Will USB3 be superior to SSD?

J

JOSHSKORN

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 29, 2007
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I'm curious about USB 3.0 drives vs SSD. I guess this can be more of a debate, to an extent. Will USB 3.0 internal hard drives ever come into play and beat out SSDs? I'm kind of curious as to why or why not. I saw a benchmark on TomsHardware where it looked like USB3 was much faster than SSD. Opinions, please?

Please move this topic to another forum if necessary. Thanks.
 
JOSHSKORN said:
I'm curious about USB 3.0 drives vs SSD. I guess this can be more of a debate, to an extent. Will USB 3.0 internal hard drives ever come into play and beat out SSDs? I'm kind of curious as to why or why not. I saw a benchmark on TomsHardware where it looked like USB3 was much faster than SSD. Opinions, please?

Please move this topic to another forum if necessary. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Nope. Even with a USB 3.0 interface, hard drives will always be limited by their internal physical characteristics. Currently, the very fastest hard drives barely top 150 MB/s in their maximum sequential transfer speed.
 
Your comparing 2 different things...

USB3 is to SATA as SSD it to Mechanical harddrives.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Your comparing 2 different things...

USB3 is to SATA as SSD it to Mechanical harddrives.
Click to expand...

You're right. I did mess that up. What I meant was, I'm curious as to if you used a USB3 hard drive as your boot drive vs a SSD drive with whatever interface you use for that (SATA-II or III). Which one would be fastest to post the BIOS (if I'm saying that correctly) and load the OS?
 
JOSHSKORN said:
You're right. I did mess that up. What I meant was, I'm curious as to if you used a USB3 hard drive as your boot drive vs a SSD drive with whatever interface you use for that (SATA-II or III). Which one would be fastest to post the BIOS (if I'm saying that correctly) and load the OS?
Click to expand...

SATA II/III is still the way to go.
 
JOSHSKORN said:
You're right. I did mess that up. What I meant was, I'm curious as to if you used a USB3 hard drive as your boot drive vs a SSD drive with whatever interface you use for that (SATA-II or III). Which one would be fastest to post the BIOS (if I'm saying that correctly) and load the OS?
Click to expand...

Again, you're still forgetting one thing: "hard drives will always be limited by their internal physical characteristics" So that USB hard drive will still be slower than a SSD using a SATA 3Gb/s because you're still using a mechanical hard drive in that USB bay.
 
JOSHSKORN said:
You're right. I did mess that up. What I meant was, I'm curious as to if you used a USB3 hard drive as your boot drive vs a SSD drive with whatever interface you use for that (SATA-II or III). Which one would be fastest to post the BIOS (if I'm saying that correctly) and load the OS?
Click to expand...

USB3 is 400MB/sec. SATA2 is currently at 300MB/sec, and SATA3 is going to be 600MB/sec. So really USB3 is uninteresting for a boot drive as SATA3 is much faster.

Also this is just theoretical speeds, USB never actually sees these speeds. Current USB2 maxes at 60MB/sec but realistically you have a hard time getting more than 40MB/sec from it. Compare that to SATA2's 300MB/sec limit that you can actually hit with fast enough SSDs.

While USB3's 400MB/sec is 'faster' than SATA2's 300MB/sec, SATA2 will likely still be faster in the real world. SATA3 at 600MB/sec however, which is already on many new motherboards, will surely destroy USB3.
 
JOSHSKORN said:
I'm curious about USB 3.0 drives vs SSD. I guess this can be more of a debate, to an extent. Will USB 3.0 internal hard drives ever come into play and beat out SSDs? I'm kind of curious as to why or why not. I saw a benchmark on TomsHardware where it looked like USB3 was much faster than SSD. Opinions, please?

Please move this topic to another forum if necessary. Thanks.
Click to expand...

USB3.0 is newest bus, there is NO native USB3.0. Every USB3.0 drive is combination of interal (HDD or ODD) connect via USB3.0 bridge.

Although the USB3.0 bandwidth is 5.0Gbs.But the transfer rate is a function of the attached drive. Here are MAX speed of those attached device

SSD @ ~ 300MB/sec
10K SATA @ ~ 145MB/sec
7200 SATA @ ~ 100MB/sec

So the answer to your question: depend on the drive is attached
 
Light Peak will surely replace inkjet :p

But serisously, Intel seems to be on a roll introducing industry technologies and I bet LP will replace both USB and SATA in the future.
 
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