Two USB 3.0 ports enough on a new desktop?

Plus more USB 2.0 ports than that.

 

I will definitely be backing up my system with an attached hard drive in an enclosure. I don't know what other things 3.0 is really important for. That's why I asked. Maybe two is enough.

 

Thanks.

I look forward to the day when SSDs the size of ordinary hard drives will come down to reasonable price levels. I notice a lot of expensive computers throw in 25 GB or so SSD in addition to the hard drive. Is that really very useful?

 

A couple comments here. I personally could care less about USB3.0 speeds. All I really care about is USB stability and reliability - and sadly, of all the I/O options available for external storage devices, USB reliability continues to plague consumers, even with 3.0.

It is important to understand, even with the best USB3.0 (or Firewire) external drives, the hard drives and solid state drives within are still SATA (or PATA on older enclosures). Therefore, if you connect via USB (or Firewire), there has to be a data conversion process into one of the external data transmission protocols, then back again to SATA. This requires extra "bridging" circuitry and extra processing which adds complexity and additional potential points of failure. While in theory and on paper, USB3.0 is faster than eSATA, in practice, USB slows down the effective throughput.

While USB 3.0 (in theory) supports 5 Gbps, it was designed to support all sorts of devices (mice, keyboards, wifi, printers, external drives, etc.), the bandwidth is shared among the multiple ports connected to the same USB host controller. Also many devices, notably, hard drives are incapable of reaching those speeds in the first place. eSATA was designed for drives and uses one drive per eSATA connection - no sharing of bandwidth.

Therefore, if you need the most reliable high-speed data transfer to an external drive, the best solution, IMO, is to get a motherboard and enclosure/docking station that supports the latest eSATA protocols.

As for, "are two USB3.0 ports enough?", if not, you can always add a USB 3.0 hub to an existing USB 3.0 port. In any case, remember the USB device must also be USB 3.0 to take any advantage USB 3.0 has to offer.

 

That's very helpful, Digerati. Have a great holiday season.

 

You are welcome and Happy Holidays to all, and watch out for idiots on the road.