USB 3.0 and sata 3

[knotes]

hey,
so i wanted to know if any hardware can be used by the new usb 3.0 and sata 3 6gb per second, or will there be new hardware coming out that are compatible with the new technology.

if i were to stick my usb key or an external harddrive (usb 2.0 compatible stuff) into a usb 3.0, first of all will it work? and will it work at the same speeds or will it be faster?

same question for sata 3 will any sata 2 harddrive work or will there be special hard drives that are only sata 3 compatible. also how significant will the change in speed be??

 

[sminlal]

Both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbit/sec are backward compatible with USB 2.0 and SATA 3Gbit/sec - so you can plug an older device into a newer port and it will operate at the slower speed.

There are plenty of SATA 6Gbit/sec hard drives available, but they're really no faster than SATA 3Gbit/sec drives because the bottleneck is in the mechanics of the drive itself, not in the SATA connection. It's only a few of the very fastest Solid State Disks (SSDs) that actually need something faster then 3Gbit/sec.

USB is another matter. Virtually all modern drives are bottlenecked by USB 2.0 and will operate faster (usually a lot faster) with USB 3.0. If you're buying an external drive or drive dock then it really pays to buy a USB 3.0 one. Even if you don't have a USB 3.0 port on your system, it would be worth your while to buy a USB 3.0 adapter card so you can get the higher speed of a USB 3.0 drive.

 

[knotes]

Best answer selected by knotes.