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USB 3.0 stick - anyone taken the plunge?
MilesAhead:
They got me on an impulse buy. A-Data isn't a speed demon but I like them because they don't have the "sliding guts" design. So far I haven't had one break. I got this model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211522&cm_re=a-data_s102-_-20-211-522-_-Product
The one user review claims he got 27 MB/s write speed using USB 2.0 port. If I get 15 MB/s in a 2.0 port I'll be very happy. USB 3.0s are in the back of the machines so it's not likely I'll use those except to benchmark it.
My next PC I'd expect to be USB 3.0 all around.
f0dder:
btw where are you seeing these USB 2.0 60+ MB/s reads?-MilesAhead
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That is the theoretical limit, and you're going to see a lot lower speeds in reality because of protocol overhead. That said, even sucky onboard controllers can deliver 30MB/s (and onboard by itself is no excuse for bad performance - in theory it could perform a lot better than addon PCIe controllers). And the perfectly achievable 30MB/s USB2 rates are a lot better than what you see for most pendrives.
Don't confuse pendrives and external HDDs.
MilesAhead:
btw where are you seeing these USB 2.0 60+ MB/s reads?-MilesAhead
--- End quote ---
That is the theoretical limit, and you're going to see a lot lower speeds in reality because of protocol overhead. That said, even sucky onboard controllers can deliver 30MB/s (and onboard by itself is no excuse for bad performance - in theory it could perform a lot better than addon PCIe controllers). And the perfectly achievable 30MB/s USB2 rates are a lot better than what you see for most pendrives.
Don't confuse pendrives and external HDDs.
-f0dder (February 11, 2011, 05:00 PM)
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All I know is I can't get better than 24 MB/s out of my USB 2.0. I mention the external drive because I'm talking about a situation where the bottle neck is not the stick. If I have a drive capable of 100+ MB/s sustained reads and put it in a docking station plugged into USB 2.0 on my machine, I'm still only going to see 24 MB/s read(might hit low 30s peak for a couple of seconds but that doesn't do me any good.) Plug the same drive into USB 3.0 docking station/port combination and I'm getting 120+ MB/s sequential reads.
So no matter how good a chip my new stick has, it ain't gonna' read faster than 24 MB/s on my machine. I just hope it writes at a decent speed.
It will be interesting to see how it benches and what I really get when copying on a huge vid.
4wd:
btw where are you seeing these USB 2.0 60+ MB/s reads? Do you have USB on an addon card?-MilesAhead (February 11, 2011, 02:07 PM)
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As I said above, the only time I have seen this kind of speed from any USB device is a 2.5" USB HDD connected to both my old nForce2 Ultra400 EPoX motherboard and a friends el-cheapo nForce2 Ultra400 motherboard.
They consistantly transferred at ~50-55MB/s using the onboard USB ports - I have not seen any USB device since perform as fast.
It almost made me want to swap my, (then), AM2+ machine for the nForce2 U400, (I gave it to the parents)........almost :)
I've got a ASUS PCIe x4 USB3/SATA6 card plugged into the PC, just plugged my 2.5" USB2 HDD into it - still only managed ~31MB/s, (same drive that was giving me 50MB/s on the nForce2), another 2.5" USB HDD gave ~34MB/s.
Not a really good improvement considering the increased bandwidth of USB3, even though the HDD are USB2 I would have expected something better.
I really wish they had developed IEEE1394, (Firewire), as the standard for external storage, (50-60MB/s consistantly no matter what motherboard), and kept USB for mice, keyboards, fans, EL lights, missile launchers, etc.
MilesAhead:
Yeah, I don't fully get what going on. When I plugged my Seagate 500 GB USB 2.0 external into my USB 3.0 port it got about 18% increase in read speed. I'm not up on all the chip set business but they are saying in some of these USB 3.0 stick articles some stuff about not needing a bridge chip in the high performance models. I'm thinking the Seagate external drive must have a bottle neck in the Sata to USB internally because native USB 3.0 docking station just runs as fast as the internal drive you stick in the thing.
When USB 3.0 starts coming standard on towers then the info I'll have to find out is the benchmark for that system so I don't get stuck with slow port syndrome.
Just for grins I plugged in my Verbatim stick and got a benchmark of 12 MB/s sequential write on the USB 2.0 port. I didn't bother to copy a big file on. I think it drops to about 8 or 9 MB/s when you copy a gig file onto it. I'd like to get at least double that with the new stick if not a full blown 24 MB/s on the 2.0 ports. That would be worth it if I could copy an 8 GB .mkv onto the thing in reasonable time. Although I'm not as psyched about plugging into USB 2.0 ports on WD set top box as when I got the thing. It has 2 ports and already one has gone South. Seems like they're at tad on the flimsy side. I use a 2.0 docking station to avoid plugging/unplugging. Seems like it's less wear and tear to just slide an internal drive in the dock.
The other wrinkle with the stick I just bought is there's supposed to be a software download for purchasers that includes a Windows7 VM.
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