Quest for DVD duplication on the cheap: burning multiple discs simultaneously USB hub

Occasionally I have to do DVD duplication to several disks at once. My quest was for the ability to burn at least 4 discs at once.. lightscribe and data for under $200, externally with only one cable coming from the PC, and have future expansion capability. Commonly available duplicators with this capability cost $500+, and lock you into the duplication count you purchase.

The biggest bottleneck is the communications bus.
Firewire: capable but too expensive
USB 2.0: incapable without dedicated duplication processor

Potential solution: USB 3.0?

So far:
I've picked up sata burners from ebay
picked up USB 3.0 card, 4-port hub, sata adapters, and cables, and power splitters


Question to be answered:
Can USB 3.0 support the bandwidth of 4 burners when used through a 3.0 HUB?
I haven't seen this talked about on the web too much yet, but will have the answer and post soon. If you already have experience with this, let me know what you found

You're going to have to use USB3.
Yes, USB3 can handle it.
Just make sure your laptop has a native full-blown built-in USB3 port (and plug your USB3 hub into this port), because a USB3 hub will be useless if you plug it into a USB2 port.

Hi there, thanks for your reply. Are you speaking from experience about USB 3.0 working?

One of the interesting things I found out about USB 3.0 is that if you plug multiple usb2.0 devices into a USB 3.0 hub and the hub also connected to a usb 3.0 port, that the usb 2.0 devices will still end up sharing just 480mb/s of old-style USB 2.0. So the entire solution end to end must be usb 3.0 compatible for it to work.

Hey drlava,

I'm not sure how USB hubs work exactly.

Will a hub allow 4 simultaneous data streams? That's what you'd need if you want to burn 4 discs at the same time through a hub.

You will be able to hook 4 burners to your computer through a hub... and the computer will see them as 4 different drives...but I'm not sure if you can write to all of them all at once. There might be a limitation in the hub based on USB itself.

USB has a host/device relationship. Theoretically your solution should work... the hub is invisible in the data chain. The host (computer) will think the devices (burners) are connected directly.

But trying to write to all 4 devices at the same time might be a problem.

Give it a shot and let us know if it works!

If you want the bandwidth of USB 3.0, you have to have support for it end-to-end:

* Port on motherboard
* Cables
* Hubs
* Devices connected

Everything has to be USB 3.0-rated.

That said, you can definitely buy USB 3.0 DVD burners, and this will allow youm plenty of bandwidth for multiple simultaneous burns. USB 3.0 DVD burners are pretty rare because USB 2 has more than enough bandwidth for a single drive burn, but I did find this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Vinpower-Digital-USB-External-Burner/dp/B005HMY5SY

Or you might have to trade-up to a Blu-Ray burner to get more USB 3.0 selection (they also handle DVD burns):

http://www.amazon.com/Vinpower-Digital-USB-External-Burner/dp/B005HMY5SY

The hub will allow for as many data streams as you have devices connected - they can all be run simultaneously at full speed, so long as the combined drives don't saturate the single upstream connection. USB 3.0 makes this even easier thanks to the new bus design over 2.0: it features separate read/write channels allowing the bus to better-utilize the full rated speed, so it's capable of realistically pushing hundreds of MB/s per-channel.

A full-speed 16x DVD writer is going to top-out at 20MB/s, so you can easily support 4 of them on a single hub.

Nice to know about the data streams, defaultuser. Those USB 3.0 burners are probably sata burners with a USB 3.0 adapter case.

Here's what I ended up with and will be testing with:

5-pack sata drives
http://www.ebay.com/itm/200894199058

USB 3.0 card
http://www.ebay.com/itm/130647454459

USB 3.0 to SATA bridges (5x)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/230895745234

USB 3.0 hub (this is a multi-select ad, it's the "4 port USB 3.0 Hub style 3"):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/170906377761

plus assorted cables. All-in, about $130. I'm a bit concerned about the crappiness of the hub, but it was one of the few that had the slots arranged in a way that should accept the SATA adapters without going all out like this

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281062578856

Most USB 3.0 hubs have horizontally arranged ports that are spaced too tight to fit the adapters.

That hub is most likely not USB 3.0. If it is really USB 3.0, the ports should have the color BLUE instead of white.

They can get away with bullshit marking like that on Ebay because TECHNICALLY USB 3.0 devices will work connected to a USB 2.0 hub. But the connection will only run at 2.0 speed.

Try and make your purchase from a reputable storefront like Amazon or Newegg, and look to spend $20-30 on a hub because the USB 3.0 chipsets are still significantly more expensive than 2.0. Know that you should not cheap-out on a hub - that's the central data handler in your setup, so you don't want it to fall short of spec.

Some quick suggestions that look more legit:

http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digita...F8&qid=1360938460&sr=8-3&keywords=usb+3.0+hub

http://www.amazon.com/Anker®-Uspeed...F8&qid=1360938463&sr=8-7&keywords=usb+3.0+hub

Look at the small pictures below the large picture. The right most picture is what you want.

The black hub with 4 USB slots on the top. The USB slots are a nice blue.

GeorgeHR said:

Look at the small pictures below the large picture. The right most picture is what you want.

The black hub with 4 USB slots on the top. The USB slots are a nice blue.

Click to expand...

Good point, I didn't select the correct style.

$20 is a reasonable price for such a hub.

I would still be hesitant shopping Ebay for bottom-dollar merchandise in this case because USB 3.0 is still the Wild West in comparison to USB 2.0 (standardized and cheap). I would value known branded items simply because I could get customer feedback.

Posting a status update on this project.

After installing the cards, drivers, etc. all drives were detected. It was possible to write lightscribe labels on all 4 drives at once with SureThing 6 labeler.

However, there appears to be an issue with using the sata/USB 3.0 adapters on the USB hub. The hub comes up in the device manager as both a USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 hub. When I plug in the SATA adapters, they show up under the USB 2.0 hub, and windows throws a warning 'this device could perform faster'. When I plug them directly into the USB 3.0 card ports, the message doesn't show.

It's not possible yet to burn to all 4 at 8x at once without failures when they are in the hub. I think this is because they are performing at USB 2.0 spec/speed and not 3.0 in the hub.

Not sure if the problem lies with the hub or with the SATA/USB3 adapters.

The hub uses a Genesys GL3520 chip which got good reviews elsewhere
The SATA bridge uses a Jmicron JMS539 IC.

Congrats drlava on being cutting-edge! And like all cutting-edge people who pay bottom-dollar, prepare to troubleshoot this yourself!

Before we begin, do you have at least Windows 8? Otherwise there's no native support for USB 3, so we might have some issues with complex setups (unless you were thorough about installing drivers). Also, is this a platform with native support in the chipset, or is it through a 3rd-party USB 3 chipset?

Second: is your hub powered? If not, it may not have enough juice for the passive converter chips in each SATA-USB3 cable at super speeds (so it defaults to USB 2).

I'm using XP, but the USB drivers are sorted. The controller is a renesas uPD720201 and I've updated its firmware and drivers now to the latest
http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic.php?id=5214

The problem seems to be the J-Micron JMS-539 chips in the USB3-SATA bridges. I've read around and found people with the same problems, drives dropping out and just overall issues with these jmicron chips. I've tried all the firmwares
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/jmicron.htm
available for it and none solve the problem. Most of the firmwares are only for HDD enclosures, so don't work with DVD-ROMs. The one firmware that does (2.0.1.3) DOES put the device on the USB 3.0 hub in USB 3.0 mode, but the device drops out soon after a burn starts. In the end, these sata bridges are what is holding the project back and a set of 4 'quality' bridges not using the jmicron chip would be about $120.

In the end I've cut losses of $ and time on the external solution and put all 4 drives in the computer now and am happily burning away.

It's a shame that the USB 3.0 consortium allows this kind of crap without major repercussions on the offending companies (jmicron) for giving USB 3.0 a black eye.