USB 3.0 Warning

[Xavien]

If, like me your new pc has the nice shiny USB 3.0 slots on your motherboard here is a word of warning before you rush out to buy one of the limited storage devices that are on the market at the moment.

After reading several reviews i decided to buy the Buffalo Drivestation USB 3.0 storage device.

After coping the same amount (107GB) to my pc under usb 2 it took me 1hr 30mins, under usb 3 it took me 1hr 20mins saving me a fantastic 10 mins of time. Woo hoo.

Im not impressed, i dont know if this is the same for all usb 3 storages but its proof that jumping on technology as soon as it arrives its not always a good idea. My advice would be to wait until usb 3 storage devices no longer suck.

 

[Xavien]

I also forgot to say that when watching the information being copied, the transfer rate went from really quick to an almost stop position. The estimated time went from 30 mins to 46 hours!

 

[jeebus]

Problem with that is while the USB 3.0 bus speed is much quicker you are still limited by the read/write speed of the hard disc. For a standard 7200RPM hard drive you are only likely to get 50MB/s while the Velicoraptor will double that, the speed of USB 2.0 is 60 MB/s and USB 3.0 is 600 MB/s.

You can see from this that the hard disc drive itself is the bottleneck and the only improvement from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 in this case is the overheads don't slow it down by that 5-10%.

 

[Xavien]

I dont think im getting 50mb + with my raptor drive, trouble is usb 3 seems nearly pointless if your transfering alot of small files. I managed to copy my ps3 back up which is 40GB (13 files) since its only 13 files it only takes 10 mins which is fast. But my usual file transfering is over 500 thousand files, because of this it cripples the copy speed. A real shame but sometimes technology can be a disapointment

 

[Xavien]

Well its all been confirmed, for those of you who dont know, if your thinking about buying a usb 3 storage device please be warned that most of them only transfer large files fast, if your transfering hundreds of thousands of files (like i do with daz 3d) your speeds wont be much faster then usb 2 (600k of files plus especially). So it pays to know what your requirements are before you spend the £100+ on a usb 3 capable strage device.

 

[LDUK]

Problem with that is while the USB 3.0 bus speed is much quicker you are still limited by the read/write speed of the hard disc. For a standard 7200RPM hard drive you are only likely to get 50MB/s while the Velicoraptor will double that, the speed of USB 2.0 is 60 MB/s and USB 3.0 is 600 MB/s.

You can see from this that the hard disc drive itself is the bottleneck and the only improvement from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 in this case is the overheads don't slow it down by that 5-10%.

I had literally explained this in another thread

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?471-USB-3.0-drives.....pointless