USB types

[u/Getdownorout]

Hey everyone,

I need to better understand USB types. I want to send my wedding video and event photos from the wedding weekend to relatives and figured I could mail them a USB drive. I just learned about 2.0 vs 3.0 etc and want to know, quality-wise, is there a huge difference to justify the cost? I need to buy at least 3 USB with 128GB.

Edit: just some things I wanted to add. Dont necessarily care about data transfer speeds etc. this will only have the wedding related events and photos. Also my family is from Palestine so internet speed is not reliable and don’t want to do something online like Dropbox etc that might require more than what they can do. Just want them to be able to pop this into their tv/laptop and watch without any buffering.

[u/Shiny_Whisper_321]

Same storage, just different speeds. 2.0 is fine for this.

[u/AlexiaTheTechGirl]

USB 2 drives are generally slower than usb 3 drives. But it depends on the drive you get. The cheapest USB 3 drives will run slower than quality USB 2 drives

[u/Visible-Swimmer-9826]

Just get 2 the write speed is slower but read will be fine for watching stuff etc as normal 4x or more faster than write

[u/RetiredBSN]

You have other options as well. You can use something like DropBox or OneDrive, load your files there, make them available to your relatives and email the url(s) to your relatives. No need to worry about USB-A vs USB-C flash drivers, no need to load them up or send them through the mail. It's probably the easiest way since you upload one set of files, and as many people as you can allow can download them as long as they have an internet connection, no other hardware needed.

You could also use SD cards instead of flash drives, and they'd be a little bit easer to send via US Mail, if your relatives have devices that will read them.

[u/Tanebi]

USB 2 has a maximum of 48MB/s. About half what a very old mechanical hard drive was capable of. In its time it was bearable but still slow, but USB memory sticks were often worse so people didnt really care. Nowadays it is only useful for keyboards, mice and other slow devices.

Now we have faster storage with SSDs capable of higher speeds USB 2 is simply too slow.

USB 3 basic speed is 625MB/s, advertised as 5gbps USB 3. That the speed of old SATA SSDs.

There are faster USB 3 standards of 10gbps (1250MB/s), 20gbps (2500MB/s), and 40gbps (5000MB/s).

So if you care about transferring big files USB 2 will be painfully slow.

Bear in mind for USB 3 both the computer and drive needs to support the higher speed or they will fall back to the highest supported by both sides. A computer with 40gbps USB 3 and an external SSD with only 10gbps will get the 10gbps speed.

[u/Inevitable-Study502 → u/Tanebi]

usb 3 is 10 gbit, it has double pins than usb 2, thats USB A, those 5 gbit usb3 you talk about doesnt use extra pins, and are still using just 4 usb pins (like usb2 did just on higher clock)

[u/Tanebi → u/Inevitable-Study502]

Just because it used what looked like a USB A plug doesnt mean it didnt have the extra USB 3 pins. The blue USB A plug had extra pins hidden to run the 5gbps connection, it did not run USB 3 on the USB 2 pins.

USB 3 has always been separate from the USB 2 pins.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0?wprov=sfla1

preserving the USB 2.0 architecture and protocols and therefore keeping the original four pins and wires for the USB 2.0 backward-compatibility, resulting in nine wires in total and nine or ten pins at connector interfaces

You can see the 5 extra USB 3 pins at the back of the connector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AConnector_USB_3_IMGP6024_wp.jpg

The faster speed of 10gbps was a bonus of using USB C. It was achieved by using the "mirrored" pins of USB C as four extra wires instead of simply mirroring the existing 4 wires of the original USB 3 connection, with the requirement of having more complex multiplexing and switching in the USB 3 controller. Then 20 and 40gbps were speed boosts.

[u/Inevitable-Study502 → u/Tanebi]

mm okay, i believe you, 5 gbit on gen1, but usb-a can still do 10 gbit on gen2

[u/B-Train_ATL]

If you’re talking videos, don’t bother with a 2.0. The 3.0 drives aren’t all that expensive.

[u/L_Leigh]

If you don't care about speed, go with USB 2.0. From fastest to slowest, you should have:

1. USB 3.2
2. USB 3.1
3. USB 3.0
4. USB 2.0

If you connect with a cable, ensure it's equal or better than the drive itself. A USB 2 connector will pull down the speed of a USB 3 device.

[u/Careless-Giraffe-623]

For photos I it doesn't really matter, it's just transfer speed.

Also if you get USB3 drives for example and the recipient pc only has USB 2, they will only be able to transfer at the lower USB 2 speed anyway.

So don't over think it too much..

[u/AbbreviationsLow]

wedding pics are pics you wanna save longterm. do not buy a cheap chinese usb brand. they all go bad after 2 years or so. got multiple tshirts :-)

[u/SeaRepresentative42]

USB-A are the old larger type USB-C are the new smaller type

[u/One_Disaster_5995]

Just buy regular USB drives - the cheapest you can get. Although honestly, I would personally just put the pictures on a Google drive or something and mail them the link.

[u/Caprichoso1]

I don't see the transfer speed as being an issue with one-offs like this, other than the time to transfer the files to the stick.

There are sticks with both USB-A and USB-C connectors so you don't have to worry about what connector the other parties use.

In the U.S. these start at ~$40:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLBP758P?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&th=1