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Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0
Esther Schindler writes "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec of high-end networking in the home. USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"
...seriously? Will USB 6.0 be super-hyper-megaspeed USB?
If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
So, each USB iteration offers the smallest possible increments in speed?
It really should be illegal to create proprietary connectors for anything.
I must say that I support your point of view but your suggestion would go against the "American free spirit" and stifle innovation at the same time. We should look for a better solution.
... fuck everything, we're going to plaid.
My work here is dung.
One detail missing from the article was the relative costs of the two technologies, with the popularity of net books and the like the cheaper technology will probably come out ahead in the long run.
Monstar L
All I can think of is this:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
SATA is up to 6.0 Gb/s now, and networking is starting to hit 10Gb/s.
Contrary to the lame doomsday message IFTA, USB isn't going away, people. I see all the millions of devices that use USB for data transfer, power charging, ect. not to mention cellular phone market is finally starting to standardize to micro-USB. On top of that, there's too many TTL 5v devices out there built and designed around USB that it would cause some serious chaos if it did go away. There's no way that something like LightPeak is going to come in and whisk it off of computer hardware manufacturer's list of "things to provide". It may be a high-speed fad like Firewire or something of the recent past, but USB is here to stay.
Home network, let me introduce you to your new friend USB 3.0. He is really fast, so I expect the rest of you to keep up! Don't be the bottleneck and you get to stay right where you are instead of being tossed in the bin.
Home of The Suki Series
The only reason I can see would be if you had an external USB enclosure that housed multiple drives that you plan on RAIDing. With the speeds of SSD drives still ramping up, it is possible you could saturate even USB 3 with just 2 drives.
But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port. The edge of a USB 3.0 plug is colored blue so you know it’s a 3.0.
But it'll still take you 3 tries to get it plugged in the right way around.
.. not to mention cellular phone market is finally starting to standardize to micro-USB.
Finally? I hope all the companies that implemented that horrible plug will go back to mini-usb. It is as big, by far more robust, you can get cables for it and you are not afraid to plug it in. And plugging in is easier, as the plug will "find" its way in.
There has never been a worse plug than micro-usb.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices and cables into the USB 2.0 ports on your current computer, but you won’t get the speed advantage.
So one place says it won't work in a 2.0 port, then it says it will .... gah! . . . . . I know they mean (at least, I hope they mean) that you won't get USB3 speeds, but contradictions like this doesn't help the article's credibility
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
What if you have 2 hard drives connected to a hub?
Backing up from a pen drive to an external drive would I thought be a common use case of bulk data transfer.Or from video camera to my mass storage device.
As soon as you allow hubs and caches and protocol overhead and software inefficiencies then a connection significantly faster than the media makes a lot of sense
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
I'm not sure I'd trust that article entirely. From TFA:
But with USB 3.0, even though the plug looks the same, the cable has extra wires. Because of this, it will not work in a 2.0 port..............
On the plus side, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices and cables into the USB 2.0 ports on your current computer, but you won’t get the speed advantage.
(my emphasis)
Anyone care to explain this apparent contradiction?
USB 2.0 was such a bottleneck that a stopgap was introduced called eSATA, which allowed for external drives that used a SATA hard drive interface. Well, USB 3.0 pretty much that out to pasture
Sure USB 3 might be rated up to 5Gbits/sec, but in a real world test will it actually be faster than SATA? In file copy tets Firewire at 400mbits/sec is 15-50% faster than USB2 at 480mbits/sec
The one major eSATA issue(I don't know why they overlooked this the first time) is power. For 3.5inch drives, or multi drive external towers/shelves, this doesn't matter at all. An external PSU is a given. For the "single 2.5 inch or smaller in portable case" case, the fact that USB3 delivers the bandwidth(and is backwards compatible right back to the two-1.1-ports stuff that they were shipping in the mid 90s) and the power, while eSATA delivers only the bandwidth, requiring a seperate connector for power, pretty much ruins things. If eSATA had included power from the start, it might have been a much better contender.
As a replacement for SCSI type use cases, of course, USB is a toy and eSATA or SAS is the natural replacement; but for the vast market for flash drives, 2.5 inch externals, and mass-market, works-with-anything 3.5 inch externals, eSATA is doomed compared to USB(especially since a USB port can be used for non storage purposes, while an eSATA port is pretty much storage only. In principle, a high speed serial interconnect like SATA could be used for other stuff; but I've never seen it actually done in practice.
People have a hard enough time saying USB (I often hear UBS). I can imagine this conversation taking place:
Computer sales guy: Hi! Welcome to (insert name of favorite electronics store). What brings you in?
Customer: I need one of those "Leet Speak" things.
CSG: You mean a gaming headset?
Cust.: No...wait, maybe. No.
CSG: What are you trying to do with your computer?
Cust.: Oh! I remember...it's a Light Speed Drive!
CSG: You're looking for a DVD-burner with LiteScribe?
Cust.: I already have a DVD. What's LiteScribe?
CSG: Nevermind.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
eSata doesn't hubs or daisy-chains, making it much more rigid. If you want that port to be "universal", then the space is better occupied by a USB3. (yes, I know that the eSata/USB "solves" that, but I'd still rather have 1 format (to which I might be able to connect an HD video stream *or* an HD) than the hybrid port)
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
They're more than just a "bit" slow, IMO. An external HD connected by USB 2 can only really be used for backup, and even then it lags. Firewire is better, but driver problems will occur more often than with USB. Then there's eSata, of which you need 1 per drive. I really hope USB 3 becomes the standard for external storage, possibly even more common than eSata (even though, technically, eSata is cheaper when looking at the overall system).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Before USB
RS232 - Open standard
SCSI - Standard - No Pins
PCI - Standard
IEEE 1284/Parallel - Standard
FireWire - When available - Standard - No Pins
Where were all these non-standard proprietary connectors ...?
And is it just me or are many of these still around because USB2 does not replace them ...and USB 3 won't either ?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
You can plug a USB 3 device into a USB 1/2 port without issue. The USB 3 Type-A plug (the flat rectangular one) retains the same pins in the same locations, but has a recessed group of 5 pins that only come into contact with the host when placed in a USB 3 SuperSpeed socket. You will not be able to, however, plug a USB 3 Type-B plug (the square ones) into a USB 1/2 Type-B socket. They are not breaking compatibility.
eSATA does not always require separate power. Most eSATA-equipped laptops on the market right now use a port known as eSATAp which adds in both power and USB 2.0 compatibility. It's less common on desktops, but is gaining in popularity. Since an eSATA + USB enclosure is generally within a few dollars of a straight eSATA or USB model it's the best of both worlds. With the right hardware at both ends you get full SATA speeds on a one-cable power+data solution, but either end can fail back to USB 2 as necessary for compatibility with the world.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Sure, we could go to optical connections next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, electrons worked out pretty well, and photons are the next particles after electrons. So let's play it safe. Let's make an optical cable and call it the USBOpticon. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the data speed game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. USB is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If 12Mbps is good, and 480Mbps is better, obviously 4.8Gbps would make us the best fucking cable that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the cable game by clinging to the parallel industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, USB3 is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent—I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick four more gigabits in there. I don't care how. Make the wires so thin they're invisible. Put some on the outside. I don't care if they have to cram the extra electrons in perpendicular to the other ones, just do it!
You're taking the "Universal" part of "universal Serial Bus" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make computer history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that 4.8Gbps can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when USB3 becomes the computer cable for the U.S. of "this is how we connect now" A.
People said we couldn't go to 480Mbps. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "4.8Gbps crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Sony, working on fucking discs. Rotary storage, my white ass!
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in Intel's wake and make chipsets. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like Intel is the day I leave the computing game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!
The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, "Hey, connecting with anything less than 4.8Gbps is like carrying your data in a rusty bucket." Or "Your connection will be so smooth, I could snort lines off of your transfer rate graph." Try "Your computer's gonna be so friggin' fast, you'll get a speeding ticket."
I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which USB is, always has been, and forever shall be, Amen, 4.8Gbps, sweet Jesus in heaven.
Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Make that fucker backwards compatible, too. That's right. 4.8Gbps, fully backwards compatible cables, and make the connectors out of gold. You heard me—gold connectors. It's a whole new way to think about downloading. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge—the razor's edge—and I feel like dancing.
The seekers do no need truth, the seekers do find truth and the finding do be painful
The one major eSATA issue is power.
Yes, power and hot swapping because windoze doesn't recognize the drive as removeable.
While I understand you were going for humor, Windows (at least back to Win2k) will allow hot-swapping an eSATA drive, as long as the controller is using AHCI.