How fast is USB 3.0 really? | Macworld
What does it all mean?
While you won’t see a tenfold increase in the transfer speed from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 in real-world use, USB 3.0 is fast—about three times faster than USB 2.0 with a spinning hard drive, and three to five times faster with SSD. And using a hub doesn’t impact speeds, even with other (and slower) peripherals attached. USB 3.0 is also faster than FireWire 800, and it stacks up favorably against Thunderbolt. Also, depending on the task and the drives used, it can be just as fast Intel’s speedy connection. When you remove the drive-speed bottleneck (by using an SSD), however, Thunderbolt can trump USB 3.0 easily.
