Heya folks, Just lookin' into various Transfer Speeds for different Bus' and what not; 100Mbit LAN supports 12.5 Megabytes/sec, which I originally suspected my 2 PC's should be able to perform, but noticed it's stuck around 5-7MBps. (8 Port 100Mbit Switch with Cat-5 UTP cables being used). I concluded it's because one machine is forced to use USB Network adapters, and the bottleneck must be occuring on the USB front, reducing the maximum possible 12.5MBps. I have also noticed when transferring music to my Creative Mp3 player in the past, it remains around 8mbps at best, both the PC and the Player support USB 2.0 and are running drivers which are stated as USB 2.0 drivers. Yet, the "jip" is, USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, therefore 60 Megabytes per second. Why does it not perform so? Even over a cable not even 10 centimetres long (trust me, I have one that came with the Creative player) and that's rated USB 2.0. Some Bus' are calculated rightly so, such as 100Mbit LAN, but USB is a joke, why? Keep in mind, this is when the USB Bus is only working with a single device. And further more, is Firewire any better? Rated at 800Mbps, leaving a "True" speed of 100MBps, does it actually meet this expectation? If not, again why? Thanks for the information. I'm hoping this above problem isn't normal, because if my USB speeds can increase to it's designed levels (or even squeeze out a few Meg more through tweaks?), then I can remove this Networking Bottleneck and transfer large files possibly 25%-50% quicker. (Note the Capitals: I applied MBps & Mbps in respect to MegaBytes and Megabits)

It's just like anything else in the computer world...there are the advertised specs, then there's reality. ATA100 doesn't transfer data at 100MB/sec, SATA2 doesn't transfer data at 300MB/sec, PCI-e 2.0 doesn't transfer data at 500MB/sec, etc. But it certainly looks good on paper & get's people to upgrade components in the never ending quest for speed. Read the section on USB Signaling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Ah ha. Yeah, that about sums it up, thank you -_- But stupid though, USB is a common connection to connect all types of peripherals, yet generally your stuck with, for the lack of a better word, "crap" speeds. I hope USB 3.0, or Wireless USB, is greatly improved, I don't wanna be stuck with another standard that seems like it's a generation behind the present requirements. I spose when it's released, our current USB 2.0 External HDD's and what not are gonna be scuppered still, depressing. I guess with change you have some make sacrifices too! Thanks again.

"I hope USB 3.0, or Wireless USB, is greatly improved, I don't wanna be stuck with another standard that seems like it's a generation behind the present requirements." I think you are still confusing the "bandwidth" of the interface with the speed of the device. As Jam stated above you will not get 300MB/sec with a SATA2 drive. The interface may be able to handle it, but the device cannot (I think the max performance for the fastest drives is around 75MB/sec.). But, the SATA2 interface allows you to use a port replicator to attatch multiple drives to one interface (commonly used for external multiple-drive enclosures). In this case if you were accessing multiple drives on that interface (such as RAID setup) you would get closer to the maximum throughput of that interface. Michael J