USB 3.0

What is USB 3.0?
USB 3.0 is new specification for USB, known as USB SuperSpeed. The new specification has made many improvements over the USB 2.0 specification. One of the main improvements is the speed of data transfer. The speed of USB 3.0 surpasses existing USB specifications, eSATA, and IEEE-1394.

What you should know?
Currently there are only a limited number of USB 3.0 devices on the market. First generation USB 3.0 devices will not be capable of full throughput. Hardware and chipsets have not yet reached the full potential of the USB 3.0 specification. Also, overhead from protocol, hardware limitations, and chipset limitations prevent file transfer at 4.8Gbps. The "real world" is the throughput, which is 600Mbps. It is also important to note that USB 3.0 utilises new connector types. These new connectors will not work with older USB 2.0 & 1.1 devices.

What application is it best for?
USB 3.0 is designed for data transfer from large mass storage devices. A few examples would be transferring data from a large hard drive, HD video for video editing or Blu-Ray authoring, or high resolution photos for editing and storage.