USB 3.0 - The New Standard In Data Transfer?
Written by Kevin Scott   
Friday, 23 July 2010 07:03
USB 3 is now available in the market. This is a great development in file transfer speed given that USB interface to external memory devices are widely used for backup. Like any new technology, there will always be a number of disadvantages that comes with it. Nevertheless in this year?s Consumer Electronics Show, the USB 3 was a blockbuster.
by KevinScott


USB 3 is now available in the market. This is a great development in file transfer speed given that USB interface to external memory devices are widely used for backup. Like any new technology, there will always be a number of disadvantages that comes with it. Nevertheless in this year?s Consumer Electronics Show, the USB 3 was a blockbuster.

Four hundred eighty megabit per second or fifty seven mbps is the standard speed rating of USB 2. But those are the maximum speed and a large number of users are fortunate to get 30 mbps transferring average-sized files. The latest USB 3 has a speed rating of 4.8 gigabit/second or roughly 570 mbps. And during our tests, we got numbers far less than these figures but in some instance we did get 60 mbps transfer speed and that we processed different file type and sizes.

An average 50% increase in speed and 50% reduction in transfer time using the same file sizes were shown during our actual tests. In some of our tests where 1 GB file sizes were used, we got up to 80 mbps transfer speed but that was fluctuating speed. On the average I will accept a 50% raise in speed and a 1/3 time faster to copy files anytime.

The huge difference in speed will be more evident when transferring large files like video or graphics. Copying files to a computer from video cams and audio gadgets will get a big boost. Servers and workstations handling engineering, audio and video applications will definitely benefit from the latest USB 3 capacity.

Copying my MP4 collection to another storage device takes a lot of time. I have got around 60GB of audio file and waiting for it to finish is unbearable. I had done backup of my PC several times with about 130GB of data and it took several hours to complete. Upon testing the latest USB 3, I got a much better response doing the two chores and it took just about one third of the USB 2 time to finish.

There is however a minus point for the USB 3, its interface port is not compatible with USB 2 devices. As far as I know, there are just a few devices today that are fully compatible with USB 3, and you must also have a data cable that connects one side to the USB 3 port and the other side to the device.

One topic that came up is the BUS interface speed of older motherboards. Motherboards that use PCI 1.0 interface is restricted to 2.5GB processing speed which means USB 3 is also restricted to a maximum of 2.5GB. The set minimum transfer rate for USB 3 is 5GB. With older motherboards, you will see improvement in transfer speed but it can only go as far as your motherboard allows it.

A lot of new computers today do not have the USB 3 yet but there are companies that took advantage of this technology by including USB 3 ports into their PCI board which cost about $50. Other companies are also following suit and gradually adding USB 3 to their latest PC models. This issue is significant to laptop owners given that a media card adapter is needed to improve their unit.

Some laptop manufacturers like HP and Fujitsu made known that their new laptops already includes the USB 3. The new edition of My Book 3.0 from Western Digital was even packaged with a USB 3 capable PCI adapter. Seagate was closely following suit with their version of USB 3 capable external HD that will come out soon. And USB 3 compliant flash disk are now being produced and sold by Super Talent.

If you are looking for more speed in transferring your data, the new USB 3 might be the answer to your quest. And by the time the computer makers get the USB 3 into new computer models it will turn out to be the new standard in data transfer interface.

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