First USB 3.0 devices to be slower than expected

TG Daily reports the first USB 3.0 devices which will hit the market by late 2009 or early 2010 won't be as fast as many users are hoping for. Theoretically, the USB 3.0 standard offers up to 5Gb/s (625MB/s), but the site says early adopters will have to settle for only a fourth of the maximum bandwidth.

The reporter heard at CES that the first USB 3.0 storage devices won't be much faster than 150MB/s:

Readers who have been following the history of USB may remember that USB 2.0 was a rather underwhelming technology when it showed up in first products in late 2001. While it promised a data transfer rate of up to 480 Gb/s, the real life numbers were much closer to 250 Gb/s. It took several years until the technology improved and finally came closer to its 480 Gb/s specification.

A representative for the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) told TG Daily that USB 3.0 will go through a similar evolution and not reach the promised 5 Gb/s initially. A prototype USB 3.0 hard drive on display at CES 2009 topped out a 165 MB/s in read operations and at 125 MB/s in write processes.

We need to stress that this was a (very fragile) hard drive prototype and bandwidth is likely to improve somewhat until actual products hit the market. However, we are told that we should not expect much more than 150 MB/s.