Meanwhile my thumb drive:
The best I can do is 20Mbps with the curve xy = 1
Mine is worse, it says it can do way more than 20Mbps, but once the buffer is exhausted, it hangs frequently. And this isn’t some random POS from AliExpress, I bought it retail at BestBuy.
If you’re ok with some bulk, go for an nvme enclosure. I have a sabrent one with a 256 GB crucial gen 3 drive in it, it’s a slow cheap drive, still substantially better than any usb key and you can put one together for under $100 cad including a longer high speed cable.
I just did a fresh install off of my usb key and wow, super slow compared to any time I’ve done off my enclosure
Good idea! I don’t need it very often (like maybe once/year?), but I’ll keep it in mind the next time I start looking for my USB drives again.
Like that guarantees quality.
It certainly doesn’t, but it’s understandable for users to expect that paying a premium at a place like BestBuy should result in getting a better product that picking up something on Amazon.
I generally do my research, but in this case, I needed it in a pinch to flash a Linux ISO to get my computer up and running because I couldn’t find any of my other ones. I expected to get ripped off, so I’m not too mad about it, but I was surprised at how crappy it was since I figured USB drives are largely a solved problem.
And this is why I largely avoid BestBuy and steer others from it, stuff costs more (though they do match if you ask), and they tend to carry crappy accessories and peripherals. It’s basically Walmart quality crap priced higher than better products at Microcenter, all because customers either don’t know better or don’t have any other retail options.
Every device I have just has a couple of blue ones and a couple of black ones, perhaps some orange ones and some USB-C ports, and good luck figuring out what they all can do. No symbols anywhere.
I believe yellow or orange ports always deliver charging power regardless of device’s power state.
It’s cool, the colors are just for aesthetics. Internally they’re all connected to the same USB controller chip anyway.
/s probably
Edit: it was a joke. I know blue means 3.
If they’re following the standard, which they often do but sometimes don’t, white indicates 2.0 and blue indicates 3.0+. I think there are more but I don’t remember the other colours.
the colors are just for aesthetics.
Blue is a convention to indicate USB 3. Of course, not everyone actually implements that, and USB-C ports don’t, as far as I know, do that at all, just USB-A.
My current desktop does both – the case has USB ports on the top that come off a USB header from the motherboard, which have a simple number “3.0” pointing at its USB-A ports in front, but uses black plastic for them. The motherboard’s USB connectors in back use the “blue plastic” convention on its USB-A 3 ports, and black plastic on its USB-A 2 ports. The motherboard also labels the USB 3 ports by having a text label reading “USB 3.2”, which isn’t listed on OP’s set of symbols, and puts symbols on them.
Black is USB 2, blue is USB 3, and Orange or Yellow are usually “always on” and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
Not on all vendors tho - coloring was an optional part of the standard. Dell often uses grey for USB3
and Orange or Yellow are usually “always on” and/or 2.4 amp or some other kind of thing like that.
It’s the variety and surprise here that adds novelty and excitement to life.
https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/blog/usb-port-colors/
The blue USB port is also known as USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed (SS) USB. It was introduced in 2008 and offers a data transfer speed of up to 5 Gbps, which is more than 10 times faster than USB 2.0. In addition, it can transfer data in both directions simultaneously.
I definitely have a number of devices that use newer-than-USB 3.0 and use blue.
The teal USB port is also known as the USB 3.1 Gen 1 or SuperSpeed+ (SS+) USB. Released in 2013, it supports up to 10 Gbps data transfer speed, which is twice as fast as USB 3.0. The color is similar to USB 3.0, but it will appear as slightly more green-toned than the classic blue of 3.0. This is the easiest way to differentiate USB 3.0 vs 3.1 ports.
I don’t think any of my devices actually use teal, regardless of what they support. Oh…hmm. Wait, I think my last desktop motherboard did that.
goes to investigate
Yeah, it has teal and blue ports.
My current motherboard uses blue or red for everything USB-A, so clearly isn’t using blue to indicate “USB 3.0”, and labels every port, blue or red, in English as “USB 3.2”. So it clearly isn’t using the port color to indicate purely speed.
The red USB port is generally classified as USB 3.2, which was released in 2017. However, it can also be used to indicate a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
Another source of novelty and excitement.
Yellow USB Port Meaning
The yellow USB port is another color that can indicate either USB 3.2 or USB 3.1 Gen 2.
So much excitement.
The yellow USB port is more commonly found on laptops while the red USB port is more commonly found on desktop computers. This is because the yellow USB port indicates that it is always on, meaning it will continue to draw power even when the computer is turned off or in sleep mode. As a result, you can generally use it to charge other devices, such as smartphones.
It’s useful but it got me even more lost 😅
So many different standards my god.
The superiority of german aryan ports proven once again.
(this is a joke, nazism is evil and I hate it)
LOL, yeah, manufacturers don’t follow this at all.
Last I looked, these (and the “blue plastic for USB 3” convention) weren’t mandated by the spec. So it’s not that they’re violating the spec, but that they’re optional.
And that’s the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they’re not.
What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.
It has to be optional to remain a “Universal” spec.
If it had more requirements, it would be more cumbersome to implement and device manufacturers would come up with completely different, completely incompatible cables and ports (a la Apple’s lightning) that would cause you even more headaches.
“Universal” merely means devices with different capabilities can use the same interface. So you can use mice and keyboards (very low bandwidth needs) on the same port as a data hungry drive. That was the major innovation when USB took over for PS/2, parallel port, etc.
Manufacturers can still use low-end components on the client devices, the requirement would merely be that the ports in host devices and cables would meet some minimum specs to be able to meet USB certification. Instead of having a wide variety of possible configurations, force host devices into smaller niches so the marketing is clearer to customers. Devices would still negotiate voltages, data rates, etc as they do now, the only change would be forcing implementations into buckets.
The problem is that there are too many separate dimensions to define the tiers.
In terms of data signaling speed and latency, you have the basic generations of USB 1.x, 2.0, 3.x, and 4, with Thunderbolt 3 essentially being the same thing as USB4, and Thunderbolt 4 adding on some more minimum requirements.
On top of that, you have USB-PD, which is its own standard for power delivery, including how the devices conduct handshakes over a certified cable.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB. Most famously, there’s the DisplayPort Alt Mode for driving display data over a USB-C connection with a DP-compatible monitor. But there’s also an analog audio mode so that the cable and port passes along analog data to or from microphones or speakers.
Each type of cable, too, carries different physical requirements, which also causes a challenge on how long the cable can be and still work properly. That’s why a lot of the cables that support the latest and greatest data and power standards tend to be short. A longer cable might be useful, but could come at the sacrifice of not supporting certain types of functions. I personally have a long cable that supports USB-PD but can’t carry thunderbolt data speeds or certain types of signals, but I like it because it’s good for plugging in a charger when I’m not that close to an outlet. But I also know it’s not a good cable for connecting my external SSD, which would be bottlenecked at USB 2.0 speeds.
So the tiers themselves aren’t going to be well defined.
Right, which is why it’s so important to define tiers.
For example:
- basic support (cheap) - gen 2 speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; for peripherals and whatnot
- high speed (fast enough) - 5gbps speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; USB drives, regular laptop/desktop ports, etc
- fast charging (general purpose) - 5gbps data transfer, fast charging up to 45W (or maybe a little lower) at various voltages; phones, special laptop/desktop ports
- specialized PD - gen 2 speeds (faster is optional), fast charging up to 240W at various voltages
- specialized data - 40gbps data transfer, charging at 5v 500ma (faster is optional), display out
You’d use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.
Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn’t mean you should. The goal here shouldn’t be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.
And then you have the standards for not just raw data speed, but also what other modes are supported, for information to be seamlessly tunneled through the cable and connection in a mode that carries signals other than the data signal spec for USB.
Not to mention power-only cables to avoid the security issues associated with cables that permit data transfer.
“Power-only” meaning no data BEYOND the PD devices themselves because its actually a data protocol to negotiate the power output to the device.
Thanks for succinctly explaining what thunderbolt is
My laptop has two USBC ports. No logos of any kind. They are Thunderbolt 4. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Here, you’ve lost an arm: \
If you’re trying to get Lemmy to print the backslash, you need to make it a double backslash since backslash is an “escape” character that means “ignore any special formatting meaning of the next character” (among other meanings)
Reddit was the same exact way. I don’t know how people are messing it up here too.
some additional info about USB. If your cable/connector is old, idk how old is requred, the names and standards are actually completely different now than they used to be, but they’re adopted into the new standards, so you have to keep this in mind when trying to recognize this stuff.
thanks USB forum, you guys are the best :)
What is the difference between USA and USB?
One connects to all your devices and accesses your data, the other is a hardware standard.
One gives you power, the other does everything it can to make sure you never do.
OIL
“Basic”
Also don’t forget the dubious AliExpress devices that have all these symbols, no data lines, Vcc at 12V and ground attached to a loose M8 nut.
I guess they could have a USB certification body, kinda like UL is for wall power devices, and require that a device have an certification ID number on it that you could look up in their online database to qualify. I mean, you could forge a fake number that doesn’t map to anything, but I feel like that’s a higher bar than just throwing a USB symbol on there. Like, you gotta know that you’re doing something fraudulent in that case.
investigates
Huh.
Apparently UL does certify USB devices. I have no idea how to tell whether a UL-marked device of a given age is certified to do what from the logo alone, though. I guess you could look it up with UL.
https://www.ul.com/services/ul-taiwan-usb-test-lab
I bet that only my high-power USB chargers have it, though. Honestly, I didn’t even know that they covered USB, wouldn’t have looked for a UL mark on USB devices.
investigates
Well, my Logitech F710 gamepad does have a UL mark. That’s some proprietary wireless protocol, uses AA batteries. Not USB and doesn’t plug into the wall. Dunno whether they certified it for wireless or power safety or whatever.
looks further
I have a wired USB gamepad with a bunch of Chinese characters, the URL “www.izdtech.com”, no USB labels, and no UL mark.
I have a wired/wireless USB 8Bitdo gamepad with a CE mark, USB symbols, and no UL mark (I understand that CE doesn’t work like UL. It doesn’t indicate that any independent organization has tested the device, just is a concise way to state that the device manufacturer states that the device conforms to some set of standards).
I have a 100W USB PD “Nekteck” charger with a UL mark and some ID number that looks to be associated with that, no CE mark, an FCC mark that I assume is related to RF interference compliance, an enormous USB standard mark with the 100 watt capability listed, and some sort of mark with a box inside another box that I don’t recognize.
I have an SIIG USB audio interface that has no USB labels, a CE mark, an FCC mark, and no UL mark.
I have a USB-powered audio mixer that has no USB labels, no FCC mark, no UL mark and a CE mark.
I have a laptop USB charger that has no USB labels, a CE mark, multiple UL marks, one of which appears to be in some sort of teardrop-looking thing, some “UK CA” mark that I assume is some kind of UK regulatory body. It’s got that same mysterious “box in a box” mark that I saw before, “VI” in a circle, a picture of a house, some “NYCE” mark, and a “NOM” mark.
I bet that most people have basically no idea what any of this means. I probably know what more of it means than the average person, but definitely not enough to extract a whole lot of information from this. And all of these have a different set of marks; there is no least-common-denominator mark.
white P inside a black D
Oh… Oh!
Can we stop naming things “super speed” they are going to get surpassed in a few years then we are stuck with super speed being the slow option.
USB keeps changing their own standard every 2 years why bother learning it.
I mean, they update the standard to add new things. Is that bad?
They also change existing terms for no good reason.
The don’t.
But give me an example of what you’re talking about. I’ll explain.
USB3.2 gen 2, USB3.2 Gen2x2
The consumer facing names for those transmission specs are and have always been:
-
SuperSpeed 10 Gbps
-
SuperSpeed 20 Gbps
Unless you’re designing your own circuits you don’t need to worry about signaling rates (ie “Gen”) or lane configuration (Z×Y).
-
Pshh, speak for yourself. I’m ready for USB 3.2 gen 5 pro ultra max
And Knuckles
Was that the first one that had M Bison as a playable character?
But will that be better or worse than USB 3.3 gen 2 extra super speed?
Will USB 3 get an update now USB4 is out?
Eh, USB4 is basically what USB 3.3 would’ve been, but with fresh branding. I expect it to have the same naming issues after a few updates…
Wasn’t USB4 based on Thunderbolt 3?
Sort of? It borrows a lot of the high speed protocol bits from Thunderbolt 3, but I think it does DP a little differently (at least it supports different DP standards than TB3). So it’s closely related, but not necessarily the same thing.
Both, of course.
We’re not calling it that anymore. It’s been rebranded to “SuperDuper Speed USB ]|[” now. Note that this is a different standard than the previous “SuperDuper Speed USB 3,” and under no circumstances should you call it “SuperDuper Speed USB 3.0,” because there was never any such spec and pedantic nerds will climb up your nose in the comments if you ever utter it.
No symbol for power-only ports?
These are found almost exclusively on PC/laptops/tablets. Which I’ve never seen a power port only on.
Would be nice to have a standard indicator on the cable side of things.
