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Sorry if this is a stupid question but I wanted to be sure before I purchased this PCI card. I have the server HP ProLiant DL380 G4 and I wanted to know if this card would fit. I have purchased a 3TB external HDD to share over LAN but it is running very slow and supports USB 3.0. So I thought I would invest in a USB 3.0 PCI card. Please see the link below for the PCI card:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-Express-Interface-Dual-Expansion/dp/B003MVJG8Q/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1324935532&sr=8-6

I have a gigabit infrastructure so the switch is not the problem and the only think I can think of is the HDD running through the USB cable.

Anyway my question is would this card fit in this server?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks!

user9517
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Crazyd22
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  • ServerFault questions should be generally applicable to the sysadmin community at large -- Your question isn't "bad", but it's really only helpful to you in your specific case (this type of server, and this specific card). You should consult with HP and the card vendor to answer this question. – voretaq7 Jan 14 '12 at 05:29

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According to HP's QuickSpecs for the DL380 G4 (which should be your first stop for questions like this):

3 Total Available Slots (2 available on SAS models): (2) non-hot plug 64-bit/100MHz PCI-X slots and (1) non-hot plug 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X slot

No PCIe slots for the card you linked to.

The server has USB 2.0 ports, running at up to 480Mbps. Coupled with your 1GbE network it should be fairly snappy. You really need to define what you mean by "very slow" because it's all relative. This configuration should be able to pump out 30 to 40 MBps on a good day.

Chris S
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  • Okay thank you. Transferring files from the external HDD (attached to the server) to another computer on the network I only get speeds of barely 200 KB/s. If I also try to stream a .avi file it takes very long to load and takes a while to stream well where this should not be the case. – Crazyd22 Dec 26 '11 at 22:36
  • Try profiling disk speed directly on the server. This will give you a good indication if there's a problem with the USB connection or if it's somewhere else (which would be my guess at the moment). – Chris S Dec 26 '11 at 23:38
  • You were correct, I managed to transfer data at 30 MB/s directly to the servers HDD. The server is connected to a gigabit swich which is connected to a gigabit router. The computer is connected to the router so this goes as follows: Computer > Router > Swich > Server > External HDD. Is there anything wrong with this? Cheers! – Crazyd22 Dec 26 '11 at 23:54
  • Nothing stands out as wrong. Have you tried transferring to other hard drives or computers. – Chris S Dec 26 '11 at 23:59
  • Solved the issue! Realised that I had 3 Ethernet cables plugged into the server. Not sure why this would reduce the speed but I was using them for testing virtualisation and giving them their own network adapter. Thank you for your help! – Crazyd22 Dec 27 '11 at 00:42