USB 3.0 flash drives render all USB 2.0 flash drives obsolete
August 31st, 2011
USB 3.0 promises 10 times faster speeds than USB 2.0 so it’s no wonder that USB 3.0 flash drives are making all other drives obsolete. USB 3.0 drives that have shown up on foreign etailer websites offer 6x the speed of their USB 2.0 counterparts for the same price! It’s actually no contest at all!
The Corsair flash voyager is typical of the new generation drives. The manufacturer claims upto 70MB/s read speed and 19MB/s write speed. That compares favourable to USB 2.0 drives that are typically advertised as 10MB/s read and 5MB/s write. So for the same money you can get 6-7x the performance of USB 2.0 drives! Needless to say if you’re planning on buying a thumb drive anytime soon hold off on your purchase until these new drives become available locally.
USB 3.0 drives are backwards compatible so they will work on USB 2.0 ports. But if you want to enjoy the faster speeds that these drives offer you will have to have USB 3.0 support on your motherboard. So if you’re buying a new system look for a motherboard which has USB 3.0 support. Alternatively, you can add a PCI-E USB 3.0 host controller card to your existing system to get USB 3.0 functionality. Currently these cards cost around Rs. 3,000 locally so they are not cheap. But expect prices to go down in future.