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What's so great about USB 3.0 on Macbook Air 2012?

Y

yoyoma1992

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 20, 2012
30
0
Hi everyone,

I was just wondering, I hear a lot of people say that they are really happy with USB 3.0 and stuff. I understand that it is faster than 2.0 but what are the real world applications of it? Like how will it affect you? Don't you need an actual USB that is 3.0 to plug into your computer to get that speed boost? But then almost no other computers around right now has USB 3.0 ports, so your USB 3.0 can't even be plugged into anything else?

Am I missing something here?
 
yoyoma1992 said:
Hi everyone,

I was just wondering, I hear a lot of people say that they are really happy with USB 3.0 and stuff. I understand that it is faster than 2.0 but what are the real world applications of it? Like how will it affect you? Don't you need an actual USB that is 3.0 to plug into your computer to get that speed boost? But then almost no other computers around right now has USB 3.0 ports, so your USB 3.0 can't even be plugged into anything else?

Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

There's actually a lot of things that are USB 3.0, even Walmart sells external 3.0 drives. It's been out for about a year and a half now, so it's not just that it's better, but also that they've been waiting on Apple for over a year now.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
There's actually a lot of things that are USB 3.0, even Walmart sells external 3.0 drives. It's been out for about a year and a half now, so it's not just that it's better, but also that they've been waiting on Apple for over a year now.
Click to expand...

But like other computers around, like at the library or school, don't those computers need USB 3.0 ports for your USB 3.0 to work?
 
yoyoma1992 said:
Hi everyone,

I was just wondering, I hear a lot of people say that they are really happy with USB 3.0 and stuff. I understand that it is faster than 2.0 but what are the real world applications of it? Like how will it affect you? Don't you need an actual USB that is 3.0 to plug into your computer to get that speed boost? But then almost no other computers around right now has USB 3.0 ports, so your USB 3.0 can't even be plugged into anything else?

Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

Actually there are a lot of USB 3.0 devices already out and many computers already have had USB 3.0 ports long before Apple added them this year.
 
As far as I know, USB 2.0 used to be 2x as fast as USB, so USB 3.0 should be 3x as fast as USB. So therefore USB 3.0 should be 50% faster than USB 2.0, and no you don't need USB 3.0 peripherals to see that difference.
 
yoyoma1992 said:
But like other computers around, like at the library or school, don't those computers need USB 3.0 ports for your USB 3.0 to work?
Click to expand...

As far as I know most USB 3.0 drives should work just fine when plugged into a USB 2 port, they just won't be as fast as with a USB 3.0 port obviously.

GREEN4U said:
As far as I know, USB 2.0 used to be 2x as fast as USB, so USB 3.0 should be 3x as fast as USB. So therefore USB 3.0 should be 50% faster than USB 2.0, and no you don't need USB 3.0 peripherals to see that difference.
Click to expand...

USB 1.0: 12Mbit/s
USB 2.0: 480Mbit/s
USB 3.0: 5Gbit/s

So USB 2.0 was roughtly 40x faster at theoretical max speed than USB 1.0/1.1, and USB 3.0 is roughly 10x faster at theoretical max speed than USB 3.0.
 
USB3 external drives have become common and they are less expensive than FW800 and far less than Thunderbolt. It seems like USB3 is pretty much the defacto standard for external drives in fact.

It's not a big deal to me personally, but it's always nice to have more fast connections available. Firewire 800 ports are too big for the Air (about the same size as Ethernet). USB is much thinner, so it's a nice fit for the Air.
 
yoyoma1992 said:
But like other computers around, like at the library or school, don't those computers need USB 3.0 ports for your USB 3.0 to work?
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that the other computers need 3.0 to take advantage of faster speeds, but no in that USB 3.0 is backwards compatible so it can support 2.0. So you can personally take advantage of 3.0 at home and save some time when transferring files.
 
GREEN4U said:
As far as I know, USB 2.0 used to be 2x as fast as USB, so USB 3.0 should be 3x as fast as USB. So therefore USB 3.0 should be 50% faster than USB 2.0, and no you don't need USB 3.0 peripherals to see that difference.
Click to expand...

USB 1.1 offered speeds of 12 Mb/s (1.5 MB/s), USB 2.0 offers 400 Mb/s (almost 40 MB/s in real world application) and USB 3.0 offers 5 Gb/s (150 MB/s in real world).
The 2.0 and 3.0 moniker are not factors, but the version numbers.
 
Stetrain said:
As far as I know most USB 3.0 drives should work just fine when plugged into a USB 2 port, they just won't be as fast as with a USB 3.0 port obviously.



USB 1.0: 12Mbit/s
USB 2.0: 480Mbit/s
USB 3.0: 5Gbit/s

So USB 2.0 was roughtly 40x faster at theoretical max speed than USB 1.0/1.1, and USB 3.0 is roughly 10x faster at theoretical max speed than USB 3.0.
Click to expand...

That's the theoretical speed. In practice, an external hard drive connected to an MBP with USB 2.0 will copy files at about 34 MByte per second, while USB 3.0 will be around 3 times faster, limited by the speed of the hard drive itself. So that's quite a difference, and it costs almost nothing. Basically, it makes an external drive the same speed as an internal one.
 
gnasher729 said:
That's the theoretical speed. In practice, an external hard drive connected to an MBP with USB 2.0 will copy files at about 34 MByte per second, while USB 3.0 will be around 3 times faster, limited by the speed of the hard drive itself. So that's quite a difference, and it costs almost nothing. Basically, it makes an external drive the same speed as an internal one.
Click to expand...

USB 1.0: 12Mbit/s ----> 1,5MB/s
USB 2.0: 480Mbit/s ----> 60MB/s
USB 3.0: 5Gbit/s -------> 640MB/s

That's all theory. But USB2.0 got to hit the 50% of it.
I can do 170MB/s for both write and read with an SSD in an USB3.0 enclosure. So nice but pretty far away from those actual 640MB/s.
 
dasx said:
That's all theory. But USB2.0 got to hit the 50% of it.
I can do 170MB/s for both write and read with an SSD in an USB3.0 enclosure. So nice but pretty far away from those actual 640MB/s.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think you really need Thunderbolt to take full advantage of an external SSD.
 
Hard drives have a lot of overhead when using USB, that is why the drives don't hit the max USB speeds. eSATA doesn't have the overhead and is much nicer for external drives. Though with USB3 and a HDD (not SSD) it isn't a big deal as the HDD will become the bottleneck instead of the port.

EDIT: eSATA III or Thunderbolt should both give full speed to a SATA III SSD.
 
GREEN4U said:
So therefore USB 3.0 should be 50% faster than USB 2.0, and no you don't need USB 3.0 peripherals to see that difference.
Click to expand...

Besides your speeds being off, yes you do need a USB 3 device to see USB 3 speeds.
 
yoyoma1992 said:
But like other computers around, like at the library or school, don't those computers need USB 3.0 ports for your USB 3.0 to work?
Click to expand...

Nope. USB us USB, it's all backwards compatable. Get yourself a USB 3.0 hard drive and plug it into any computer, and it'll work. But when you plug it into your USB 3.0 port, it'll work really really fast.
 
yoyoma1992 said:
Hi everyone,

I was just wondering, I hear a lot of people say that they are really happy with USB 3.0 and stuff. I understand that it is faster than 2.0 but what are the real world applications of it? Like how will it affect you? Don't you need an actual USB that is 3.0 to plug into your computer to get that speed boost? But then almost no other computers around right now has USB 3.0 ports, so your USB 3.0 can't even be plugged into anything else?

Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

yoyoma1992 said:
But like other computers around, like at the library or school, don't those computers need USB 3.0 ports for your USB 3.0 to work?
Click to expand...

You are connecting USB 3 devices to your new USB 3 mac. Not your new mac to other computers.
 
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