usb3

Al MacLeod

Al MacLeod

Well-known member
Has anybody stuck a pci x1 usb3 adapter in their pc yet?

I have an available pci x1 slot and would like to try a usb3 external hard drive...faster than sata they say.
 
I've got some USB3 ports on my new laptop (including a wild port, it's a combination USB2 and eSATA port -- you can plug either device into it).

But that's beyond the point. If you're thinking you're going to see blazing speeds, prepare to be profoundly disappointed -- not in USB3, but in the idea that you'd get any faster access to your data. SATA and USB3 are already incredibly faster than any hard disk, and for that matter, USB2 is already faster than most every hard disk on the market.

A moped won't go any faster if you put it on the autobahn, and a 50mB/sec hard disk won't transfer data any faster if you put it on USB3.

Now, if you were talking about hooking up a 10-disk RAID of hard disks to that USB3 port... now you're talkin'...
 
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One problem, PCI x1 expresscard slots on a laptop are slower than SATA 3.0Gbps, and run at 2.5Gbps. However, Expresscard II is much faster if you're lucky enough to have one of those slots.
 
What about transfer speeds Barry?

For example, wouldn't a USB3 p2 card reader transfer p2 contents faster that a USB2 connection or FW800 all things being equal?
 
Well, yeah, that's the whole crux of the matter. It depends on what you're transferring from, and what you're transferring to. So if you put a 10-disk SATA RAID on the end of that USB3 cable, it's going to be much much faster than if you used USB2, because the RAID is capable of feeding that data at such a higher data rate.

But if you put a regular hard disk on there, it's not going to make much, if any, noticeable difference. If the drive can only feed the cable at 50 megabytes per second, what does it matter whether the cable can handle 60 megabytes per second (USB2) or 400 megabytes per second (USB3)? The transfer will still happen at 50 megabytes per second, because that's all the drive can handle.

So yeah, put a P2 card on one side, and a high-speed SSD on the other, and yes, USB3 will help quite a bit, because both devices are capable of faster-than-USB2 speeds. A P2 card can handle 150 megabytes per second, and a good SSD should handle at least 120 megabytes per sec, so yes, by all means, use USB3 for that.

But a 150-megabyte-per-sec P2 card, transferring over USB3 to a 50mB/sec hard disk, is still only going to transfer at a maximum of 50mB/sec. Which is the exact same speed it'd do over USB2, or FW800.
 
Exactly why panasonic is now selling the new "p2 store" type device with removable SSD modules, it's a very quick rip to the SSD, and so is doing quick edits off it via esata. Single hard drives are quite slow.

I've been learning my computer math (transfer times and storage computation) via a very handy web bit calculator lately, enough that I can do it all in my head now. For anyone who wants to know how to translate megabits to megabytes or gigabits/s to megabytes per second, etc. check out http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/.
 
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