Anyone else eagerly awaiting USB 3.0? I will probably have to buy an external USB adapter to get full speeds of the new devices (won't upgrade motherboard for a while yet) and I hope that new thumb drives won't be too expensive because the first thing I want is a 8GB USB 3.0 thumb drive to place my PortableApps backup on 
I will be so happy if the speed increases are very defined (right now PA speeds on most thumb drives are slow - but I love PA so much so that's not reason enough not to continue using it)
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It won't help. Flash drives are constrained by the speeds of the flash RAM and the controller chips. They don't come anywhere close to the speed limits of USB 2.0. You can get a very fast flash drive right now on USB 2.0, but it'll be more expensive than a regular flash drive (due to the faster RAM and controller).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
External drives will gain a lot. Especially SSDs.
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov
Ah, we're talking about thumb drives as they're limited by other components (not USB 3.0). In fact, I think it'll be a while before USB3 is necessary for flash drives.
But m2 is very right... it will help other external fast drives. USB2's raw data rate is 480Mbps whereas SATA (internal and external hard drives and SSD drives currently) supports 1.5 or 3.0Gbps (soon to be 6 for the new revision). USB 3.0 will fall somewhere between 3 and 5Gbps with commercial products arriving in 2009 or 2010. So, maybe we'll see flash drives (thumb size) in USB 3 form in 2010 or 2011 if fast flash RAM has come down enough in price to justify it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Aren't there USB flash drives that use parallel writing? Like if the max speed of writing/reading is a certain speed max, won't 2 used in parallel double the speed?
Yes, but it's still nowhere near USB 2.0's bandwidth limitations.
Flash drives (aka thumb drives) aren't the same as SSD "hard drives". The former use much cheaper (slower) RAM and controllers. Which is why a 16GB 2.5" SSD drive is at least $150 and the 16GB thumb drive I just got was $40.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
Would the solution not be to simply get an external e-sata connector?
I'm starting to struggle with the speed of my setup which is a e-sata hdd in a usb 2.0 casing. It takes too long for me to start OO. The initial splash screen comes up fast enough but then it takes several minutes for the proper OO spalsh screen to load and then half that much for the application to actually start. It's faster on by dual core notebook, but am using the older single core machine on site.
You do get some notebooks with external e-sata connectors and I expect it to be far easier when you have a desktop. However, will this result in near local install performance?
I see external e-sata does not provide power, but hopefully you can steal it off a USB port. If I can get the speed then I can live with having to have two wires.
Regards
Paul