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Why is there a speed increase when using a USB 2.0 device with a USB 3.0 port?

I know this question, or similar questions, have been asked before, but still I am curious…

My laptop has two USB 3.0 ports and—on occasion—I will plug in a Western Digital external hard drive which uses USB 2.0. I have also used this same drive plugged into a USB 2.0 port and—having tried both of these configurations—I can say that I notice a bit faster transfer (roughly 20 MB/s more) using the USB 3.0 port. This doesn’t make sense to me.

Is there any reason for this?

What does the "open as portable device" option in Windows do?

I just bought a new USB stick, and when I plug it in and open My Computer, the context menu for the USB stick has an option "open as portable device". Clicking it opens a new window that just seems to show the contents of the drive, and appears to behave the same as just opening it normally.

What does this option actually do, and what it is for?

Mount drive at /Volumes/NAME/ or similar in Cygwin

I'm using Cygwin on Windows 7. When I plug in an USB stick, the drive automatically gets mounted to /cygdrive/x . This is good and really easy to use.

My problem is that the drive letter changes sometimes, and when I've got remotes set up in git - I've got one called usb at /cygdrive/h/ - this sometimes doesn't work and I have to change the remote URL. That's just an example, there are other scenarios where I wouldn't want it to change.

I like what the Mac does, and puts mounts a volume at /Volumes/STICK (STICK is the Volume name of my usb stick). Is there any way I can do this, or something similar under Cygwin.

Thanks

How do I quickly copy 900,000 files?

I need to copy some data that includes 900,000 tiny files totaling around 30 gigabytes to a windows computer. However, it needs to be able to be copied and set up in under an hour and a half, and it can take 5+ hours to copy off a USB hard drive mostly due to the crazy amount of files. Is there a better/faster way to deal with this, such as doing some sort of block copying? Thanks

is it safe to unplug a USB drive while Windows is in sleep/hibernate/off mode?

I have a portable USB flash drive that I use with my netbook. When I'm on the go, it is convenient to be able to simply close the lid and remove my flash drive without first having to use Windows's Safely Remove Hardware routine. The netbook changes to sleep mode (ACPI S3 mode) when I close the lid. Is it possible to do this safely with Windows 7 Home Premium? What about for hibernate (S4) and off modes?

Opened up a USB stick and it looks a bit odd

We opened up the case of a USB stick (that didn't work before we opened it) and it looks like this:

Has the memory been taken out of it or do some USB sticks actually look like this? Note that it was probably cheaply-produced.

Create an .iso from USB drive [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Where do I download Windows 7 (legally from Microsoft)?

I have Win 7 on a USB stick, non-iso. How do I get an iso of that?

How can I mount an EXT4 USB drive on Windows 8?

I have a USB drive formatted as EXT4. How can I mount it in Windows 8?

Ideas on other workarounds are appreciated as well!

Starting scheduled task by detecting connection of USB device

I know it has been discussed that it is not possible to start an application from an usb drive upon connection due to limitations of autorun (or autoplay??) in Win 7. But it is possible to create a scheduled task having an event type trigger. Surely there must be an event occurring when the drive -- or any USB device, for that matter -- is connected.

Does anybody have the slightest idea which Event ID should I use? Or at least what type of event? Where can I find the event in event viewer?

Is it safe to remove USB media when a computer is suspended?

We are often cautioned against unplugging USB drives in case it is currently being read from or written to. When a computer is suspended, hibernated, or asleep is it obviously not writing any data; it may have been in the middle of a read/write, however, it will have put such an operation on hold.

Since no arms are moving (for USB hard-drives), or bytes on the drive flickering on and off (for flash drives), is it then "safe" to unplug a drive?

Is this true even if data is being written to it, but the operation temporarily "suspended"? (assuming you don't mind that specific file only having been half-written to the drive)

Why Do Some USB Cables Have Two USB Connectors at the End?

I've recently bought an external hard drive enclosure and it had arrived with an USB cable, with one USB connector on one side and two on the other. Why do some USB cables have two connectors while others do not?

Verifying USB connection speed (USB 3 or USB 2?)

I've purchased several new USB 3 capable drives to use with my new (USB 3 capable) laptop. They connect ok but I suspect they're silently falling back to USB 2. The sustained transfer rates I'm seeing are around 30 Mb/s for both reads and writes, well within the practical limits of USB 2. One of the drives in particular is rated for transfers well in excess of 100 Mb/s so this is surprisingly (and suspiciously) low.

My question is.. how can I conclusively determine the USB connection speed being used by these devices?

I've poked about in the drive properties and run various diagnostic tools (like SIW). The only information I can extract is that they are indeed connected over USB (duh) but no info on the specific connection speed. The only suggestions I can find online are to benchmark the drives and "if its over 30-40 Mb/s it must be USB 3!" but this seems generally pretty vague and, in my case, inconclusive.

Details:

• Laptop is an Asus G75VW running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
• Reading and writing to the internal SSD (so no bottleneck there)
• USB drives are a Toshiba Canvio Basic A1 2.5" 1TB USB 3.0 External and a SanDisk CZ80 Extreme 64GB USB3.0 Flash Drive

EDIT/SOLVED -- My root problem here was driver related; I'd tried to manually install Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Drivers for Windows 7 on Server 2008 R2 (since no server drivers are available). In doings so I appear to have missed one or more devices. By following these instructions I've been able to coerce the driver installer to run correctly, fixing the issue. The SanDisk is getting 170 MB/s reads, 130 MB/s writes and the Toshiba is getting around 110 MB/s.

Share external USB hard drive over USB between multiple computers

I want to connect 3 Windows computers (2 Windows XP, 1 Windows Server 2003) to an external USB hard drive via USB. I would like each computer to be able to directly read and write to the HD as if it were directly connected to each computer.

Using special file transfer software isn't a viable solution. Sharing the HD over the network also won't work for me. Is this possible?

Thanks for any advice!

Connect USB storage device to 2 computers at a time

I'd like to connect an USB storage device to 2 computers at the same time (With a cable, not over the network). Is this possible?

Context: I want my Raspberry Pi to save output on an external USB-storage, and then be able to read the output on a Windows XP PC.

Accessing the firmware of an USB flash drive

Is there any way via which one can read the firmware of an USB flash drive? And if there is really such a way, can one write to that memory area?