-----Original Message----- From: Chuck Cole [mailto:cncole at earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:29 AM To: Florin Iucha > -----Original Message----- > From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org > [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Florin Iucha > > On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 07:39:00PM -0500, Donovan Niesen wrote: > > PII and USB... if you were using onboard USB there is a good chance > > that it was USB 1.1 which was abysmal. > > Nope, it was a USB 2.0 add-in card, and a Gigabit NIC. USB just sucks > for storage, especially when you layer it on top of IDE... > > florin For those who think USB might be fast, it's worth pointing out that USB is serial and has a protocol overhead as well. IDE has transaction overhead also (quite visible when buffer depth is exceeded). The fastest IDE is parallel and 3x faster than USB 2.0, ignoring protocols. The oldest and slowest IDE is roughly the same as USB 2.0, however. Ignoring overheads, USB 2.0 has a max of 480Mhz while SATA is 1.5GHz. The real difference will have USB much slower than 1/3 the speed of SATA. For a conversion to work at near the maximum speed, the interfaces must be appreciably faster so the overhead is masked. USB is plenty fast enough for keyboards, mice, printers and modems, but not much else. It's very convenient, commonly found, robust, and inexpensive, so "good enough" for many uses. Chuck