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    USB 3.0 expresscard help

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by cloudbyday, Jun 19, 2010.

  1. cloudbyday

    cloudbyday Notebook Deity

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    I want to put a USB 3.0 adapter in my MSI EX625, but I don't know what type of expresscard port is in it. I was thinking of something like this.
     
    cloudbyday, Jun 19, 2010
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  2. G73Guy

    G73Guy Notebook Consultant

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    That will work fine. If your notebook has a 54mm or 34mm express card it will work.
     
    G73Guy, Jun 19, 2010
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  3. cloudbyday

    cloudbyday Notebook Deity

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    So the express card will fit in both the 34 and 54 type?
     
    cloudbyday, Jun 19, 2010
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  4. G73Guy

    G73Guy Notebook Consultant

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    The card is 34mm so will fit in either socket. 54mm card won't fit in 34mm slot.
     
    G73Guy, Jun 19, 2010
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  5. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    sgogeta4, Jun 19, 2010
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  6. laststop311

    laststop311 Notebook Deity

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    your express card slot doesnt support the full 5gbps speed of usb 3.0 though. PCI-e express slots are 2.5gbps
     
    laststop311, Jun 19, 2010
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  7. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    Then it also counts on usage, if the OP is using it for Secondary storage the 2.5 Gbgs is more than ample. Most HDD's will not be able to saturate that.......
     
    TANWare, Jun 19, 2010
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  8. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    No HDD will saturate it. Even most SSDs have trouble.
     
    sgogeta4, Jun 19, 2010
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  9. cloudbyday

    cloudbyday Notebook Deity

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    cloudbyday, Jun 19, 2010
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  10. G73Guy

    G73Guy Notebook Consultant

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    eSATA (300) is 300MB/s. I thought on USB 2.0 people get around 30MB/s real world. That would make USB 2.0 the bottleneck. I have never got above 20MB/s myself.
     
    G73Guy, Jun 20, 2010
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  11. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    In terms of bandwidth/speed: USB 2.0 (60MB/s theoretical, realistically <48MB/s - about 80%) < HDD (typically <100MB/s) < eSATA (300MB/s theoretical and close to that in realistically since no overhead like USB) < USB 3.0 (500MB/s theoretical, realistically <400MB/s). So USB 2.0 will bottleneck HDD, while eSATA and USB 3.0 won't see a difference in performance since the HDD itself will be limited.
     
    sgogeta4, Jun 20, 2010
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  12. G73Guy

    G73Guy Notebook Consultant

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    USB 3.0 is 625MB/s theoretical (5Gb/s=625MB/s). But yes points still stand.
     
    G73Guy, Jun 20, 2010
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  13. lackofcheese

    lackofcheese Notebook Virtuoso

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    While we're on the topic of correcting things, SATA actually does have overhead involved due to 8b/10b encoding. One also has to be careful with binary vs metric measures in these situations, but we can safely assume that all these are in metric units.

    In actual fact, 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s (as for SATA) correspond to 375MB/s and 750MB/s respectively. However, the use of 8b/10b encoding means that the maximum throughput is actually 300MB/s and 600MB/s respectively.

    It's similar for USB 3.0, which also uses 8b/10b encoding.
     
    lackofcheese, Jun 20, 2010
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  14. cloudbyday

    cloudbyday Notebook Deity

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    Okay I'll stick with eSATA.
     
    cloudbyday, Jun 20, 2010
    #14