Introduction Of Super Speed USB 3 And Related Peripheral Technologies

The Universal Serial Bus has been with us since around 1996 commercially with the release of USB 1.0. Through mass adoption of this type of connection, we no longer struggled with various, PS2, serial and parallel connectors used for computer keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, scanners and similar hardware.

The main issue, whilst widely adopted, it was plagued with problems, ratty device drivers, forcing of the connectors the wrong way, loose connections, strange adoptions to Windows settings to make it work. What was touted as 'Plug-n-Play' soon became 'Plug-n-Pray'.

A revision in September 1998, mostly related to USB hubs, did resolve a few issues, but not all. And it was sloooooooooooooooow. A throughput of 1.5Mbps, relegated main use to only keyboards, mice and joysticks. Not until USB 1.1 were connected devices like USB drives, scanners and printers performed much better with a throughput of 12Mbps.

USB 2.0 arrived in August 2000 and was seen as a rival to firewire 400 (usually found on Apple MAC computers) with a throughput of 480Mbps, Windows 98 users eagerly adopted the new format, but not until the release of Windows XP in August 2001, did USB 2.0 see a much wider spread of use. Microsoft also adopted a better written form of device drivers from 3rd party manufacturers, this helped to make the USB standard more popular, as the realm of 'plug-n-play' finally became realized.

More devices hit the market as well, better equipped to handle the faster data transfer, now, hard drives, external dvd drives, USB thumb drives, ALL in one printer, scanner, photocopier devices, powered USB hubs, USB based external ADSL modems and routers, even USB based floppy drives became available for purchase.

In November 2009 the specifications of USB 3.0 as outlined by the USB Promoter Group and transitioned to the USB Implementers Forum, the managing body of USB specifications. Released with consumer products on January 2010 at the Las Vegas Comsumer Electronics Show. USB 3.0, now dubbed 'super speed USB' promotes a throughput of up to 3.2 Gbps. A speed around 10 times faster than USB 2.0

So with USB cables and devices now available on the market, what does this mean for the general consumer?

For one, although the cable connectors on USB 3.0 are slightly larger, to allow for better regulation of power (less need to power external devices, now can always be powered via your PC) devices are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and more than likely will need to use a USB 3.0 cable.

Can I use the technology now?

Yes, many places, including Amazon.com already have devices available to purchase - PCI-E cards, external hard drives, USB 3.0 hubs, USB 3.0 flash/thumb drives starting at 32Gb, external SSD drives, cables, PC motherboards and Expresscard devices for laptops. Many new and exciting devices will be released over time.

But my PC doesn't have USB 3.0?

USB 3.0 can be made viable if your PC has a spare PCI-E slot on the motherboard. If you open your computer and see those ports connecting cards like your graphics and soundcard, that really short slot is PCI-E, most motherboards inside computer sold since about 2006 have these. (Like the two short black colored ones in the picture on right)

A USB PCI-E card can be purchased for less than $40

Will my Windows / Linux version support this standard?

I have seen that Microsoft will support this standard for Windows 7.0 (according to crawling through some Microsoft forums), although not natively at this stage, yet most likely through a windows update, if not through a Service Pack. Using a manufacturers device driver will work on this version of windows. There will more than likely will be a update for Windows Vista users as well.Consideringthe age of Windows XP now being more than 7 years old, there is doubt that this version of windows will support it.

Since linux system users have a wealth of support in the community, it will not take long, if not already that support for this standard will become available for the most popular distributions, debian, ubuntu, red hat, etc.

Why would I want to use USB 3 instead of the current USB 2.0?

As with most changes in computer technology, there are advantages now and those to come with this standard. For one, especially useful for external devices, will be the criteria that USB 3.0 supports power variation depending on use. What this means is if you have an external drive, when not in use, your PC will cut the power down on the device, when you access the device it will power up to accommodate its needs.

Another feature is much faster transfer, since USB 3.0 is up to ten times faster than USB 2.0, file transfer will be much quicker, so instead of files taking twenty minutes to transfer, the same amount of files will take approximately two minutes.

New HD digital video and still cameras as released to market will have their video and picture transfer time cut down dramatically, as well as allow for much larger file sizes.

Any Exciting New Features Planned?

There are plans for in the future to have a wider adoption and support for HDMI and higher throughput video, so we can see high resolution cameras, video surveillance, faster transfer for HD video for cameras, even USB 3.0 Displaylink video screens.

Higher thoughput speed for external hard drives which will be useful for even watching HD video from an external drive, external blu-ray players and high end external sound cards.

HD digital video and still picture cameras.

External RAID capable drives will emerge in the not too distant future.

Any other news at this time?

Only Apple's silence at this stage as to whether they will adopt the standard, considering many devices that connect to Mac and Apple hardware are either proprietary connections or Firewire. Firewire is the defacto connection for video for Apple, although they do use USB 2.0.

Need a spare USB 3.0 cable? Or purchased a device without one? Necessary to enable connection between the above PCI-E card and your external USB 3.0 device. This item allows to connect up to 6 feet.

Have any spare SATA connector based hard drives lying around? This External adaptor connects via USB 3.0 to your USB 3.0 enabled connector or PCI-E card on your PC and you drop in a SATA based hard drive to start using it as a external device.

This USB hub contains, four USB 2.0 & 3 USB 3.0 connections so your multiple devices are never left out from sharing their time on your computer. Great for a mixture of old and new USB devices.

Wow, watch that 1 Gigabyte folder FLY. I have an external USB 2.0 Hard Drive and it takes me anywhere from 6-10 minutes to transfer that information.

There is good information here also about using both USB 2.0 & USB 3.0 cables on a USB 3.0 device.