usb 3.0 - anybody used it yet?

chunter

I see usb 3.0 cards are now available.
http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=192066

Also hard drives too
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1146161

wonder if anyones tried it and
is it really 10 times quicker than usb 2.0?
is it usb 1.1 compatible?

bob_man_uk

from what ive heard and read, it wont be 1.1 compatible, though if its still using legacy ports i dont see why the hell not.

as for speed, im only going off of what i can find on websites, were currently at about 60MB/s with usb 2, this could be about 400MB/s with USB 3 (this is true data transfer speeds the theoretical speed of usb 3 should be about 4GB/s), so im keen to see how devices will take this up, will webcams get better/faster, hard drives shoudl become faster, though tbh, arent we already pushing the boundary of how fast even sata drives can write to disk? i dont keep track of sata much but i think the last one i looked at could manage about 300MB/s

interesting, but personally id prefer an uptake in light development, ive heard that optical fiber hard drives can reach about 2GB/s true data transfer.... now that would be great to shout about.

BargainGalore

Only useful for high end stuff like HD at mo, dont think any video cameras support it at present but will in time

Richie-from-the-Boro

chunter wrote: »

I see usb 3.0 cards are now available.
http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=192066

Also hard drives too
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1146161

wonder if anyones tried it and
is it really 10 times quicker than usb 2.0?
is it usb 1.1 compatible?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, plugging it into a PC that does not have a USB 3 controller card or MOBO chip is pointless, you by your own links recognise that, however purchasing both the card & drive make it two and a half times the price per GiG.

As an external drive you will never benefit from it if you plug it into a-n-other puter, you will only ever use it in your own single ' carded ' machine, the idea of going round to your mates and getting a dozen movies at ten times the speed are a no-no!

USB 1.1, don't see why it wouldn't work on a USB 3 controller it should just work at its own maximum speed

I did read a review about last summer [ ish ] on this, it that argued the real life speed benefit was about x3 because even with a USB 3.0 PCIe card, additional plug and additional thicker signalling wires, the data was limited by it's need to pass through the MOBO's pci bus ( after the card event ) anyway

- I looked at your URL and the Buffalo does not say if it auto powers down, or that it has additional ventilation, these are two things to look out for !
- I've just had a quick look for that review from last summer and can't find it my friend.

Hope this helps your understanding, I looked at this and SSD's last summer and concluded - not yet thank's

GeoffX

My motherboard, an Asus P7H55D-M Evo, has two USB 3 ports and I've not had any problems with legacy devices in them. All I need now is a USB3 device...

USB2 may have a theoretical limit of about 60MB/s, but half of that is the norm.

Richie-from-the-Boro

GeoffX wrote: »

My motherboard, an Asus P7H55D-M Evo, has two USB 3 ports and I've not had any problems with legacy devices in them. All I need now is a USB3 device...

USB2 may have a theoretical limit of about 60MB/s, but half of that is the norm.

Nice kit GeoffX, you are that example I used that has inbuilt capability, when you do go III I'd be interested in your sustained throughput figures, you know do you average x3 or x10 !

JasX

bob_man_uk wrote: »

hard drives shoudl become faster, though tbh, arent we already pushing the boundary of how fast even sata drives can write to disk? i dont keep track of sata much but i think the last one i looked at could manage about 300MB/s

Not quite true, SATA2 can support data transfers that hit 300MB/s but that is only for small bursts into the hard drive 'buffer' RAM. Actually writing to the disk plates is a slower process still so for sustained read/writes of data writing to the hard disk plates becomes the limit.

Best drive I've seen on the market recently is the 1TB Samsung F3 which hits about 125 MB/s sustained read speed and just under 100 MB/s sustained write speed. (* doesn't apply to other sizes of this drive as they have different plate arrangmenets)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/10/06/samsung-spinpoint-f3-1tb-review/3

If you want to transfer data faster than this to/from a hard disk you either need a RAID array of multiple drives or be writing to Solid State memory (eg one of those expensive SSD hard drives or doing something in RAM)

This wiki page I find useful for comparing data transfer speeds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidth_speeds