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I have windows 8 installed to an external drive. The drive came with my laptop and is the one I exchanged with a SSD. At present it runs over USB 2.0 and is slow. Will buying a new USB 3.0 enclosure and running over USB 3.0 make it run fast?

Actually, most of the I/O which make the HDD slow are random 4k r/w which shouldn't be any faster on USB 3.0 since they never reach those speed levels on a normal HDD. So, can going to USB 3 make any visible difference?

EDIT: By fast I mean more responsive.

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    Fast is subjective; it'll most likely be faster at booting up, but you'll still notice slowdowns. You should move your OS to a properly connected disk.
    – Thor
    Commented Jan 1, 2014 at 13:26
  • By fast I mean more responsive.
    – Ashwin Singh
    Commented Jan 1, 2014 at 14:27

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USB3.0 will provide additional benefits regardless of your drive speed. Communications speed and reliability, as well as power efficiency, are all improved in USB3.0.

That being said, there's almost no way that USB2.0 is saturating your disk's I/O speed. Even on a low RPM laptop disk, you're still talking about a device that by default communicates through at least a 1.5Gbit/s SATA bus, whereas USB2.0 has a theoretical maximum throughput of 480Mbit/s. USB3.0 has a usable data rate of 4Gbit/s, which will more than accomodate a SATA II disk.

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  • Any idea then why responsiveness is excruciatingly hindered?
    – Ashwin Singh
    Commented Jan 1, 2014 at 14:28
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    @AshwinSingh USB 2.0 can do 30mb/s if you lucky and the SSD does approx 400-500mb/s. USB 3.0 is required to enjoy any benefit from an SSD.
    – cybernard
    Commented Jan 1, 2014 at 17:07

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