Here's a pretty awesome article from Tom's hardware comparing eSata, USB 2.0, and a USB 3.0 thumb drive. The thumb drive is a very special (and expensive) one, but the results are astounding.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb ... or=RSS-182
spoiler: :p
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| Quote: Its performance is impressive regardless of whether or not it can reach the promoted 300 MB/s. Even at almost 180 MB/s for reads and 90 MB/s for writes, the RAIDDrive requires your storage to be fast enough to keep its speedy pace. Hard drives are anywhere between 60 and 150 MB/s and network storage is typically limited by gigabit Ethernet (about 100 MB/s). In any case, the RAIDDrive USB 3.0 can almost triple write performance and increase read performance at least fivefold over USB 2.0. | |
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It's kinda slipped in there, but basically this USB thumb drive performed better than any standard hard drive. They tested a 64GB version and weren't able to get the special drivers to work, so their performance was a "paltry" 180MB/sec... way faster than any standard drive. They got the special drivers to work on a different box that managed to reach over 200MB/sec.
The thumb drive is too expensive, but it bodes well for the future.