No idea whether this still applies to the current test samples or the final product (it’s not even mentioned on the product page that the M3’s SoC isn’t SATA capable), no idea if you SinoVoip people have any clues about USB storage features like UASP (I doubt it), no idea whether the GL830 suffers from the usual 2 TB limitation of bridge chips that were produced back then and no idea what performance you can expect since according to Lion Wang the USB-to-SATA bridge is behind the internal USB hub. The only thing I know for sure is to avoid any of the new boards called “Banana Pi” since there exists no support any longer.
Compared to a BPi M1 the M3’s storage performance will be just a small fraction of what’s possible with the M1. If it’s about I/O performance then the number and speed of CPU cores doesn’t matter that much. The BPi M1’s A20 SoC with its native (and limited) SATA capabilities will easily outperform the M3 if it’s about NAS useage.
The A20 is able to exceed 45/200 MB/s write/read via SATA. With the M3 you are limited to ~30 MB/s under best conditions. Since the USB-to-PATA/SATA bridge has to share bandwidth with other USB ports behind the internal hub things might get even worse if other bandwidth intensive USB peripherals are used.
This is more or less meant to be a community support forum.
At least its a good start despite the lack of ppl backing it. And I am not from a SinoVoip person, but rather a volunteer.
As said its nice that you pointed out the SATA thing with BPI M3. So you are saying the A20 came with SATA support directly from the SoC and the A83t does not.
Below is a A20 spec diagram. Is the SATA port somewhere under connectivity?
The specs under the A83t are below,
2x SPI, 4x TWI, 6x UART, RSB
3x SD/MMC
HSIC
2x I2S/PCM
CIR, LRADC
LOL, if you have a look at the ‘threads’ here http://forum.banana-pi.org/latest most of the stuff is copy&paste from the former ‘community support forum’ (LeMaker community – unfortunately they had to give up the Bananas and now no community any longer exists) or useless OS image release or announcements like which fair SinoVoip joined and so on.
And c’mon: You really doubt that the A20 lacks SATA since you didn’t find a reference on a picture? You should become familiar with the primary information source regarding the devices you sell:
It’s really annoying since some marketing guy trying to flood this forum here with contents inserts really old/outdated contents from time to time. But otherwise there would be nothing at all since user questions aren’t answered appropriately here (this thread being a good example).
Which “converting module” do you use? It’s unbelievable that the M3 is being marketed as “SATA capable” while it’s not, it’s also unbelievable that such informations aren’t part of the ‘specifications’ somewhere and that people have to ask the very same questions over and over again.
There exist so many different USB-to-SATA bridges with different performance and feature sets so it’s necessary to know which one a specific product uses. If Lion Wang’s thread answer in the other horrible forum is still right then we’re speaking about the GL830 (not fully SAT capable, no UASP support, bad performance and maybe also a 2 TB limitation since the chip is rather old)
But you have to keep in mind that on the Orange Pi Plus the GL830 is directly connected to one of the H3’s USB ports while on the M3 it has to share bandwidth with other USB ports since it’s behind a hub. So the bad performance figures you find for the Orange Pi Plus will be even worse with M3.
And please, take there infomations to the specs pages
if you can’t the marketing will do
thanks
btw: the M1 hat a SATA Port AND an USB Port, but just on the SATA Port my 8 TB HDD is completely recognised. on the usb the M1 will just recognise 2 or 4 GB.
But HDD’s are still growing, the next will be a 16 TB hdd, becase a 12 is already available.
This has nothing to do with the M1 but only with the USB-to-SATA bridges used in the USB enclosures you tested. From the three bridge chips i listed here http://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS#Testing_3_different_external_enclosures both the ASM1051 and the JMS567 are able to access HDDs larger than 4 TB. So the chipset matters. And unfortunately SinoVoip relies on a really outdated chip on the M3
thank for your info about the chips and the M1, but pls let them first answer my question about the M3
otherwise we are going to loose us in diskussions
Who are they? The ‘volunteer’ called projectbananapi not being from SinoVoip and doubting the A20 has native SATA?
Have a look at the ‘specs’: SATA(up to 2TB). So these ‘specs’ seem to confirm the words of SinoVoip’s CEO Lion Wang: They use the GL830 or something similar crappy. You can use just 25 percent of your Seagate and the storage performance of the M3 will be only a fraction of the M1’s.
And the funny thing is: Unlike with the M1 or M2 where you can use mainline kernel now and UASP you’re simply lost with the M3 since there is only a horribly outdated kernel 3.4.39 available and mainlining efforts just started. So you’ve to rely on the old and slow USB BOT mode even if you would use an external USB-to-SATA bridge instead of the crappy onboard GL830.
so, here the direct Info from Sinovoip: we use GL830 for USB to sata.
I would appreciate more direct support, so i must pull this Information from their Nose, which isn’t funny for me.
If I had a wish free, I would wish for me that they read more in their forum and give more detailed info about the questions to their Hardware.
Since your post was directed to me… I knew that since I asked the very same frustrating questions some time ago back when the official forum wasn’t this one but another (see the links above!). And did they answer your real question whether you can use the full capacity of a HDD greater than 2TB? Will they update their so called ‘specs’? The answer is no because they simply don’t give a sh*t about correct informations or customer needs.
To find answers to questions many users have you have to crawl through different forums where the company’s CEO posts some links to google drive late at night. Whether these answers are correct or not… at least the person who gave them doesn’t care. The SinoVoip people call their hardware ‘open source hardware’ but they have no clue what ‘open source’ means. That’s more than just releasing parts of schematics if a user asks. It’s about providing any hardware information available in a reasonable way.
What does SinoVoip put on Github? Countless and useless cloned sources that do not contain the latest fixes even for their own hardware. They seem to be not able to understand the meaning of ‘open source’
I’m a hardware Developer, but if getting Input to this Device is so arduous.
I will not buy it. If this begins so heavy, I won’t
I am not willing to pull all the Input out of their nose.
BUT: And I will tell all my Friends how easy I’m getting Information to Develop.
I think they won’t buy, too, because there is no centralised Support that all the needed Inrformations know and give to the Developer.
It’s a shame, not telling directly the needed Informations, that I could dev things working with the M3.
I’m sorry and very disappointed.
I think they should work more on supporting their Customers, and will learn how to spontaneously give the needed Input to the Community.
If they will not learn to Support, they will not sell a huge amount of these BaPi’s such the Suppliers from the Cubiboard CC-A80.
They haven’t sold a huge amount of them, and it’s not sold anymore.
I thought at Sinovoip the World would be better than this.
if you can’t the marketing will do 
