Three External (And Fast) USB 3.0 Drives Compared
Table of contents
- 1. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Retail Drives Reviewed
- 2. USB 3.0 Basics And Connectors
- 3. A-Data Nobility NH01 (500 GB)
- 4. Buffalo MiniStation Lite (HDPE500U3, 500 GB)
- 5. Western Digital MyBook 3.0 (1 TB)
The first USB 3.0-based external hard drives aim at eliminating the USB 2.0 bottleneck (that hovered around 30 MB/s) with enough bandwidth to outperform the fastest mechanical disks. A-Data, Buffalo, and WD do battle for maximum performance.
USB 3.0 hasn’t yet become the standard interface for external connectivity, but only because there still aren’t any chipsets that come with integrated USB 3.0 controllers. The interface itself is mature, and there are more and more storage products and host adapters coming to market. Today we're looking at three new USB 3.0 devices (two portable 2.5” drives and one 3.5” external storage product) to get a glimpse of what the future has in store.
We first wrote about the finalized USB 3.0 specification in 2008 and provided a detailed article on USB 3.0 roughly a year ago. Another story on different PCI Express implementations that might bottleneck USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s solutions provides more insight, and we analyzed a few USB 3.0 enclosures for 2.5” hard drives, as well. Finally, you could look at our USB 3.0 thumb drive review from a few weeks ago. Now, it’s time to look at retail storage products.
Less technical users might wonder why USB 3.0 is so important given that USB 2.0 works fine. True though that may be, USB 2.0 bandwidth is effectively capped at just over 30 MB/s. This creates a serious bottleneck that not only impedes enthusiasts, but also mainstream users who find themselves waiting longer for file transfers as they try to move more data.
Consider a few examples. If you mainly handle small files, then you probably don’t need to worry about USB 3.0 just yet. However, high-definition content and large media libraries (photos, videos, music), as well as backups, require larger and larger disk capacities. Sure, you can buy huge hard drives nowadays for relatively little cost, but it's actually the time required to copy your data over an external interface that turns into the real issue. A 20 GB system backup typically requires 12 to 15 minutes to copy onto a USB 2.0 drive. A large 400 GB video archive can take hours. If you’re in a hurry, that's too bad. Fortunately, USB 3.0-based solutions require only 1/3 or even 1/4 of the time.
Let’s look at what the three new USB 3.0 drives from A-Data, Buffalo, and Western Digital can do for you.
Related Stories :
- Intel Receives SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Certification
- USB 3.0-to-SATA Adapter Gives HDDs SuperSpeed
- USB 3.0 Spec Finished: It's SuperSpeed USB
- IDF 2008: "SuperSpeed" USB 3.0 Demoed At IDF
- WD Ships My Passport Ultra USB 3.0 External Drives
- Turn Your 2.5-inch HDD Into a USB 3.0 External Drive
- Three More External USB 3.0 Drives Benchmarked
- Philips Debuts USB 3.0 External SSDs
- Deals Dec 28: External USB 3.0 Blu-ray Burner $89.99
- SuperSpeed USB to Provide 10 Gb/s and 100 W
Nice article.I'm more intended now to look into USB 3.0 hardware.
I will not buy one until there are casing with USB3 and motherboard that has internal USB3.
Hehe looking at the HAF X but no motherboard to support yet
Can you do an article comparing USB3 to SATA? It would be nice to know how much extra overhead USB3 has.
woof
Don't forget about external hard drive enclosures. You can buy a USB 3.0 hard drive enclosure for about $50 and put whatever hard drive you want in it. The Western Digital MyBook is not a 7200RPM hard drive, so I'm going to get myself an external hard drive enclosure and a 7200RPM hard drive for it.
What I'm missing in this review is taking appart the ADATA an Buffalo drives, to see what HDDs are in. It would also help to test what the enclosures maximum performance is by putting in a SSD.
Oh, and please, could you test that add-on card in a P35 system (with PCIe 1.0 spec), I'd really want to know if there is a performance drop due the old PCIe spec.
But all in all, nice review.
Since neither ADATA nor Buffalo manufacture hard drives, we are left clueless as to what is inside the cases.
Due to an inordinate number of problems we have encountered with Seagate drives, in our shop, as well as poor experiences with their tech support department, we no longer recommend them to customers, nor will we purchase them for personal use.
Consequently, we decline to purchase any hard drive product unless we know exactly what is inside the case.
I'm running a quad intel 9400 on a P35 system myself, so finding out what the PCIe 1.0 spec performance would be great.
Man, that's fast. Really fast. Can't wait for them to get cheaper ^^
Wow, only one cable?
I'm tired to cary a USB "Y" cable plus the eSATA cable for my external drive. Quick adoption of mainstream motherboard pls 
Though the article is well done, I noticed this "The first USB 3.0-based external hard drives aim at eliminating the USB 2.0 bottleneck (that hovered around 30 MB/s) with enough bandwidth to outperform the fastest mechanical disks." in the RSS feed.
Come on guys. You know a USB3.0 drive isn't going to outperform a "mechanical drive" -- that's what's friggen inside. In no way would going from SATA to USB3.0 and then USB3.0 to PCIe be faster than going directly from SATA to PCIe. You can't add layers of overhead and improve performance, so why the retarded tagline?
That max interface bandwidth concerns me. 185 MB/s will probably improve as they work on the tech, but that's only about 30% of USB3's 5Gb/s data rate. USB2 hit about 60% there, so it'll likely improve as drive makers optimize enclosures, but high end SSDs can saturate that easily.
Does the USB interface use significant CPU, or just a few % of one core?
All USB3 brings to the table that eSATA doesn't is a connector that will be commonly available after Intel/AMD add it to their entry level chipsets. I suspect most Tom's readers who care about external transfer rates got themselves an eSATA drive already. Mine actually beats my old internal drive's transfer rates.
I will not buy one until there are casing with USB3 and motherboard that has internal USB3.Hehe looking at the HAF X but no motherboard to support yet
I am inclined to agree. As much as these are fantastic speeds, i'd like the convenience of just attaching the cable to my pc case like we do with usb 2.0. Hopefully it won't take too long for manufacturers to work something up!
Super Talent is claiming a faster than 300 MBps Thumb drive since December 2009 and this is what gets reviewed?
Info here: http://www.supertalent.com/product [...] =RAIDDrive USB 3.0
But it here: http://www.supermediastore.com/pro [...] =raiddrive
and here: http://www.ewiz.com/query.php?dp=1 [...] displaytop
I'm more interested in whether a usb3 connection for a card reader would make a noticeable difference to the performance of ReadyBoost on win7.
I'm more interested in whether a usb3 connection for a card reader would make a noticeable difference to the performance of ReadyBoost on win7.
it would but belive me you're much better off spending your money on more RAM
Nah, my desktop PC already has 8 GB of ram.
Though the article is well done, I noticed this "The first USB 3.0-based external hard drives aim at eliminating the USB 2.0 bottleneck (that hovered around 30 MB/s) with enough bandwidth to outperform the fastest mechanical disks." in the RSS feed.Come on guys. You know a USB3.0 drive isn't going to outperform a "mechanical drive" -- that's what's friggen inside. In no way would going from SATA to USB3.0 and then USB3.0 to PCIe be faster than going directly from SATA to PCIe. You can't add layers of overhead and improve performance, so why the retarded tagline?
They arent saying the drives inside are faster than previous drives, they are saying that the bandwidth that USB 3.0 provides is faster than any mechanical drive can use. AKA, the mechanical drives cant keep up with USB 3.0. The fastest mechanical drive I can think of right now would be the velociraptor 600GB drive, and it wont come even close to maxing out a USB 3.0 connection.
Nah, my desktop PC already has 8 GB of ram.
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