USB 3.0 vs SATA – Speed Comparison for SSD

ssdusb

I have a Kingston V200 256GB SSD. When connected to my SATA 6.0gbps port on my motherboard I'm seeing sequential read speeds of 300 megabytes / second.

When I put the drive into a sata to USB 3.0 enclosure and connect it to my USB 3.0 motherboard port my sequential read speed is maximum of 200 megabytes / second and average of 120 megabytes / second. I tried the enclosure on another machine and got 120 megabytes / second as well.

I'm guessing the enclosure itself is the bottleneck. Anyone know of reviews/benchmarks on enclosure chipsets themselves so I can buy something that isn't going to slow me down?

Best Answer

USB is slower then SATA. The new SATA 3 standard operates at a theoretical maximum rate of 6.0 Gbps, while USB 3 operates at a theoretical maximum of 4.8 Gbps bi-directional. If we crunch these numbers...

      USB 3.0                    SATA 3
      4800Mbps            6000Mbps each way
      600 MBps            750 MBps each way

      USB 2.0                    SATA 2
480Mbps divided by 2      3000Mbps each way
  240Mbps or 30MBps       375 MBps each way

EDIT: As per @MrAlpha, I stand corrected on USB 3; it can take advantage of Full Duplex (as described here)

Related Question