USB 3.0 for Starters: An Analysis
Table of contents
- 1. USB 3.0 - Fast and Affordable
- 2. USB 3.0 Test Drive: Samsung S2 (2.5” Portable 3.0)
- 3. Upgrade to USB 3.0: The Controller
- 4. Test Configuration And Throughput Test
The third generation of USB is faster than ever before, but how noticeable is the difference in practice?
The fast USB 3.0 standard offers a bandwidth of 5 Gb/s instead of 480 Mb/s, it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, and new USB 3.0 hard drives as well as flash drives are widely available. Nevertheless, the standard has yet to come in full swing. This article shows that technically USB 3.0 should be taking over rather sooner than later.
The prices of portable drives with the USB 3.0 interface are a bit higher compared to USB 2.0 models, and it will probably stay like that for a while. But the price difference is entirely justified, because as soon as more data is written to or read from your storage device, you save a lot of time. The data on a portable USB 3.0 drive is available at virtually the same speed as it would have been on an internal hard drive.
The problem however, is that there currently are no chipsets with native USB 3.0 support. Thus, third party components have to be used instead. Or in other words, motherboards and notebooks have to be designed around, and equipped with additional controller chips.
While that might not sound all that dramatic, it really does have a real effect on products. For notebooks in particular, every millimeter of physical design space counts, which means that integrated components are preferred. Enclosure manufacturers and storage accessory companies must consider whether it makes sense to equip their products with a USB 3.0 interface when suitable controllers are not widely used. Making things even more complicated, the new Intel P67 platform (Sandy Bridge) does not have any native USB 3.0 support either, as the interface standard was not finished during Intel’s chipset design phase.
However, all computers with an available PCI Express slot can be made USB 3.0 compatible, and there doesn’t even have to be a lot of cost or effort involved in order for you to use your fast external drive at its full speed.
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Nice article but not really surprising results. Would love to see a round up of the usb 3 caddies out there that take 3.5 and 2.5 harddrives - im trying to find one to turn an old 3.5 internal barracuda drive into an external drive but customer reviews all seem conflicting.
Thanks for the read. Only thing I would have liked to have seen is internal sata 3 & 6 (drive to drive), esata, Wireless G, Wireless N, Gigabit network, and 1394 options for comparison.
Since USB2 has a bandwidth limit of 480Mbps translating into a limit of 60MB/s but typical real world performance of around 35MB/s is it not conceivable that since most drives inside USB2 caddies are capable of at least 50MB/s regardless of actual USB2 performance, would it not be reasonable to expect a modest performance boost from a USB2 drive connected directly or indirectly to a USB3 controller?
Any CPU overhead should not impact a relatively slow USB2 device running on a USB3 controller?
What about testing different controller cards + drivers. This can make a difference?