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Re: External Enclosures for 2.5" IDE Hard Drives

From: Theo de Raadt (deraadtcvs.openbsd.org)
Date: Sat Apr 02 2005 - 13:47:57 CST


> Does OpenBSD support any USB 2.0 and/or Firewire external enclosures?

USB yes. Firewire not at this time.

> I am thinking of using one such enclosure 24/7 as the boot and runtime
> source for my multipurpose home server.

We are not 100% sure that the usb 2.0 (ehci) bugs are all gone, but
things are starting to look fairly good.

> Is introduction of USB 2.0 link before a 2.5" 4200rpm drive going to
> affect its performance by a noticeable margin?

We have been surprised. In some cases, laptop drives with a USB 2.0
adapter appear to outperform the same drive plugged into a laptop.
We found that quite amazing. It might be due to decreased interrupts,
or because of how IDE drives still use polled commands to direct
commands to drives..