Does SATA III to USB 3.0 cable slow down a SSD significantly?

TheMystic · Nov 3, 2021

clam1952 said:
Not all cables advertised as USB3 are, depends on where you get them from, there are dodgy suppliers out there USB3 has extra wires to USB2, fakes mainly from Ebay often look correct with the blue insert but don't have the extra wires in the cable.

You could test the drive by connecting it as an internal drive in the PC, assuming it's not a laptop and you have a spare SATA cable, most PCs will have sufficient power connectors.

Bought it on Amazon. It had a reasonably good rating, although it is no longer available. It got the job done for what I bought it (migrating OS from HDD to SSD).

It was lying unused, and I wanted a spare SSD on a budget. So got the SiliconPower internal one, so I could put the cable to use.

I don't have another SATA cable or a SATA disk, except the Samsung Evo 860 which is inside the laptop. So unable to test independently.

TheMystic · Nov 3, 2021

Dru2 said:
When using that cable make sure you use the USB side with the blue insert for USB 3 speeds, NOT the black one. Additionally, you need to make sure you plug the USB cable into a USB 3.0/3.1 port. To get the fastest USB 3.0 speeds possible

BTW this is the one I have...

View attachment 12428

StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5”

Yes, I am using the blue one for connecting to my USB 3.0 port. The other one with a white plug is for charging, and I don't normally plug it in.

clam1952 · Nov 3, 2021

Random thought, check there isn't any dust or fluff in the plug or the socket and that the pins look correct?

Also may be worth checking that the USB3 port is actually running at USB3 and not USB2 may be a driver issue, should show USB3 if you expand Serial Bus Controllers in Device Manager

TheMystic · Nov 3, 2021

clam1952 said:
Random thought, check there isn't any dust or fluff in the plug or the socket and that the pins look correct?

Also may be worth checking that the USB3 port is actually running at USB3 and not USB2 may be a driver issue, should show USB3 if you expand Serial Bus Controllers in Device Manager

Those can be ruled out because my Samsung SSDs run fine on them.

clam1952 · Nov 3, 2021

Have you tried a second opinion? Such as an alternative benchmark such as ATTO or AS SSD, just to rule out it's not something odd with Crystal and that particular drive.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 3, 2021

A cable should not make that much difference. However what you have is more than a cable. It has some electronics in it (under the bulk of the connector) that convert the SATA protocol to USB protocol. I have a couple of similar conversion cables and your mileage will vary as far as performance goes - it depends on the quailtiy of chips that do the conversion. But you will never get the full potential of the drive, but could come close enough.

But, it appears that you are running at USB 2.0 speed for some reason (maxes around 35 MB/s).
You should be able to attain near SATA SSD speeds with USB 3.0, dependent on what I mentioned above about the converter cable..

The white connector is supposed to be plugged into a USB 2.0 jack (USB 3.0 is fine) to draw enough power for the SSD. The blue USB connector is for transferring the data.

You also might not have the drive setup properly which can have a dramatic impact on performance.
When you go to This PC -> Management -> Device Manager -> Disk Drives and click on your USB disk -> Properties -> Policies, is Removal policy "Quick Removal" checked? If so, that is might be your problem. You want it setup thus (EXCEPT don't check

Just do not check the "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing"

hdmi · Nov 3, 2021

Could be that the USB 3.0 to SATA bridge in the cable is hopelessly outdated. Star ratings on amazon don't always reflect how old the electronics are, as it is entirely possible that the vast majority of users who rated the product did so aeons ago and/or maybe they just never noticed that it's slow because they only ever used it to copy relatively very small amounts of data and/or they have no ability to make comparisons with modern tech, they never read up on these kinds of hardware related subjects so they simply don't know what's fast or what is slow by yesteryear's standards, let alone by today's standards. Even if it does support USB 3.0 it offers no guarantee that it also supports SATA III (6Gbps) with UASP. So, if it only supports SATA II (3Gbps) with no UASP, then yeah, certainly that would hold back a SATA SSD that has a maximum theoretical read speed of 400MB/s, very significantly.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 3, 2021

unifex said:
I've never had high speeds on external drives. Simply the USB thumb drives which I use daily (I use San Disk Extreme Pro, rather fast on paper) in real use show relatively slow speeds (I never bother with benchmarks). Partially this can be attributed to the antivirus, partially to the way Windows is treating USB drives.

Moreover, USB 3 ports are now labeled strangely - the 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 ports are now 3.2 Gen 1, 3.2 Gen 2, and 3.2 Gen 2x2. The actual speed can be affected by the controller, etc. If you think cable is at fault - you can always change the cable, but as far as I know "digital" cables either work or they don't.

Take a look at this:

Is SATA 3 cable always faster than USB 3?

Answer (1 of 6): To offer a bit of snark up front, a SATA III cable isn’t particularly fast. In fact, these seem to be just sitting there. And if you try to hook them up to a SATA I or SATA II hard drive, they’re not any faster than normal SATA I or SATA II cables. If you hook them up to PATA dri...

www.quora.com

Well not really.

If you want to get full performance from a drive over USB, you need a USB chipset on the USB-3 enclosure (or whatever) that supports UASP (USB Attached SCSI). SCSI is a transfer protocol for disks. With UASP support the device will be treated as a disk, and you will get SATA transfer rates. It improves performance by a significant amount for USB attached disks. These cable converters do not usually support UASP (but I have a StarTech one that does). Neither do most USB jump drives. Most newer external hard drive enclosures have USB chipsets that support UASP. UASP support was introduced in Windows with Windows 10. TRIM is also supported.

So now there are jump drives that support UASP. When plugged in they look like a SCSI disk device. Here is the one I have., a 512 GB Patriot. It performs at SATA SSD rates and it do4esn't even have a SRAM buffer!

60198de27d31a90c0c9f42cb_Rage Pro_D_512GB-p-500.jpeg

Here is what I get with the StarTech USB-SATA converter cable (that supports UASP) attached to a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro :

This^ is the StarTech USB3S2SAT3CB Rev B cable I have had for 6+ years. $12 at Amazon currently:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SATA-USB-Cable-USB3S2SAT3CB/dp/B00HJZJI84

TheMystic · Nov 3, 2021

clam1952 said:
Have you tried a second opinion? Such as an alternative benchmark such as ATTO or AS SSD, just to rule out it's not something odd with Crystal and that particular drive.

I will do that. I will also test with the other ports I have on the laptop.

TheMystic · Nov 3, 2021

geneo said:
A cable should not make that much difference. However what you have is more than a cable. It has some electronics in it (under the bulk of the connector) that convert the SATA protocol to USB protocol. I have a couple of similar conversion cables and your mileage will vary as far as performance goes - it depends on the quailtiy of chips that do the conversion. But you will never get the full potential of the drive, but could come close enough.

But, it appears that you are running at USB 2.0 speed for some reason (maxes around 35 MB/s).
You should be able to attain near SATA SSD speeds with USB 3.0, dependent on what I mentioned above about the converter cable..

The white connector is supposed to be plugged into a USB 2.0 jack (USB 3.0 is fine) to draw enough power for the SSD. The blue USB connector is for transferring the data.

You also might not have the drive setup properly which can have a dramatic impact on performance.
When you go to This PC -> Management -> Device Manager -> Disk Drives and click on your USB disk -> Properties -> Policies, is Removal policy "Quick Removal" checked? If so, that is might be your problem. You want it setup thus (EXCEPT don't check

View attachment 12468

Just do not check the "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing"

Thanks for that. I will check these settings.

Is there a way where speeds can be tested without involving the cable? For example, if I partition the disk and transfer a file between the partitions, will it still involve the cable?

As mentioned in one of my earlier comments, I copied a large 12 gb Windows ISO files from one partition to another on the same disk. The windows copy popup showed a speed of over 100 MBPS for the most part during the transfer. What am I to make of it?

Always Why · Nov 3, 2021

Your next computer be a pre-built or custom-built will have USB 3.2 (or higher). You'll then want to have USB cables and/or USB Adapter & Cable with USB 3.2 capable speeds or higher. You can buy anything that needs a USB 3.0 and your ports will work just fine. However, if you get a new laptop or tower you will want the latest USB Port speeds.

I just Googled for latest and greatest USB Port speeds.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 3, 2021

TheMystic said:
Thanks for that. I will check these settings.

Is there a way where speeds can be tested without involving the cable? For example, if I partition the disk and transfer a file between the partitions, will it still involve the cable?

As mentioned in one of my earlier comments, I copied a large 12 gb Windows ISO files from one partition to another on the same disk. The windows copy popup showed a speed of over 100 MBPS for the most part during the transfer. What am I to make of it?

Yes, it will still involve transferring the data over the cable.
I missed that comment. Were the units MB/s or Mbps. 8 Mbps = 1 MB/s. I don't think the transfer window uses megabits per second (Mbps) anytime, but I could be wrong.

TheMystic · Nov 4, 2021

geneo said:
Well not really.

If you want to get full performance from a drive over USB, you need a USB chipset on the USB-3 enclosure (or whatever) that supports UASP (USB Attached SCSI). SCSI is a transfer protocol for disks. With UASP support the device will be treated as a disk, and you will get SATA transfer rates. It improves performance by a significant amount for USB attached disks. These cable converters do not usually support UASP (but I have a StarTech one that does). Neither do most USB jump drives. Most newer external hard drive enclosures have USB chipsets that support UASP. UASP support was introduced in Windows with Windows 10. TRIM is also supported.

So now there are jump drives that support UASP. When plugged in they look like a SCSI disk device. Here is the one I have., a 512 GB Patriot. It performs at SATA SSD rates and it do4esn't even have a SRAM buffer!

View attachment 12470 View attachment 12471 View attachment 12474

Here is what I get with the StarTech USB-SATA converter cable (that supports UASP) attached to a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro :

View attachment 12483

This^ is the StarTech USB3S2SAT3CB Rev B cable I have had for 6+ years. $12 at Amazon currently:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SATA-USB-Cable-USB3S2SAT3CB/dp/B00HJZJI84

View attachment 12484

I don’t know much about what’s inside the cable I have. It is no longer available on Amazon for me to check it.

yesterday, I cloned a 60 gb windows partition to this Silicon Power SSD. I noted that it took an average of 20 minutes for cloning 20 GB of data. That’s roughly 17 MBPS, which is too low.

I tried doing the same on my Samsung T7, and it took the same 20 minutes for cloning 30 Gb data. This is 50% faster, but the speeds are just about 25 MBPS. So the transfer speed in this case is slow because of the cloning process.

But when I do normal copy operation, the Samsung T5 and T7 are really fast. I get over 400 MBPS, which is good since my laptop is over 8.5 years old. With this one, I have only managed to get about 35 MBPS as per Crystal DiskMark.

I want to know for sure if it is the cable at fault, so I can decide whether to keep the SSD or return it.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 4, 2021

IDK. Did you look at the disk settings I suggested?

I had a cable that was not UASP and it was quite a bit slower than the StarTech one. Not near as slow as you are experiencing though.

TheMystic · Nov 4, 2021

geneo said:
Yes, it will still involve transferring the data over the cable.
I missed that comment. Were the units MB/s or Mbps. 8 Mbps = 1 MB/s. I don't think the transfer window uses megabits per second (Mbps) anytime, but I could be wrong.

Whatever it is by default. I think it is megabytes.

geneo said:
IDK. Did you look at the disk settings I suggested?

Not yet. I will take a look and update you on that. I’m on my phone now.

But regardless of the settings, it is too slow because the settings are same for all external disks. My Samsung SSDs are fast. But those are external SSDs with type c ports. This is a SATA SSD requiring a usb cable. So they are not comparable, unless I attach the disk to the SATA port inside my laptop.

TheMystic · Nov 4, 2021

This SSD also shows up as HDD in Windows Disk Defragmentation windows. Why so?

I have run the Winsat Formal command to see if it updates the disk type, but it still shows up as HDD only.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 4, 2021

TheMystic said:
This SSD also shows up as HDD in Windows Disk Defragmentation windows. Why so?

I have run the Winsat Formal command to see if it updates the disk type, but it still shows up as HDD only.

Because the bridge chip in it apparently does not support UASP. UASP is needed to support TRIM over USB and Windows defragmenter can't TRIM it (SSD optimization).

PS, your SSD also has to be formatted NTFS to be able to be TRIMed in Windows.

PerpetualCycle · Nov 4, 2021

TheMystic said:
Whatever it is by default. I think it is megabytes.

Not yet. I will take a look and update you on that. I’m on my phone now.

But regardless of the settings, it is too slow because the settings are same for all external disks. My Samsung SSDs are fast. But those are external SSDs with type c ports. This is a SATA SSD requiring a usb cable. So they are not comparable, unless I attach the disk to the SATA port inside my laptop.

Any device you hook up with the cable will get the Windows safely unload setting by default. This cripples performance. Did you look at the settings like I asked?

TheMystic · Nov 4, 2021

geneo said:
Any device you hook up with the cable will get the Windows safely unload setting by default. This cripples performance. Did you look at the settings like I asked?

Yes, here they are:

INTERNAL DISKS

EXTERNAL DISKS

Silicon Power

Samsung T7 Touch

I see that Better Performance is enabled for the Silicon Power, but not for Samsung T7T. Yet the Samsung is way faster than Silicon.

TheMystic · Nov 4, 2021

geneo said:
Because the bridge chip in it apparently does not support UASP. UASP is needed to support TRIM over USB and Windows defragmenter can't TRIM it (SSD optimization).

PS, your SSD also has to be formatted NTFS to be able to be TRIMed in Windows.

It is formatted as NTFS only.

So does it mean that it is the cable that is responsible for slow speeds?

If that be so, I'll keep the SSD. If not, I'll return it.

Does SATA III to USB 3.0 cable slow down a SSD significantly?

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