USB3 Device/USB2 Port?

Hey All,

I need to replace an external disk drive. My computer is not USB 3.0 "active". Have any of you done testing to verify that USB 3 devices will actually have better performance on a USB 2.0 port, or just the same? And are there any issues?

I want to know if buying one will be cost-effective before I rush out to Best Buy and drop another $100+ bucks...

https://photography-on-the.net …=1041032&highli​ght=delkin

USB 3.0 is all about potential of the device being connected. As for HD / HD enclosures the improvement will be there, but it will be depend on... is it a SATA 3 HD, is it a SSD drive, etc.

As an example a SSD HD on a USB 2.0 connection is laughable.....on USB3.0 it is being 100% optimized.

a tradational SATA II HD on will see marginal improvements on a USB 3.0 enclosure / connection to your computer.

I have a couple of USB 3 external hdd's. When hooked up to a USB 2 port, they transfer data just like any other USB 2 device. I haven't seen any increase in performance. The bottleneck is the port.

I bought a 2 PORT USB 3 PCI add in card and put it in my desktop and I have a USB 3 card for my laptop. Used with a Delkins USB 3 card reader, I have seen significant gains in performance like 40+ mb per second transfer rates vs 17-19mb/sec.

So does the PCI card work even if your motherboard is older and does not have any USB3 "stuff"?

tonylong wrote in post #12598337
So does the PCI card work even if your motherboard is older and does not have any USB3 "stuff"?

Yes, the card provides the "stuff"

tonylong wrote in post #12597885
Hey All,

I need to replace an external disk drive. My computer is not USB 3.0 "active". Have any of you done testing to verify that USB 3 devices will actually have better performance on a USB 2.0 port, or just the same? And are there any issues?

I want to know if buying one will be cost-effective before I rush out to Best Buy and drop another $100+ bucks...

There is no data improvement to be had by running USB 3.0 drives on USB 2.0, and none running USB 2.0 drives on USB 3.0, so no point in buying a 3.0 drive unless you run it on a 3.0 port/interface.

Tony, the card looks like this. If you have an available card slot, you should be in business. I have Vista 32 bit on this PC and it is working just fine.

Hen3Ry wrote in post #12599255
and none running USB 2.0 drives on USB 3.0, so no point in buying a 3.0 drive unless you run it on a 3.0 port/interface.

Sigh...Incorrect.... running many USB 2.0 Data Type Devices will see an improvement running on a USB 3.0 Port.

I did a quick bench with a standard 2.5" SATA II HD on a typical USB 2.0 enclosure. The HD wasnt even 7200 RPM drive..and I believe the drive is a couple of years old. You will see even more of an increase in performance with newer drives. You will also see improvements with SATA II SSD drives in USB 2.0 enclosures via USB 3.0 Ports.

I did this bench 10 mins ago.

Hen3Ry wrote in post #12599255
There is no data improvement to be had by running USB 3.0 drives on USB 2.0

Incorrect.... I don't access to a USB 3.0 HD to run benches on my home desktop, but look at the improvements of running a USB 3.0 Card Reader on a USB 2.0 Port.

https://photography-on-the.net …=1041032&highli​ght=delkin

Moreover, if you want to be future ready and only have USB 2.0 now...no harm in getting a USB 3.0 drive as it is backwards compatible. Then you are ready for you next desktop / notebook overhaul.

Well, I made the stop at Best Buy today and they had mostly, if not all, USB 3.0 drives, so I just went ahead and picked up a 2 TB drive and at least I'll still have it when I pick up a USB 3.0 card!

Thanks all for your input!

In real life, benchmarks generally only prove how fast benchmarks run.

The problem with all USB speeds as they are given is that they are not the actual streaming speed, unless they've changed that in 3.0 - the speeds e.g. 480Mb/sec is in Burst mode - which means until the device that is sending the data has exhausted its buffer. Once that happens, it slows down. So running a benchmark as you have done proves something, which is that apparently if you keep shoving data at a 2.0 device consistently, it can run in burst mode longer. Having a 256MB file broken into segments from a half k (really? do you do I/O of 512 bytes?) to 8K will probably guarantee keeping the buffer full as long as possible, and as long as you don't do anything else, like scroll a window, or move your mouse, or have google mail running in the background, it will probably keep streaming.

But most computer experts agree on the following things:

1. When using a rotary storage device, the smallest component of any I/O service is the actual transfer time between the device and memory.

2. Typically this is below 15%. Speeding this up doesn't affect the other 85% of the i/O. So if you cut the transfer time in half, you only affect 15% of the overall I/O service time.

3. The best measure of a computer's performance is throughput - i.e., how much work can you do on it.

If I had been running that benchmark, I would have quick-formatted the drives before each run, and run in I/O comparison mode.

I have a new Lenovo X220 laptop with a USB 3.0 port, and a couple of 1TB My Passport Essential SE USB 3.0/2.0 drives. I haven't timed data transfers or run benchmarks, but have copied lots of files, and it definitely is faster when the Passports are connected via 3.0.

Unfortunately, getting the computer to recognize the drives when they are in the USB 3.0 port is hit or miss - Western Digital points to a possible compatibility issue, Lenovo says? This, and many other references to USB 3.0 issues indicate it's not quite all there yet - but I still think it's good to be "future" proofed, for whatever help that may be in the future

I got tired of the very slow downloads on our laptop last year. We were shooting on safari and would have around 64GB of files to download every night. We had Sandisk Extreme 60MBs cards. Using a good UDMA reader over USB 2 took forever.

In preparation for our trip out west (we just got back) I purchased an IOGear SuperSpeed USB 3 Expresscard for the laptop. Note it comes with an AC power supply as express card connections might not provide enough power for USB 3 devices. It is one of the few cards to come with a power supply. Downloading from the same Sandisk cards, the download speeds reported by Windows where from around 20MBs using USB 2....to around 70MBs using a Delkin reader pluged into the expresscard. I have not run Crystal Disk Mark on the combo.

When we got back, the Duracell 600x 32GB cards had come in. So I did a quick comparison using the Delkin reader connected via USB 2 to my desktop. I checked both the Sandisk and Duracell cards using sequential read/write with Crystal Disk Mark. Sure enough the Sandisk card averaged 20Mbs read or write. But the Duracell cards averaged around 30MBs read/write. https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1054645

Suggestions: Get USB 3 as the transport for desktop or laptop. Get a USB 3 reader such as the Delkin (it is backward compatible with USB 2). Get a fast card such as the Duracell 600x 32GB (which is cheap at around $70). Smile when your downloads don't take nearly as long.