The biggest improvement that most end users will notice is when transferring large files, rather than lots of smaller files. The overhead and delay that sometimes accompanies transferring lots of small files still exists - however large files (i.e. Backups, Videos, high-res Photos etc…) will see a huge boost from USB 3.0 transfer speeds.
Most USB 2.0 hard drives will transfer at around 30-35MB/s (after overheads, bottlenecks and half-duplex), whereas a USB 3.0 hard drive could produce closer to 90-100MB/s (limited by drive performance). This can make a huge difference when making regular backups of a machine, reducing the time for a transfer down to a third.
We used h2benchw to benchmark both the 1TB USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 versions of the Samsung S2 drive to highlight the performance difference. The popular benchmarking software ran under Windows 7 to provide the data transfer rates:
Samsung S2 1TB USB 2.0
Write Average: 26.9 MB/s
Read Average: 31.8 MB/s
Samsung S2 1TB USB 3.0
Write Average: 90.9 MB/s
Read Average: 90.7 MB/s
The difference in both read and write speeds is very noticeable, both in terms of benchmarks and real-world testing. These two hard drives are used as backup drives, with the USB 3.0 S2 taking significantly less time to copy files.
Performance of the USB 3.0 Samsung S2 is exactly what you would expect from a latest generation portable storage device. The design builds on the successes of the previous S2 generations, providing a huge speed boost – whilst only costing a small amount extra (at the time of writing). Even if you have an older system, it may be worth investing in a faster external drive so that you can take advantage of the increased transfer speeds at a future date. USB 3.0 is much, much faster than USB 2.0 and no longer acts as a bottle neck on external hard drives. At this price/performance level, there are few drives that can match the Samsung S2.
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