subject: The Benefits Of The New Usb 3.0 [print this page] USB 3 is now out on the streetUSB 3 is now out on the street. Because USB connections to external hard disk drives for backup are rather popular, this offers a huge enhancement in boosting up the transfer. But as usual, you can find a handful of caveats for being on the cutting edge of technology. The USB 3 was a big hit in the CES exhibit in January of the current year.
USB 2 has a speed rating of 480 mBits/s, which means about 57 megabytes a second. But those tend to be mystical numbers because most users are lucky to get 25 megabytes a second and even that is based on file size. The brand new USB 3 is rated at 4.8 Gbit/s or 570 megabytes a second but that also is far beyond the realistic speeds we received through testing. Once again it's pretty dependent on file size and type but we did manage to reach 58 megabytes a second in a number of tests.
So in the real world our tests demonstrated at least a doubling of speed and often half the time period to copy the identical amount of data. In some instances in which there were a lot of larger files (1 GB or higher) we did get bursts of more than 80 megabytes a second although that was the exception to the typical copy rate. Nevertheless I'll take a 50% boost in speed and generally a third of the time to backup files any day of the week.
Moving big and dense files including graphics or music will see a rather big enhancement. Video cameras and music devices will obtain a significant improvement in moving data files to a computer. Server class models and large workstations created for AutoCad, video editing, and music will undoubtedly get a big boost from the new USB 3 speeds.
Transferring my personal audio collection around has always been a huge pain. I have over 55 GBs of music and waiting around for it to copy is intolerable. Or accomplishing a complete fresh back up of my principal workstation with in excess of 120 GBs might be about as much fun as watching paint dry. In evaluating the brand new USB 3 I received a huge enhancement over both tasks and dropped the time well in excess of two thirds which is a great improvement.
Now for the not so good news about USB 3: they changed the connector part that goes to the device and so all your active USB 2 devices will by no means see the new speeds. And as far as I could find right now, you can find just a handful of flash drives and external hard disk drives that are fully USB 3 compliant. And this in addition signifies you'll require the new USB 3 cable to connect with just about any new device.
One issue with recent and older motherboards is that they may perhaps be limited by their bus interface data transfer speeds. The PCI Generation 1.0 is limited to 2.5 GB transfer rate so it doesn't make a difference how fast any connection is beyond that limit. And the new standard for USB 3 is a bare minimum of a 5 GB transfer rate to be certified. You will see an increase in speed but by no means obtain the maximum transfer rate with these older types.
And you will not find USB 3 available in many new computer systems yet. You will find a couple of forward thinking organizations like Startech who market a PCI board having USB 3 connections for around $50. And a few personal computer businesses are gradually adding USB 3 to their newest computer versions. This is notably critical for laptop users due to the fact the sole method now to upgrade is to use a media card adapter.
Both HP and Fujitsu declared that they will be offering USB 3 on their new laptop computers. Western Digital was first out of the gate with a new version of My Book 3.0 external hard drive that also comes with a USB 3 PCI adapter in a package deal. Seagate has mentioned it'll offer similar external hard drives by mid summer 2010. And flash drive manufacturer Super Talent is providing a 16 GB flash drive that is definitely USB 3 compliant.
So should you desire to speed up your file and data transfers, USB 3 will definitely offer some real world improvements in transfer rate. And when the brand new computers catch up and offer USB 3, and most of the device producers get the brand new USB 3 compliant models inside the supply line, it'll rapidly become the new standard.
