Are there any USB 3.0 users here?

[oz]

Have any of you tried any of the new USB 3.0 products that have recently become available?

My motherboard has some USB 3.0 ports on it but I don't want to spend any money for new hardware if it won't make a considerable difference in speed and/or features. I'd be interested in hearing what USB 3.0 components you have, and how they compare with similar USB 2.0 components.

Thanks!

[techieMoe]

Not here. I'm running a two-year-old laptop and a two-year-old workstation, both with 2.0 ports. No plans in the near future for new equipment as the laptop is still trucking along nicely (with recently upgraded RAM), and we generally don't change out workstations until they're out of 5-year warranty.

I'm curious to hear anyone else's experiences though.

[oz]

Right, I keep reading about all the theoretical improvements it has over 2.0 but want to hear about how it performs under actual use. I'm especially hoping for big speed increases when transferring data to external hard drives.

NewEgg already has about 10 pages of USB 3.0 related products on hand but I don't want to spend any money just yet if the benefits won't be substantial.

[oz]

I've still been looking for info on how USB 3.0 is working out for actual end users but can't find much on it other than some random reviews and a few articles giving details about the technology and the benefits that we should see from using it.

One thing of interest that I ran across was an article saying that USB 3.0 was designed to be no more expensive to end users than current USB 2.0 technology, and that similar components using the two different technologies should be about the same price. The article went on to say that some retailers are currently charging users anywhere from 50% to 100% more for USB 3.0 devices simply because the technology is new, and because they can get it.

If that's the case, I'll be waiting for prices to stabilize before making any USB 3.0 purchases of my own, and those of you thinking about purchasing might also want to watch pricing closely.

In the interim, I'd still like to hear how it's working out for any of you that already own any USB 3.0 components.

Thanks!

[oz]

Ok, I've gone ahead and ordered one of the currently available USB 3.0 external enclosures and plan to drop a fast hard drive into it. Once it's arrived and some testing has been done, I'll post back with some USB2 vs USB3 speed comparisons.

Hopefully, it won't turn out to be money wasted.

[oz]

Okay, the USB 3.0 enclosure that I ordered came in today so I dropped a Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB hard drive into it then hooked the enclosure up to one of the USB 3.0 ports on my motherboard and tested it by copying a folder containing 5.7 GB of ISO files and other miscellaneous files from my internal drive over to the external enclosure drive. It took 1 minute and 17 seconds for the full transfer to occur. After removing the folder then moving the USB connector over to one of the USB 2.0 ports on the motherboard, I copied the folder over to the external drive once again, but this time it took 2 minutes and 13 seconds, almost a full minute longer.

Of course, the speeds derived from USB 3.0 technology isn't going to do anything for mice and keyboards, but for storage devices it's impressive enough that I'm happy with the purchase, at least so far.

[oz]

Being quite happy with the device above, I went ahead and purchased another USB 3.0 external enclosure but this one is for the smaller 2.5" drives. It's fast too, but doesn't seem to want to run quite as fast as the larger 3.5" unit. I'm guessing the slight difference in the speeds is more related to the individual drives that went into each enclosure more than anything else. The 2.5" unit has a WD 160GB Scorpio Black that has the same RPM speed as the bigger Samsung drive, but it does have a smaller cache.

Either way, USB 3.0 external enclosures seem to be a worthy investment if you are hung up on getting all the speed that you can.