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USB 3, what's it good for?

G

gmm421

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 24, 2011
40
31
From most speculation, the new imac will be thinner, have USB 3, and will likely be somewhat faster. I don't care about thinner and, faster is ok. Other than the USB 3 speed for backup drives, what would be the benefit?

I would be more excited by a new design that allows for easy hard drive removal and/or graphics card upgrade.
 
For me, its going to be helpful for photo and video workflow. Offloading 60GB of video footage and hi res photography from 3 cameras for every assignment is a major time eater at USB2 in my current process. USB3 will allow the most crucial steps -- offloading and archiving the original footage -- to be completed faster and put the valuable footage into immediate safety. This will also me improve my turnaround time and have more time available for creative effort, not offloading, processing and backup.

I am buying a Drobo 5D with 12TB, it is both USB3 and and Thunderbolt... as my current workflow run rate chews up about 400GB per month. My camera is already USB3, and I have a Kingston USB3 reader for both SD and CF sizes. I think the new iMac will also have SD so that means offloading two cards at once. This should take an hour long task down to a few minutes. Major improvement.
 
redirector said:
For me, its going to be helpful for photo and video workflow. Offloading 60GB of video footage and hi res photography from 3 cameras for every assignment is a major time eater at USB2 in my current process. USB3 will allow the most crucial steps -- offloading and archiving the original footage -- to be completed faster and put the valuable footage into immediate safety. This will also me improve my turnaround time and have more time available for creative effort, not offloading, processing and backup.

I am buying a Drobo 5D with 12TB, it is both USB3 and and Thunderbolt... as my current workflow run rate chews up about 400GB per month. My camera is already USB3, and I have a Kingston USB3 reader for both SD and CF sizes. I think the new iMac will also have SD so that means offloading two cards at once. This should take an hour long task down to a few minutes. Major improvement.
Click to expand...
in practice 3.0 is about 3 times faster than 2.0... so your hour becomes 20 minutes.... also spec (marketing) claims 5 times but no one ever gets those theoretical speeds
 
seanm9 said:
in practice 3.0 is about 3 times faster than 2.0... so your hour becomes 20 minutes.... also spec (marketing) claims 5 times but no one ever gets those theoretical speeds
Click to expand...

Ah ok. Makes sense. I will take advantage of the built in SD reader as well as the external. Both at USB3.0... So that hopefully will eliminate the sequential waiting for one 20 minute interval for both cards. I wonder if there is any latency or bottlenecking with two simultaneous offloads like that.
 
mobilehaathi said:
Edwin Starr - War


But um anyway, USB 3 transfers data faster. You seem to already know this. What's with the question?
Click to expand...

Is it still compatible with regular USB? If I got a external HD that is regular USB would I still benefit from faster data transfer times?
 
No. It seems like you're comparing a USB 2-limited transfer to a disk-limited transfer speed.

USB 3 is over 10x faster theoretically, but it's not like you won't see that in real life... take a super fast SSD, like a Vertex 4 or something. In a USB 2 enclosure, it'll move files about at maybe 45ish MB/s, but in a USB 3 enclosure, you can see upwards of 400 MB/s.

Practically speaking, you can use a super-fast SSD as your boot drive connected via USB 3, and reap all the benefits, something you can't do with USB 2.

You can move large amounts of data as quickly as your drives will allow.

USB 3 is backwards compatible in the sense that you can use USB 2 and 1 devices with USB 3 ports, but using a USB 3 port isn't magically going to make everything USB 3. The device itself, the wire and any extensions you might have all need to be USB 3 as well.

seanm9 said:
in practice 3.0 is about 3 times faster than 2.0... so your hour becomes 20 minutes.... also spec (marketing) claims 5 times but no one ever gets those theoretical speeds
Click to expand...
 
USB 3 is a win-win feature

If you have an older mac with USB 2, you can plug in a "USB 3" external hard drive and it works great...at optimal USB 2 speeds. I'm doing that now on my mid-2010 mac mini.

If you buy a brand new mac with USB 3 built in, (I'm looking forward to that very feature on the next iMacs), it will work with USB 2 and USB 3 drives and work to the optimal speed of either drive's chipset. No issues. "It just works"

My backups to the external USB 3 drive on my upcoming iMac will be MUCH faster. In fact I hear USB 3 is faster than firewire 800...
 
G5Dual said:
If you have an older mac with USB 2, you can plug in a "USB 3" external hard drive and it works great...at optimal USB 2 speeds. I'm doing that now on my mid-2010 mac mini.

If you buy a brand new mac with USB 3 built in, (I'm looking forward to that very feature on the next iMacs), it will work with USB 2 and USB 3 drives and work to the optimal speed of either drive's chipset. No issues. "It just works"

My backups to the external USB 3 drive on my upcoming iMac will be MUCH faster. In fact I hear USB 3 is faster than firewire 800...
Click to expand...
so in short it's backwards compatible and will work but you won't benefit from faster speeds..unless 3.0 to 3.0
 
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