The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    USB 3 external instead of SataIII

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by QuadAllegory, Jan 18, 2010.

  1. QuadAllegory

    QuadAllegory Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    65
    Messages:
    976
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I had an idea to upgrade to USB 3 (through ExpressCard slot) so that in the future when SSD's surpass the Sata II limit, I could run an external SSD through USB 3 and come close to SataIII speeds.

    My question is: would it be possible to use an external USB 3 SSD as your main OS drive, and set your internal HDD (say 500GB) to the secondary storage drive?

    Hope this makes sense.
     
    QuadAllegory, Jan 18, 2010
    #1
  2. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,972
    Messages:
    7,788
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    should be possible. but i'd suggest to do it the other way around, then.

    why?
    a) because it's awkward to see the os outside of the actual laptop
    b) i would not trust my os on a mainboard->pcie->usb3->sata->ssd path, too much tiny failures possible, and
    c) the very low latencies of ssds could get lost somewhere in the latencies of the path described in b). it could double, quadruple, etc the latency, and thus alienate one of the main benefits of the ssd.
     
    davepermen, Jan 18, 2010
    #2
  3. ilikepie

    ilikepie Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    48
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    dave makes some good points and even if you wanted to do that express card is currently limited to 2.5 gbps. Express card 2.0 is capable of gbps which is part of the usb 3 standard neither of which are out. so by the time you can get a express card with usb 3 support sata 3 will be out with a speed of 6 gbps.
     
    ilikepie, Jan 18, 2010
    #3
  4. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,972
    Messages:
    7,788
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    oh, and i found a

    d) if you have your data drive externally, it's easy to share data with other people if needed. you don't want to share your os files with others, normally :)
     
    davepermen, Jan 18, 2010
    #4