USB 3.0 hard drives emerge from Western Digital and Seagate
The first external hard drives using the new USB 3.0 standards have been unveiled. But while a marked improvement they are a reminder that theoretical capabilities are rarely reached.
Officially USB 3.0 allows data to be transferred up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0. However, Seagate says its new drives using the technology are instead around 3.5 times faster than before, increasing transfer speeds from around 1.75Gb a minute to just over 6Gb per minute.
One possible limitation to USB 3.0′s advancements is that for most individual files, it won’t make much practical difference: even being three times faster isn’t going to be noticeably more convenient when you are talking about a matter of seconds anyway. Where it’s going to really count is in situations such as using an external hard drive to perform a complete back-up of a computer.
For example, even with the limited improvements of the Seagate drive, a 240GB drive could now be copied in 38 minutes rather than taking more than two hours, making it much more feasible to carry out a daily-back-up.
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January 7th, 2010
LaCie’s popular Rugged external hard disk is now speedier than ever. Lacie is set to release the LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 with faster speeds than even firewire. We’re talking 110MB/s. The system will also come complete with a software bundle for easy formatting and backup, as well as 10GB Wuala online storage included for one year. We’ll update this post with pricing and more info when it becomes available. It’s about time USB 3.0 products came to market!