If you are looking at getting an external hard drive or any external device then you may be confused about which type of interface is best. This is perfectly natural given the amount of options out there. Whenever new technologies, again those of us who are not geeks and technicians tend to have difficulty making a decision. Hopefully, what follows will help facilitate the decision that has to do. Currently there are three main types of interfaces for connecting external devices. You are always tested and reliable USB 2.0, the new external SATA USB 3.0 or eSATA as it is called. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and reliability. Note that the data transfer rates also differ between the three.
First, let's compare the two USB interfaces. While everyone knows what a USB port is that many do not know the story. USB is an interface type developed more than a decade ago to connect the smartphone to the PC. Due to the ease of use and interface capabilities quickly became the industry standard for all types of external devices. All that has changed between the original design of USB and USB 3.0 is the speed of data transfer. The original only had a USB data transfer speed of 12 Mbps, while USB 2.0 has a transfer rate of 480 Mbps 2.0 As you can imagine is best for external hard drives and tape drives. However, USB 3.0 is the target of 2.0 hit off the water due to its estimate from 3.2 to 4 Gbps transfer rate.
However, the number of available USB 3.0 devices are still few and far between, as it has only recently been made available. As time goes on we expect the number of devices available to increase rapidly. ESATA on the other side is a useful alternative to USB 2.0. Today its transfer speed is 3 times faster than USB 2.0, which puts it at around 1.4 Gbps. The only downside to this is that it requires its own power connector for operation. If you are a desktop does not have an eSATA port that does not have to worry about. There are many expansion cards to add eSATA ports to your computer and lets you use external technology. Laptop owners can purchase additional cards too, but with a reduced number of ports due to the limitations of card size.
