Usb3

Godiva500

I want to purchase a new backup drive, and it has a USB3 connection. What do I need to do to my computer usb2, to make the correct connection? Do I need to buy something extra to make it wortk?

Many thanks

GunJack

nothing, the external drive will just transfer data at USB 2.0 speeds. 3 is backward-compatible with 2

JJ_Egan

The bit that connects to the PC is the same as your old USB drive cable its the bit that goes into the USB3 drive that has changed .

jje

John_Gray

Depending on whether or not you have a spare PCI slot inside your PC you could possibly buy a PCI card with a couple (usually) of USB 3.0 sockets on it. But then you may need to have a spare Molex power connector within the PC to plug into the card. And you'd need to install a USB 3.0 software driver for the card...

If you are not confident with the internals of PCs, then GunJack's answer could well be the best!

Godiva500

Thanks all xx

A.Penny.Saved

A card to add USB 3.0 ports would be the best solution. USB 3.0 is a very big improvement on USB 2.0 in terms of speed and ability to perform both read and write at the same time, whereas USB2.0 could only issue reads OR writes.

There are PCI express (PCI-e) cards which add USB 3.0 capabilities to a PC, although most are only PCI-e x1 one lane cards which has a maximum bandwidth of 250MB/s in each direction (Read/Write) which is quite a bit lower than the typically achievable USB 3.0 bandwidth of 400MB/s. However, in practice for many current applications, PCI-e x1 would probably be fast enough except for some SSD drives if connected via USB 3.0.

There are some PCI-e x4 cards, one discontinued by Asus, which should allow full speed. The problem is fitting a PCI-e x4 card as many motherboards don't have such a connection available. Using a PCI-e x16 slot is possible if one is free as many motherboards have two such slots for video cards.

USB 2.0 is not fast enough for many applications today. Flash cards are frequently capable of faster speeds than around 20 to 30 MB/s achievable with USB 2.0. It's closer to 20 than 30 when writing to fast memory cards which are capable of far faster speeds.