USB 3.0 vs USB 2.0 for external Hard disks drives

Question

I considered buying this HD USB 3.0.

If the writing/reading speed of a HDD is, about, a hundred megabytes per second, it is worth it spending 15€ more for the transfer speed? Isn't it limited by the writing/reading speed? Isn't the USB 2.0 500 mb/s transfer speed enough?

Solution 1

USB 2.0 only has 35MB/s as maximum. In real life 25-30MB/s is realistic. So 100MB/s with USB 3.0 would be worth it for me.

The calculated 60MB/s can't be reached, because USB has a lot of protocol overhead.

Solution 2

A current 2.5" HDD can perform way over 100 MByte/s. See WesterDigital Red 2.5" (144 MByte/s)

USB-2.0 HiSpeed offers only 480 Mbit/s = 60 MByte/s (So USB-2.0 is the Bottleneck)

So if you need the HardDrive daily for working then it is of course worth to spend the ridicilous 15€ for the faster performance. If you use the HDD just for backup, then you don't really need it.

Another question is also - do you have a PC with a USB-3.0 Port? If not now, you will have in the near future... Take the USB-3.0 and enjoy the better performance.