Performance of portable external USB3.0 SSDs?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious how they perform. They're darn expensive for what they are, so I probably wouldn't be able to afford one, but I hope that they are faster than my 1TB portable external USB3.0 HD. It's certainly faster than USB2.0, by about a factor of three, but still pretty darn slow when trying to move the entire drive to and from.

Hmm, I just looked up portable external USB3.0 enclosures with a SATA interface, and all of the ones that Newegg had listed, only had a SATA1/2 interface. None with SATA6G. Would be nice if there were such a thing, then you could put together your own portable external USB3.0 SATA6G SSD.

 

[God Mode]

Its limited by the usb controller.

 

[corkyg]

The USB controller will limit both drives to about the same performance as far as data flow is concerned. Putting a SSD in an external is, IMHO, a waste of capability.

 

[exdeath]

The USB controller will limit both drives to about the same performance as far as data flow is concerned. Putting a SSD in an external is, IMHO, a waste of capability.

Will still be 3-5 times faster than a USB 3.0 thumb drive.

 

[corkyg]

Will still be 3-5 times faster than a USB 3.0 thumb drive.

Yeah, but that is not the question. That is because the thumb drive is inherently slower. Bottom line is tnat both a SSD and a spindle HDD will be throttled by the USB 3 controller.

 

[groberts101]

I've been running "retired SSD's" in external USB 3 enclosures for some time now. Think of them as ultra low latency raided HDD with only a fraction of the capacity. lol

heres my little 30GB drive. My kids use it mainly(tablet, movies, etc) but I do use it for mobile PC maintenance and for a quick carry all device. Works slick even though we get no where close to sata2 saturation from it. eSATA is better in that regard but has no where near the compatibility that a USB device would.



we'll surely be seeing a lot more of these devices being concocted as older SSD's are "retired" while we continue to move up in speed/capacity. Hopefully the mfgrs will see fit to cater to us a little better by then as well.

Here's the most recent addition to my external interface arsenal. Who needs an enclosure for something that already has one built in, right?
http://www.amazon.com/DiabloTek-EN4228S-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B0040JGY6G

 

[exdeath]

Yeah, but that is not the question. That is because the thumb drive is inherently slower. Bottom line is tnat both a SSD and a spindle HDD will be throttled by the USB 3 controller.

If you're talking about the thumb drive's controller chip not the PCs USB 3.0 controller then OK.

But a USB 3.0 thumb drive vs a true SSD with a real controller on a USB 3.0 adapter, a sub $100 60-128GB SSD on a USB3.0 adapter will MURDER any premium $300 thumb drive regardless of any USB 3.0 issues.

In reality the limit is going to be the SATA controller in the dongle. Most SATA to USB3 dongles are still only SATA 3g, but even then the SSD with it's true SSD controller is going to destroy even the fastest thumb drive which are only 200 MB/sec tops and horrendous randoms compared to a standard SSD. USB 3.0 itself can sustain around 300-400 MB/sec or so. SSDs are optimized for destop OS use and 4k randoms, while thumb drives aren't really because they are really only intended for sequential data transfers and copy a dozen documents or mp3s here and there.

And no way is a spindle drive being slowed down by USB 3.0. I hit 100 MB/sec or so on my GoFlex Pro 7200 RPM 2.5" backup drive with USB 3.0, that's as fast as the mechanical spindle can go.

 

[VirtualLarry]

USB 3.0 itself can sustain around 300-400 MB/sec or so. SSDs are optimized for destop OS use and 4k randoms, while thumb drives aren't really because they are really only intended for sequential data transfers and copy a dozen documents or mp3s here and there.

And no way is a spindle drive being slowed down by USB 3.0. I hit 100 MB/sec or so on my GoFlex Pro 7200 RPM 2.5" backup drive with USB 3.0, that's as fast as the mechanical spindle can go.

I would agree that USB3 doesn't seem to be a significantly limiring factor for storage, unlike USB2.0 that had a lame 30MB/sec limit. I have a Toshiba USB3.0 external 1TB drive, and it seems to run at platter speeds.

I was just thinking, why not a USB3 SSD, that would even be faster.

Even with USB3, it took 4 hours to write 900GB of data to the drive.

 

[Charlie98]

And no way is a spindle drive being slowed down by USB 3.0. I hit 100 MB/sec or so on my GoFlex Pro 7200 RPM 2.5" backup drive with USB 3.0, that's as fast as the mechanical spindle can go.

I just did a ATTO test on my GoFlex portable (5400RPM) and that mirrors very close to what you said (adjusted for RPM.)

L is USB3.0, R is USB2.0...

 

[exdeath]

Yeah you can see how much even the small transfers blow on USB 2.0 due to the "hidden" protocol overhead of having all those excessive command packets and headers etc to do one 4k at a time, etc. It ends up overwhelming the channel with command data and robbing bandwidth from the actual data. 35 MB/sec just isn't much to work with at all.

 

[iamlilysdad]

I've been running "retired SSD's" in external USB 3 enclosures for some time now. Think of them as ultra low latency raided HDD with only a fraction of the capacity. lol

heres my little 30GB drive. My kids use it mainly(tablet, movies, etc) but I do use it for mobile PC maintenance and for a quick carry all device. Works slick even though we get no where close to sata2 saturation from it. eSATA is better in that regard but has no where near the compatibility that a USB device would.



we'll surely be seeing a lot more of these devices being concocted as older SSD's are "retired" while we continue to move up in speed/capacity. Hopefully the mfgrs will see fit to cater to us a little better by then as well.

Here's the most recent addition to my external interface arsenal. Who needs an enclosure for something that already has one built in, right?
http://www.amazon.com/DiabloTek-EN4228S-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B0040JGY6G

So given the option you'd use an eSata drive over usb 3.0 for external purposes?

 

[Obsoleet]

I just did a ATTO test on my GoFlex portable (5400RPM) and that mirrors very close to what you said (adjusted for RPM.)

L is USB3.0, R is USB2.0...

That's interesting. I'm going to have to run that on my USB 3.0 WD Passport. I'm in love with that drive due to being small, portable and self powered. It's also a 5400RPM drive. I think I get ~70MB transfers out of it on USB3. Good enough for movies/music for the remainder of time we still store a lot locally, especially since everything went to streaming rather than retaining downloads.
Not sure if I even need any external (storage) at all, other than a spot to keep my downloaded apps.

 

[Charlie98]

That's interesting. I'm going to have to run that on my USB 3.0 WD Passport. I'm in love with that drive due to being small, portable and self powered. It's also a 5400RPM drive. I think I get ~70MB transfers out of it on USB3. Good enough for movies/music for the remainder of time we still store a lot locally, especially since everything went to streaming rather than retaining downloads.
Not sure if I even need any external (storage) at all, other than a spot to keep my downloaded apps.

I use mine for external backup and, occasionally, transferring big files (anything bigger than about 6GB,) so speed isn't essential... but it's nice!

I was quite surprised at the differences in 2.0 and 3.0... 😱

 

[Obsoleet]

I picked up a GoFlex USB3.0 drive as well. My results on the WD are not good at all. I made a new post about it here- http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=33027340#post33027340

 

[zuffy]

I am running my Intel X25M 160GB G2 in a Coolmax USB 3.0. Awesome case. I also have the ineo iPile case that has a bit of an Apple look. When I actually received the product, it feel and look cheap.

Performance wise, I think I would have been better off with a 7200rpm HDD. My usage is usually read/write of large sequential files, not much random access.

Here is how the Intel X25M 160GB G2 perform in the Coolmax USB 3.0 case

The Intel X25M 160GB G2 in SATA II