USB 3.0: What Is It and How It Is Superior to USB 2.0

In this passage, I’m going to explain USB 3.0, a super-fast way to connecting things to computers.

Superspeed arrives

USB 3.0 is a faster version that the Universal Serial Bus introduced in 1996. Whereas USB 1.0 has a data transfer speed of 12 megabits per second and the current version of USB 2.0 maxes out 480, USB 3.0 can theoretically transfer data at 4.8 gigabytes per second. This is significantly faster than fire wire and also compares favorably with SATA.

USB 3.0 is compatible with 6 billion USB devices already sold. Indeed, when you first compare a type A USB plug to a USB 2.0 counterpart, they look pretty much identical. Granted there were slight changes in the shape of moding and all USBs we lead them in jacks, a color coded bright blue.

 

However, if you look inside USB 3.0 plug, you will see that in addition to the 4 contact points we all know, there are 5 contact points in the back to allow for the transmission of more data. They are, however, significant shape changes in another connectors to include the extra set of pins. For example, as you can see in a type-B connector has had an extra section added on the top.

 

 

Due to the way that the new connectors have been designed, it is possible to plug UBS 2.0 cables into USB 3.0 devices to run them over USB 2.0 interface. However, not least to avoid any possible damage, USB 3.0 cables cannot be connected to USB 2.0 peripherals.

 

 

Getting connected

Slowly, new motherboards are starting to be fitted with USB 3.0. However, at present, most people will need an add-on card like this one from Startek if they want to use the new standard. This fits into a spare PCI Express slot to provide 2 USB 3.0 ports. However, it should be noted that these ports may be limited to a maximum to 2.5 gigabytes per second due to the speed of many PCI Express slot.

 

Real world comparison

In a real world comparison, I copy the same 848 megabytes file to the same external hard drive. The only difference is that in the first time I used an USB 2.0 connection and in the second, USB 3.0. As we can see, the speed of USB 3.0 is 2.5 times faster than that of USB 2.0. If your devices are only equipped with USB 2.0, you can actually upgrade them to USB 3.0 using some tools. 

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