So what’s the difference between USB Versions?

[HarriePateman]

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!

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[HarriePateman]

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.

 

[rvcjew]

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

 

[HarriePateman]

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

Just giving it a kickstart

 

[badger906]

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)..

 

[HarriePateman]

Haha !

These things happen

 

[essenbe]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

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.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

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.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

My query is what governs the speed of the 3.0 USB? the board ports - the devices themselves or the OS?? Because it strikes me that it is like having a car with an enormous engine and it is governed to only travel up to a certain speed! so pointless having an engine that will power the car to very high speeds.

 

[essenbe]

John, I think it all contributes. The cable you use, the speed of the drive you are transferring to as well as from and there is some evidence that the type of files you transfer affect the speed. I also think there is some overhead in transferring data USB to sata.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Steve pretty much nailed, John. I mentioned having USB 3.0 devices that won't run at full USB 3.0 speeds. Others have mentioned MOBOs won't run at full USB 3.0 speeds. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible (pretty much, there are a few exceptions I can think of) but that only means you can use USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices and cables with it; it doesn't mean you can use a USB 1.1 (does anyone even have anything using 1.1 anymore?) or 2.0 in USB 3.0 ports and get USB 3.0 speeds.

 

[essenbe]

Well, Lady F. my biggest gripe is all the advertisers saying that this USB 3.0 deice is 10 times faster than USB 2.0. That is false advertising as far as I'm concerned. You and I both know, it is never going to happen in real life. I have tried it from 1 SSD to another SSD and it is faster than USB 2.0, but no where near what they claim. I don't believe anyone outside of some fancy lab has ever seen 10 times faster. That is a theoretical speed limit, not an actual one, and the advertisers know that.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Well, Lady F. my biggest gripe is all the advertisers saying that this USB 3.0 deice is 10 times faster than USB 2.0. That is false advertising as far as I'm concerned. You and I both know, it is never going to happen in real life. I have tried it from 1 SSD to another SSD and it is faster than USB 2.0, but no where near what they claim. I don't believe anyone outside of some fancy lab has ever seen 10 times faster. That is a theoretical speed limit, not an actual one, and the advertisers know that.

Most of the time, the claims say "up to ten times faster" which, technically, is true; the standard is ten times faster. I agree that it is deceptive, though, because they fail to mention the variables that will prevent reaching full speed. In the case of my USB sticks, Kingston only said that they are USB 3.0. all that means is that the stick has the extra connections of USB 3.0 and runs faster than USB 2.0, which it does, just not one heck of a lot. When people complain that the sticks don't run at 5.0Gbps, Kingston will readily admit that they are an entry level product and won't be as fast as more expensive ones. I bought them on sale realizing that. For only $5, I got sticks that run much faster than my old USB 2.0 sticks and were inexpensive enough to consider them to be disposable. In other words, I could loan one to someone to transfer files, usually photos, and not lose sleep over them should one not return (I rarely use them my self).

The only other USB 3.0 devices I have are the Arctic HDD enclosures I put 500GB 2.5" WD Blacks into for use with my notebooks (the newest one has USB 3.0 ports). It makes the claim, "Supports USB 3.0, up to 5GB/sec" (italics mine) yet it also says it is only SATA II compliant. There is no way on God's green Earth that that little enclosure is going to run at 5.0Gbps simply because current HDDs simply do not run that fast, even a nice 7200rpm one like the WD Blacks. It's still considerably faster than USB 2.0 ever could be and I quite happy with that, especially since it was inexpensive and very compact. Now, if I were to put, say, a Sammy 850 Pro in there, the SATA II interface would most likely be a bottleneck but, then again, I'm too cheap to pay for an SSD to use for just short term storage and, if I were to completely lose my marbles and spring for a new 500GB 850 Pro to use in an external enclosure, I would also shell out the shekels for a better enclosure.

 

[ComputerGeek]

John, I think it all contributes. The cable you use, the speed of the drive you are transferring to as well as from and there is some evidence that the type of files you transfer affect the speed. I also think there is some overhead in transferring data USB to sata.

You hit it on the head.

I always liken that to something I learned in high school chemistry where the rate of a chemical reaction depends almost entirely on the "rate determining step". In this case, end-to-end data transfer is like a chemical reaction.

What we see as a single chemical reaction actually consists of many smaller and fast sub-reactions. The rate of the chemical reaction is determined by the speed of the slowest sub-reaction ("step") in the series.

Same is true for computers. Vendors talk about "theoretical" data speeds. Achieving "theoretical" end-to-end transfer rate assumes every sub-component involved in the transfer is capable of maximum speed.

In reality, the speed of the slowest sub-component involved in the end-to-end transfer (the cables, each hardware device, etc) is the "rate determing step" that determines the maximum speed of the data exchange. (The end-to-end speed is throttled by the speed of the slowest device)

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep I can understand the cable and device being used bits but as Steve says it is very annoying for them to claim what they do when really the reality is that the board circuitry is not capable of delivering the goods. To me it is a fairly fake if not even fraudulent sales pitch.:sarc:

Me I don't care to be honest as long s I get enough ports at the back of the machine / board as I have found 2.0 to be really fast anyway.

 

[essenbe]

Yep I can understand the cable and device being used bits but as Steve says it is very annoying for them to claim what they do when really the reality is that the board circuitry is not capable of delivering the goods. To me it is a fairly fake if not even fraudulent sales pitch.:sarc:

Me I don't care to be honest as long s I get enough ports at the back of the machine / board as I have found 2.0 to be really fast anyway.

Well John, you would like USB 3.0 then. In actual practice you will probably find 3.0 to be 2-3 times as fast as 2.0. With my rig, I tested it and got around 2.5 times, which I'm happy with. But, I use eSATA most, as it is faster than USB 3.0.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm Steve I use the ports mostly for hooking up the mouse and KB , printer etc so speed is not that important on the back of the machine. On the front of my Ivy I have four 3.0 and four 2.0 ports via the usual front panel stuff and a card reader.
I must admit I have never used the eSATA connection - I suppose I should give it a try as there are two one back one front for the external I back up to.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I mentioned the USB 3.0 sticks and enclosures I occasionally use but forgot to mention my internal card reader. It's based off USB 3.0, which it gets from a PCI-e slot (using only one lane). If I put a Class 10 SD card in it, it will run circles around the same card in a USB 2.0 reader.

I use an equivalent of e-SATA for my bare backup HDDs; two internal HDD docks connected directly to SATA III connections coming off my HBA card.