You’ve heard a lot about USB 3.0 spec. You’ve heard how fast it is. How great it is. How when it arrives that everybody will want to have it (and trust me, people will.)

Well, wonder no more. Buffalo will be shipping the first USB 3.0 hard drive this month. And yes it has a controller card available to purchase with it since nobody has USB 3.0 natively in their PCs at the moment.

Should you get USB 3.0 now? No, because the availability is still very low and you’ll pay way too much for it.

The deal with USB 3.0 spec is is "SuperSpeed" bus, giving a fourth transfer mode of 4.8Gbit/s. Whether that will actually happen in real-world use is left to be seen, but chances are it won’t be as fast as that. However it will still kick the crap out of USB 2.0, no question. It will be worth the upgrade once there is wide availability for it.

When will there be wide availability of USB 3.0?

You will probably see the first available USB 3.0 products you can buy in 1st and 2nd quarter 2010, but I’d hazard a guess as to say you won’t see true wide availability until 3rd or 4th quarter.

Will the add-on card upgrade be worth it?

Once there is wide availability of consumer products that have this spec, yes. It will be particularly useful for backup drive use. Current USB 2.0 spec drives do the job just fine, but you know that transfers can take quite a while once you get into the three-digit megabyte range.

I feel sorry for anybody that has to transfer anything in the GB range. If for example you had a Western Digital MyPassport 750GB version (which does exist,) and had to transfer, say, 50GB of data over USB 2.0, you’re going to wait a good long time for that transfer to complete. Sure, it will finish, but better make a cup of coffee or three while you’re waiting.

What will the price point be?

Too early to tell. Reports conflict with each other as to how much the products will be here in the US.

It’s probably safe to say the controller card won’t cost much. The major cost will be in the actual products that have USB 3.0 ports on them.

What will USB 3.0 be able to do for you?

If you currently have another PC at home acting as a file server and nothing more, a USB 3.0 enabled backup HDD can replace that outright. The entire reason for a file server is to take advantage of the speed of your LAN. It is the fastest way to send and receive files.

Even though USB 3.0 won’t be as fast as the NICs on your network, they are fast enough where a file server simply won’t be needed. Instead you can simply attach a hard drive via USB cable and get nice fast transfers that are solid and reliable. Over time this will prove to be very cost effective (especially if what you get is USB self-powered.)

Normally I don’t get all ga-ga for new technologies these days, but I can honestly say that yes, I really want to get USB 3.0 ports in my PC. I mean, heck, it’s even fast enough for primary hard drive use (under Linux, anyway.) Can you imagine using a PC with no IDE or SATA connected drives whatsoever? You can with USB 3.0 easily. True, it’s not as fast, but chances are you really wouldn’t notice it.

It’s amazing what a big speed boost can do for USB, isn’t it?

Short answer: No. Not on the consumer side, anyway. Consumer products for the USB 3.0 specification will appear in 2010 which is not all that far away.

How to recognize USB 3.0 when it’s available?

Look for the "SuperSpeed" and "SS" logos, like these:

What new features will be in USB 3.0?

SuperSpeed as shown above. It gives a raw throughput of 500 megabytes, however the realistic transfer rate will be somewhere around 400. But that still kicks the crap out of USB 2.0, transfer speed-wise.

3.0 spec does support power management features for idle/speed/suspend and so on.

Power delivery from 3.0 has increased 50% compared to USB 2.0. Unit load will be 150mA. This means you’ll be seeing more USB gadgets that weren’t available before because there wasn’t enough power coming from 2.0 to run it.

Will USB 3.0 be backwards compatible with 2.0?

Yes – but with one exception. Standard USB 3.0 ports can use 2.0 or 3.0. But what’s labeled as "Standard-B" can only use 3.0-spec Standard-B plugs.

What does it look like?

Standard-B:

Mini-B (has a very noticeable notch):

When will it be here?

As said above, 2010. And we’re talking first quarter 2010 between January and March.

Will there be a card I can buy and install in my PC when it’s available?

PC hardware for USB 3.0 should be available at the same time USB 3.0 consumer devices are introduced to market.

The cards should be cheap. How much they will be I have no idea, but my guess would be below $35. In order for us as consumers to embrace 3.0 spec, the cards we need to use 3.0 must be at a low price point.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to USB 3.0. My only real complaint about 2.0 is the slow transfer speed, and 3.0 will take care of that in short order.

Lastly, for those that ask, "Will my operating system support it?", USB 3.0 should be supported with absolutely no problems at all on Windows, Mac or Linux.