Seagate, Western Digital Shipping SuperSpeed USB 3.0 External Drives

From DailyTech: The USB 2.0 interface has been a limiting factor for external hard drives even as they were developed. The obsolete interface can only transfer data at 480Mbps (60MB/s), but due to protocol overhead and other problems most users will find their data transfers capped around the 35MB/s-40MB/s range.

This issue spurred the development of eSATA, the external version of the beloved Serial ATA interface. The problem is that USB is a ubiquitous interface, while eSATA has only recently become a standard fixture on new motherboards. Many external hard drives that support eSATA also come with a bracket to enable connection to an internal SATA port.

Seagate and Western Digital are taking a page from the eSATA approach and including optional adaptors for new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external hard disk drives that they have announced. The new interface is theoretically capable of up to 4.8Gbps data throughput (usually rounded up to 5Gbps), although the real world experience won't be quite as fast. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1.

Western Digital has announced its new lineup of My Book 3.0 external hard drives which have been certified by the USB-IF. The standalone 1TB version is available now for $179.99, while the kit with a PCIe adaptor will cost $199.99. The 2TB version is expected to be on sale by tomorrow. Both come with a two year warranty.

View: Article @ Source Site