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Atomic MPC > News > Build > Peripherals > Samsung external hard drive has USB 3.0

Samsung external hard drive has USB 3.0

Faster data transfer with the latest standard.

Samsung is joining the rush of companies bringing out devices using USB 3.0 with its global release of an external hard drive using the faster data transfer standard.

'SuperSpeed' USB 3.0 has only recently arrived, but is being taken up quickly by companies developing new devices as it a lot faster than USB 2.0. It is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0.

The Samsung Story Station 3.0 is an external hard drive that uses USB 3.0 technology. The company quotes the statistics that USB 3.0 offers a maximum data transfer rate of 5Gbps compared to 480Mbps in USB 2.0.

What this means in practice is that it can transfer a three minute song or 4MB in just 0.02 seconds and a typical HD movie in 2.3 minutes.

The drive concerned is available in 1TB to 2TB capacities. It also has three energy-saving modes - idle, sleep and suspend.

Backwards compatibility is the real beauty of USB 3.0. You will need a new cable and host adapter to achieve the faster USB 3.0 speeds with a computer, but it will still work with a USB 2.0 port.

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5 Comments

Lance Volcanix Apr 28, 2010 6:03 PM	Finally, an external HDD to use with 3.0... I wonder when the 3.0 Mice and Keyboards are going to start rolling in? I'll be grateful when they do... But not like it'll make a HUGE difference to the peripherals...
elmo198 Apr 29, 2010 9:03 AM	curious what benefit will a USB 3 mouse/Keyboard going to achieve, ROFL, the Ext Hdd is a bonus, so from the speed chart, looks faster than internal sata drives.. so when will we see that sort of speed in internal hdds?
12345 Apr 29, 2010 9:03 AM	I wish there were more motherboards that supported it without charging you a fortune - they more like a work around because intel is too lazy :P wonder what AMD is up to. USB 3.0 adoption needs to happen quick fast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
qwakqwak Apr 29, 2010 9:10 AM	There have been USB3.0 hard drives for a couple months now, I've had a Freecom 2TB USB3.0 drive since late feb.
darklife41 Apr 29, 2010 2:10 PM	Just what exactly is the actual transfer rate of this drive with USB 3.0? The bandwidth is great, but if its still bottlenecked by 120mb/s read/write speeds, it won't actually transfer data any faster. I bought a HighPoint RocketRaid 640 last month to be ready for SATA3 speeds, but still haven't seen any credible reviews with faster transfer rates listed. So I filled it up temporarily with 4x1TB Seagate 7200.12s. :-)

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Atomic Magazine

Issue: 137 | June, 2012

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