So what’s the difference between USB Versions?

So what’s the difference between USB Versions?

Well firstly let me start off with some background Information:

USB – Universal Serial Bus
USB 1.1 – 1.5 Mbit/s
USB 2.0 – 35 MB/s
USB 3.0 – 4 Gbit/s
USB was designed to standardize the connection of computer peripherals (including keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters) to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power.

Lets get Technical:







USB 2: 4 Connectors
USB 3: 5 Connectors

An extra connector has allowed a USB 3 to be 10 times faster!
USB 3.0, the latest generation of the Universal Series Bus, operates on the same principles as USB 2.0 technology but with some improvements. Also referred to as Super Speed, USB 3.0 offers faster data transfer rates and a theoretical 4.8 Gbps, or speeds that are ten times faster than USB.

Lets not Forget that USB is backward Compatible!

Different Types of USB Connectors:



^ This is referred to as a Type “A”



^ This is referred to as a Type “B”

I hope you learnt something reading this, as i sure did making it!
If you would like anymore information that i have not covered, please make a post!

Harry this would make a nice little tutorial albeit a little short and I think maybe mate you could include the plug designs into it to show how they are matched. Plus it would be good to add what the different connections colour cables they use are defined as data and power connections.
Stack of info and pics here
USB - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and also if you Google pics of USB ports cables and plugs you will get a huge number of pics to put into a tutorial. Plus there are also the header plugs and sockets it could be quite an article then. I would do it if I had the skill to do all that stuff they do with the tutorials.
John

ICit2lol said:

Harry this would make a nice little tutorial albeit a little short and I think maybe mate you could include the plug designs into it to show how they are matched. Plus it would be good to add what the different connections colour cables they use are defined as data and power connections.
Stack of info and pics here
USB - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and also if you Google pics of USB ports cables and plugs you will get a huge number of pics to put into a tutorial. Plus there are also the header plugs and sockets it could be quite an article then. I would do it if I had the skill to do all that stuff they do with the tutorials.
John

brilliant thank you i will update this later.

good guide for people you need the info. Though filling out your own poll seems like cheating .

rvcjew said:

good guide for people you need the info. Though filling out your own poll seems like cheating .

Just giving it a kickstart

I remember getting a keyboard with a usb port on it and thinking "WTF KIND OF WEIRD CRAPPY CONNECTOR IS THAT!?!?" whilst trying to ram it into any slot that remotely looked like it would work in!

funnily enough a USB port and an ethernet port are identical in width.. and much to my annoyance on my macbook the usb ports and ethernet are next to each other, and In the dark im often ramming a thumb drive into the ethernet port, which causes my mac to just die instantly (must be some kind of short protection)..

Haha !

These things happen :)

The only problem is USB 3.0 is not 10 times faster than USB 2.0. I know that's what the adds say, and supposedly it is true in a lab under optimal conditions. In actual practice you will never see anything close. Worthwhile, absolutely. It tends to be around 2.5 times faster in actual practice. As far as I'm concerned, that's a significant increase. But, you will never see 10 times faster in practice. eSATA is faster.

I have also found that some things that say they are USB 3.0 don't work in 3.0 ports but will work in in USB 2.0 quite well.
I don't remember the numbers but comparing USB 3.0 and eSATA when using with my external ssd eSATA is much quicker.
Now if somehow they could get USB 3.0 up to the advertised speed that would be great.

UAB 3.0 standards only call for it to be faster than USB 2.0 up to 5.0Gbps. If using an external HDD on USB 3.0, it won't be able to saturate the upper end of the USB 3.0 standard. Only solid state devices have a prayer of taking full advantage of full USB 3.0 speeds. And then, how fast you actually get depends a lot on how much you are willing to pay. I have ten Kingston 8GB USB sticks that are nowhere near 5.0Gbps in speed but they are considerably faster than the best USB 2.0 has to offer and even faster than the sticks I had (they were rather long in the tooth). Considering I paid only five shekels ($5 USD) apiece for them, I'm a happy camper.

I don't even use e-SATA for HDDs on my desktop rig anymore. I use the two hot swap bays connected to the SATA III connections coming off my HBA card. The only bottleneck is the speed of the drive. I rarely use the USB sticks to transfer data since I have plenty of 2.5" HDDs that hold way more than the sticks.