When will USB 3.0 hardives become available?

[KingstonU]

Need a new external, but hate upgrading when I know that a significant jump in technology is right around the corner. Even though my motherboard doesn't support 3.0, my new PC will and I'll carry over the new external hardrive and want the benefit of 3.0.

How many hardrive manufactruers have announced USB 3.0 products with launch dates?

Thanks,

 

[masteryoda34]

I bet you wont see USB 3 harddrives for a long time yet.

 

[tcsenter]

USB 3.0 will have competition from SATA/eSATA for external storage solutions, which already provide more throughput than best-in-class hard drives are capable of. If you want the benefits of USB 3.0 now, just get a USB 2.0 + eSATA solution.

 

[RebateMonger]

Looks like mid-2010 to me:

Wikipedia.org: USB 3.0

"On September 18, 2007, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated USB 3.0 at the Intel Developer Forum. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced on November 17, 2008, that version 1.0 of the specification had been completed and was transitioned to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the managing body of USB specifications.[2] This move effectively opened the spec to hardware developers for implementation in future products. The first USB 3.0 ports were featured on the Asus P6X58 motherboard; however this board was cancelled before production for unspecified reasons."

"Availability

Consumer products are expected to become available in 2010. Commercial controllers are expected to enter into volume production no later than the first quarter of 2010. NEC is aiming to produce its first USB 3.0 controller in June 2009, initially priced at US$15.00. Monthly production of NEC Electronics' µPD720200 host controller is expected to reach approximately 1,000,000 units in September 2009.

Windows 7 drivers are under development but no public releases have been made available as of June 2009. The Linux kernel will support USB 3.0 with version 2.6.31, which will be released around August."

It'll be nice if it works as designed. eSATA has been a disapppointment with the many controller issues.

 

[KingstonU]

Hmm, no product until 2010 is sad news. My current 250GB external (a clunky OneTouch4 that requires it's own power cord) is completely full and in total I have maybe 400GB of stuff, but can easily bring that down to ~350GB is I get rid of bunch of shows I've already watched. I would like to have 100% backup so need at least 500GB.

Ideally I would like 1000GB USB 3.0 external to allow for future growth for a couple years, but maybe could get by with 500GB USB 2.0 for the next year or so.

Why do some externals require their own power cords and others are powered just from the USB 2.0 port? Is the dedicated one faster? How much faster?

Can anyone recommend an external? Should I just get another OneTouch4? I like it, durable and easy to use, but big, clunky, and needs dedicated power cord.

 

[Syntax Error]

Not for a long time to have it as ubiquitous as USB 2.0. In other words, you can easily have multiple external hard drives in the time it takes for USB 3.0 to become mainstream.

eSATA is becoming more and more common these days, and that will serve your needs. Hell, even FireWire 800 would do the trick considering hard disk drives aren't even close to maxing out SATA 2.0 yet.

You're really looking to waiting for a product that isn't even out in the consumer market and won't be for a few years at the very least.

EDIT: as for your AC adapter question, desktop hard drives require more current than laptop hard drives, which can be powered solely by 5V USB. Desktop hard drives (which are the bigger hard drives) require AC adapters. The bigger hard drives would run faster but the bus you are going to connect to your computer (USB 2.0 most likely) will negate any such performance benefit. Larger desktop external hard drives' main advantage is a cheaper cost-per-GB but they are larger and require external power. Portable laptop external hard drives do not.

 

[taltamir]

eSATA is better.

 

[KingstonU]

yes eSATA is better, but USB is more universal, I know that all devices that I will want to connect to have it so it's more useful.

 

[Syntax Error]

USB 3.0 "claims" to have 4.8Gbps throughput, whether or not that's achievable (have you ever had a USB 2.0 drive go 480Mbps? Probably not) is another question.

eSATA is fast enough.

 

[betaflame]

SATA 6GB/s controllers (with esata) come out next month or so, dunno about the drive. USB3 is going to be perpetually behind at this rate.

 

[Syntax Error]

There's a big difference between 6Gb and 6GB. SATA III would be 6.0Gbps.

But what does it matter? Hard drives have a tough time saturating SATA I 1.5Gbps anyways. Just use a bus that will exceed the hard drive's capabilities (not to mention any other bottlenecks there might be, like the host computer, RAM, or CPU) and just go with that. No need to "wait" for SATA III or USB 3.0.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: betaflame
SATA 6GB/s controllers (with esata) come out next month or so, dunno about the drive. USB3 is going to be perpetually behind at this rate.

It won't make any difference if FUNCTIONAL eSATA controllers don't become more available. There are highly competent folks on these Forums who can't get their eSATA controllers to work properly. And almost none of the controllers function like eSATA is supposed to function: With hot-swapping that doesn't crash the host and with the ability to "safely remove" the hard drives.

Versus USB, which "just works".

If the folks on AnandTech can't get eSATA to function as-advertised, I doubt it's working very well in the "real world" either. Unless eSATA gets considerably better, I'd expect it to be drowned out by USB 3.0.

 

[betaflame]

Meh, all of my eSATA stuff (Jmicron/ICH10R) works perfectly. I've had to deal with some shit on USB too.

 

[Modelworks]

Have a friend who is already testing USB 3.0 . It is implemented with a card in his pc at this point. He hasn't used it for hard drives but it is connected to NAND chips for storage and testing. The one comment he made to me is that it is a lot more finicky about cable lengths and cable quality as well as not handling some usb 2.0 devices on the same hub. I'm kind of concerned because he phrased it like "When it works it is really fast !"