USB 3.0 Will Accelerate Data Transfer

USB 3 is finally out everywhere. Since USB connections to external hard drives for backup are quite common, this delivers a substantial improvement in speeding up the transfer. But as usual, there are a few caveats for being on the cutting edge of technology. The USB 3 was a major hit in the CES show in January of this year.

USB 2 has a speed rating of 480 mBits/s, which means about 57 megabytes per second. But those are magical numbers because the majority of users are fortunate to get 25 megabytes per second and even that is dependent on file size. The new USB 3 is rated at 4.8 Gbit/s or 570 megabytes a second but that too is significantly past the actual speeds we got during testing. Once again it's really based on file size and type but we did manage to reach 58 megabytes a second in a few tests.

So in the real world our tests showed at least a doubling of speed and generally half the time to copy the identical amount of information. In some cases where there were a lot of bigger files (1 GB or above) we did get bursts of above 80 megabytes per second however that was the exception to the typical copy speed. But I'll take a 50% increase in speed and often a third of the time to copy files just about any day of the week.

Moving around big and dense files such as graphics or music will see a very big improvement. Video cameras and music devices will get a major improvement in transferring data files to a computer. Server class machines and large workstations designed for AutoCad, video editing, and music will certainly get a big increase from the new USB 3 speeds.

Transferring my personal music collection around has always been a huge pain. I have over 55 GBs of music and waiting for it to copy is intolerable. Or undertaking a complete fresh back up of my primary workstation with above 120 GBs can be about as much fun as watching paint dry. In testing the new USB 3 I got a huge improvement over both jobs and dropped the time well above two thirds which is really a large improvement.

Now for the not so good news about USB 3: they changed the connector side that goes towards the device so all your present USB 2 devices will in no way see the new speeds. And as far as I could find right now, there are only a few flash drives and external hard disk drives that are completely USB 3 compliant. And this in addition signifies you'll need the new USB 3 cable to connect with any new device.

One concern with current and old motherboards is that they may possibly be limited by their bus interface speeds. The PCI Generation 1.0 is limited to 2.5 GB transfer rate so it doesn't matter how quick any connection is beyond that restriction. And also the new standard for USB 3 is a minimum of a 5 GB transfer rate to be certified. You will see an increase in rate but never obtain the optimum transfer rate with these older models.

And you won't see USB 3 offered in many new computers yet. You can find a couple of forward thinking firms like Startech who market a PCI board with USB 3 connections for about $50. And some computer companies are slowly adding USB 3 to their most recent computer models. This is particularly crucial for laptop users since the only way now to upgrade is to use a media card adapter.

Both HP and Fujitsu announced that they would likely be offering USB 3 on their brand new laptop computer systems. 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 maker Super Talent is offering a 16 GB flash drive that is USB 3 compliant.

So in case you want to increase your file and computer data transfers, USB 3 will definitely provide some real world improvements in transfer speed. And when the new computers catch up and offer you USB 3, and all the device producers get the brand new USB 3 compliant models in the supply line, it will quickly become the new standard.

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