Fast is good, faster is better – SATA 6G and USB 3.0

One of the holy grails of technology is to make things go faster. This impulse pervades all technology from cars to computers. There are three new and improved technologies for data transfer within a computer, tablet device or smartphone that have recently come to market that will speed up our computing. These are solid state drives (SSD), Serial ATA Revision 3.0 and Universal Serial Bus 3.0.

Solid state devices replace rotational storage devices like hard drives. They are much faster than hard drives and more durable. They are also expensive. SSDs use non-volatile memory to read, write and store information. The most recent Intel/Micron joint venture fabrication facility builds SSDs using 25-nanometer NAND technology. The factory cost billions of dollars to construct and outfit. 25-nanometers is very small. At this size a few atoms misbehaving can ruin a device. SSDs are desirable as computer drives but I am waiting for SSD prices to drop significantly before deploying them as replacement drives in my existing computers.

As an aside, I recently had a conversation with a friend who consults to a large German optical company that makes the lens for these plants. He said he was working on the 11-nanometer next generation NAND lens. Unbelievable! What an incredible human accomplishment to work at this microscopic level.

SATA is the typical way internal drives connect to a computer. The first version of SATA allowed for theoretical speeds of data transfers up to 1.5Gb/s. Revision 2 doubled that theoretical speed to 3.0Gb/s. Most modern computers have drives and controllers that communicate using SATA 2.x. SATA Revision 3.0 is also known as SATA 6Gb/s because it has doubled the maximum transfer rate once again. Real world data speeds never come close to these maximums but each major revision has significantly sped up our computers.

I tested an ASUS U3S6 controller card in my custom-built Windows 7 main computer. The computer has an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, 12GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel i7-920 (2.66GHz) CPU.  The U3S6 adapter card has two USB 3.0 connectors on the back plane and two SATA 6Gb/s connectors on the inside. These are used to connect to a computer’s internal drives. The adapter card connects to the motherboard via a PCI Express x4 interface

I needed 6Gb/s drives to test so I bought two Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives. There are not a lot choices today. This is likely to change in the near future. I also acquired a BYTECC T-200U3 external docking station, that incorporates a USB 3.0 connector, to test USB 3.0 data transfer rates.  These four pieces of equipment cost me about $300.

I wanted to get SSDs but they cost much more and the SSDs’ capacities are too small so I went with this setup: A $30 add-on card and two new SATA 6.0Gb/s capable 1TB hard drives. A single Crucial Real SSD 256GB SATA 6Gb/s costs $759 at Newegg today. My configuration is slower than the SSD but I have 8x the storage for less than half the price.

I first benchmarked my existing drives using the motherboard’s built-in SATA 3Gb/s controllers and the external USB 2.0 ports. I used PC Wizard 2010 to run the hard drive benchmarks. I then installed the board and benchmarked the SATA 6Gb/s controller and drives, and the USB 3.0 docking station with both the new and old drives.

In my testing SATA 6Gb/s is about 50% faster than SATA 3Gb/s controllers+drives not the 100% I hoped for. However, my computer is much more responsive. Applications and files open much faster than before I installed the board and new drives.

USB 3.0 may be a big improvement but I didn’t see it in my initial testing. It is supposed to work at speeds up to 10x USB 2.0. This board’s USB 3.0 ports connected to a USB 3.0 external hard drive are only about 40%-50% faster than USB 2.0 equipment. This is good but nowhere near the 10x range I hoped for. The ASUS-supplied software drivers are the probable culprit. I am hopeful that ASUS will release new ones in the near future.

The bottom line is that I recommend this board and new hard drives to anyone who has the money and the motherboard expansion slot. The 50% improvement with USB 3.0 is nice but less than hoped for. However, I do not believe you will be disappointed if you upgrade your rig. I am not looking backwards.