How to achieve highest performance with multiple USB 3 drives but only one USB 3 port

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If a computer has one USB 3 port, and one USB 2 port, and the user needs to connect two external USB 3 drives (backwards compatible to USB 2), will highest speeds be obtained if the user connects them both through a multiplexer attached to the USB 3 port, or if one is attached to the USB 2 port and the other to the USB 3 port?

Data will be transferred from the internal hard drive to both external drives, as well as between the two external USB3 drives.

RockPaperLizard

Posted 2015-05-03T09:48:49.787

Reputation: 5 415

@davidbaumann Your answer is helpful (thank you), but it doesn't really explain why connecting both drives to a multiplexer would be faster, especially given that it will be limited by a single bus instead of dividing the loads onto two buses. If you find my question to be interesting, an upvote may be appropriate. ;) – RockPaperLizard – 2018-04-20T02:30:59.807

Actually, as the two drives cannot max out USB 3.0, it's better to connect both to a USB3 port. If you connect one to a USB2.0 port, this drive will stuck at 40 MByte/s. – davidbaumann – 2018-04-20T07:43:32.650

Answers

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As USB 3.0 should be able to transfer around 400 MB/s [1], it should be faster to connect both drives to the USB3.

You won't exceed 2x200 MB/s with the harddrives, I am quite sure. For even coming close to this, you would have to copy one very big file to the other harddrive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_3.0

davidbaumann

Posted 2015-05-03T09:48:49.787

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Asked: 2015-05-03T09:48:49.787

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Active: 2015-08-28T21:09:32.500