The main impact of USB 3.0

The speed has increased from 12 Mbps of USB 1.1 to 480 Mbps of USB 2.0, a 40-fold improvement. However, upgrading from the USB 2.0 standard to the USB 3.0 standard only results in a 10-fold increase. But this 10-fold speed improvement has significant practical significance. Since the data transfer rate of USB 3.0 has reached 4.8 Gbps, which is much higher than other transmission standards, such as the data transfer rate of IEEE 1394, which is typically between 400 Mbps and 3.2 Gbps, and the new generation eSATA standard, which is only 3 Gbps in data transfer rate, it can be seen that USB 3.0 has surpassed other standards.

In fact, this is not the case. Because IEEE 1394 and eSATA have their own application positioning. The IEEE 1394 standard has a maximum data transfer rate of 3.2 Gbps. It lags behind USB 3.0 in speed, but it provides point-to-point transmission functionality. This enables data transmission between devices without relying on a PC. It also supports synchronous and asynchronous transmission modes, can connect up to 63 devices, can simultaneously transmit digital video and digital audio signals, and has no signal loss during the capture and recording process. This makes the IEEE 1394 interface more suitable for multimedia devices (such as DV cameras, capture cards), which are beyond the reach of the USB 3.0 standard. Overall, the application of the IEEE 1394 interface is more professional and flexible. However, due to these professional characteristics and the insufficient promotion efforts by manufacturers, the popularity of IEEE 1394 devices is not high. Usually, a device has both an IEEE 1394 interface and a USB interface.

Regarding the eSATA standard, it is actually an extension of the SATA interface, also known as the external SATA interface. It supports plug-and-play functionality, but has significant limitations in terms of functionality. Firstly, it does not support power supply functionality, and it must be used in conjunction with the eSATA interface on the motherboard. This means that it cannot break free from the usage restrictions of a PC. Generally, it is only suitable for devices such as portable hard drives, convenient DVD drives, and TV boxes. For the currently popular consumer digital electronic devices, it becomes useless. Therefore, after the USB 3.0 standard was introduced, eSATA was the transmission standard facing the greatest competitive pressure. However, it should still be noted that since eSATA originates from the SATA chip on the motherboard, it has the function of booting the system. That is to say, a computer connected to an eSATA hard drive or eSATA optical drive can start the system. This is relatively more troublesome for USB hard drives and USB optical drives to achieve. This is very important for system maintenance, data exchange under DOS data conditions, and so on. However, for ordinary people, the status and development of eSATA may come to an end.