USB2 and 3 speeds for external HDDs

[Ozpa]

Hello everyone!

I'm currently thinking of buying a 1-2TB external HDD for backups. I'm almost decided - it's either a WD My Book Essential or WD Elements (basically either USB2 or 3).

I'm going to connect the HDD via USB 2-3 times a month to make manual backups (just copy files to HDD, don't trust and don't want to install the additional backup software), so my question is what real-life speeds should I expect with USB2 vs 3?

Just a ball-park faster percentage number would do

 

[streetfighter 2]

Your mobo, the GA-MA790X-UD4, does not support USB 3.0 unless you added an expansion card.

I find I get sustained speed of between 12MB/s and 20MB/s over USB 2.0, but it's important to mention that USB 2.0 is half-duplex. I've read that USB 3.0 is full-duplex, but I don't have information on whether it is commonly implemented.

With USB 3.0 I'd expect to get >40MB/s sustained, but I've yet to try it for myself. Since I don't have any computers with USB 3.0 I'm rather fond of eSATA and all of my external HDDs use it.

It's also important to mention that transferring a single large file is often faster than transferring a bunch of smaller ones.

 

[cadaveca]

USB 2.0 I get 35MB/22MB(read/write) on USB 3.0 I get 80/60.

If you are doing large data transfers, do not use USB 2.0 drives...takes ages.

 

[Ozpa]

Oh right, I forgot I was getting around 20MB/s on my USB2 stick for large sequential files.

streetfighter 2: Right, USB3 is more of a "future-proof" idea since I'll be upgrading to 2500K soon this year.

On the other hand, I'll be leaving the backup file transferring to finish when I go to bed at night so it's done morning. If cadaveca's reply is true then triple speeds over USB2 should be something to think about, can't seem to decide aaa

 

[cadaveca]

Oh, it's true, tested over many motherboards now. Seems fairly consistent, too. You'll have to watch for my reviews for board-specific results!

 

[BazookaJoe]

In a nutshell, assuming we are specifically talking about 2.5" drives - USB2 : roughly 25MB/s USB3 : roughly 85MB/s - and getting faster as time / hardware improves.

Depending on how much backing up you are doing it can save you a LOTTTTT of time.

I have 2 X 2TB Seagate 3.5" drives in a Zalman ZM-MH200-U3 external USB3 Docking station - and I get well over 120MB/s to those read & write via USB3 - which is fantastic - because I use them to do backups of many hundreds of GIGS and that used to take AGES over USB2.

More than 500% faster in actual time spent backing up - using the USB3