To me, it has an intangible elegance to it. The spartan, all black, matte professional appearance screams enterprise ready.
This is a professional workhorse and it makes no excuses for it. The only visual cues that separates this from a 10 year old Thinkpad are the video display port, e-sata jack, and the various inside Intel stickers.
So far, Lenovo has done a good job of not messing up IBM's iconic design.

I'm currently working on various deadlines so I haven't had time to set it up and play with it. In the coming days/weeks, I will follow up on my experiences with it running Linux.
I have the mini dock 3 (433710U ThinkPad Mini Dock Series 3), various ultrabay caddies, monitors, and various drives ready to go. I'm most interested in seeing hack together an eGPU (external graphics card) to it.

It will be interesting to see how well it compares with the upcoming, revised quad core Ivy Bridge Retina Macbook Pro 15" that I will be getting from work.
Between 4/5 high res monitors and 2 powerful laptops on my desk, it will be computing nirvana this year.

Post blog notes:

I got it running the 30" Cinema Display using display-port from the laptop and the dock with the basic install of Ubuntu 12.04. No hassles, No xorg config files. It was able to play a 720p MKV on the 2560x1600 display while running a Virtual Machine, compiling, and cloning DD the Windows partition. Impressive and hassle free Linux experience.