USB 3.0 Controller And Test Setup

freakin awesome

Rev your porn engines!

No readyboost tests?

Whats the price?

So does the Super Talent drive work fine without the drivers? No need to deal with the issues it brings?

Ethernet has more latency, wich is the delay when doing stuff. Sending things over high bandwitdth network with latency can be like A:Hi! B:Hm.......................................................Yeah, Hi! Where the bad performance hit comes not from the overall bandwidth but from the delay when doing things in the protocol stack. That's why disk fibre channel with equal speed is much faster than ethernet, and this thinking should go into the comparison of USB too.

These are fast drives no doubt, but I take issue with the idea that eSATA drives are inherently inferior. The current crop of eSATA flash drives (represented by the OCZ drive) aren't fast enough to push the standard and thus slower than the new USB3 drive (which also isn't fast enough to saturate eSATA). I suspect this has more to do with the flash and flash controller the makers chose to use. After all, there isn't much incentive to produce super fast flash (non-SSD) architectures when the benefits can't be used in the vast majority (USB2) of the market. I'd also like to point out that 64GB of flash allows for more parallel channels than 8GB.

In truth, USB3 itself currently has no practical advantage over eSATA. Case and point, I am currently running an OCZ Vertex 2 on a Thermaltake eSATA dock at work. The drive runs, for all intents and purposes, at the same speed as it does internally. Enthusiasts covering the topic know this Sandforce based drive runs much faster than the drives in this comparison. I know it's not fair to compare an SSD to a flash disk (thumb drive), but the comparison made here is equally invalid when answering the question presented at the beginning of the article:

The article presents a relatively good answer to the question: "Which format currently holds the title of fastest flash drive?" However, to answer the question presented, you should use the fastest devices available for each format. In this case, you've limited the performance of two of the formats in question as there are faster devices available.

Intel non-graphics PCIe 1x slots are not version 1.1, they are 2.0, but they run at PCIe 1.1 speeds. This isn't a huge distinction, but one nonetheless.

Because Intel cut corners with their southbridge, you could see organic USB 3.0 implementations faster than those with discrete cards (since they can use two lanes).

I agree, it's unclear to me what this article is about. If seems to indicate that it's about comparing technologies behind drives, but if that's the case, it fails horribly. It's obvious the drives themselves have a lot to do with the performance, not the interface, and since they didn't make a real effort to compare drives as identically as possible on eSATA and USB 3.0, it's impossible to conclude anything useful about the interfaces.

Having said that, we do get a better picture of USB 3.0 vis-a-vis USB 2.0. I know this isn't that useful, but it's better than nothing.

The ethernet interface is made to operate at larger distances.
Thus must be prepared to latency and hence doesn't mind encountering.
Using fiber over distances longer than two meters actually makes sense.
Hopefully intel Lightpeak will allow us to be able to do very long distances. I can't wait for it.

eSATA is long dead. An external power brick just doesn't make much sense and now with USB3, there is no reason for its existance.

USB3 has integrated power and physical port compatibility with the millions of USB1/2 devices out there. Seems like a whoppingly huge "practical advantage" to me.

I chose to do a USB 3.0 setup at home for my backups vs eSata for several reasons. One was the backwards compatibility, so I get an extra USB port on my system (although I do have 2 wasted eSata ports), and Two, I've had way too many issues with hot disconnecting eSata drives (I've lost quite a few drives on different eSata controllers and different eSata enclosures. Yes I was telling Windows to disconnect before actually unplugging). In the end, I'm very happy with 60MB/s with an external 7200 RPM 2TB drive.

"The USB 3.0 standard is also referred to as SuperSpeed USB. This was necessary because USB 2.0 was promoted as High-Speed USB several years ago."

USB 4.0...Ludicrous Speed USB!!!

I had been wondering how fast USB 3 was compared to USB 2 / eSAT\.
Thanks for giving us a peek at what's out there.

Wow, can't wait to get my hands on a usb 3.0 mobo.

"They've gone plaid!!!!"

hehe....

For the article, on the second page it had the nominal thourough put in Mgeabytes as Mb/s and it should be MB/s. Should fix it so it doesn't confuse people.

But USB 3.0 looks promising. Its pretty fast and has just started really. I am sure new enhancements will come to make it faster and better and hopefully get close to the 500MB/s nominal speed.

Maybe when Lightpeak hits it will be able to do that since light has been known to be able to maximize nominal speeds much easier than copper wire.

An interesting article. Yes, Native USB 3.0 and SATA 6G is worth it once devices eventually become available that can utilize the bandwidth.

Still for a Thumb Drive to utilize USB3.0 requires special drivers and RAID architecture on a "Thumb Drive". For USB3.0 to become mainstream, the flash architecture within the "Thumb Drive" will have to be significantly revamped. This things look much larger than the typical thumb drive.

I myself would be better off with the OCZ USB2.0 product for the files I move.

Wow. I can see it now. Byebye HDD and SSD, Hello USB3!

SSD is the future for Hard Drives, USB3 is for thumb drives and external add-on's. They are both Awsome!