by Walter Moore

You may be one of those that has recently purchased one of those new external disk drives at the Costco sale. 8TB for $100 that was a Black Friday deal come early! Now for some of you with an older computer or laptop you plugged it in and got a message that your USB did not support the USB 3.0 speeds. Well what does that mean you might ask?

Back when USB technology first arrived or USB 1.0, the big rectangular style plugs that we still know today, the transfer rate only went up to 12 megabit per second. At the time, like anything in the 90s including a floppy drive, was state of the art. We even had external hard drives then, you just needed what was called an enclosure and you pretty much made your own external disk drive. Now you may have noticed your new USB plug has changed colors, it is blue. Well what does that mean? That means the usb plug is now either a 2.0 or 3.0 port. You will notice new computers have blue ports for your USBs as well. The latest 3.0 technology tranfers data at a blistering 5 gigabit per second or for comparison 625 megabits per second. That is what allows that new massive disk drive you just bought to quickly transfer data onto the drive.

Now for you older desktop users there may be a USB 3.0 module that you can put into your computer to upgrade your ports IF your motherboard is compatible. For laptop users, you might be able to find a computer repair company that can make the change, but more than likely you will have to put that on your wish list in the next laptop.

I hope this tip helps!

If you have any questions contact me walter@msatp.