When you are enjoying something that is more powerful and helpful than that of the previous version, you may feel thankful what you benefit from hi-tech. This is not an exception for USB 2.0. Each time when USB standards change from an existing version to a newer version, as they did from USB 1.1 to USB 2.0, hardware made for the newer version is in most cases backwards-compatible. “backwards-compatible" means if a computer has a USB 1.1 port, a device made for USB 2.0 that is marked as “backwards compatible to USB 1.1" will work on the older port. However, the device will only transfer data at 1.1 speeds when using a USB 1.1 port, which just becomes more compatible for users. When it comes to USB 3.0, users may have more expectation. No matter which version of USB you use, there are really some truths you have to know. 1. Actual data throughput Actual data throughput is usually much less than the maximum advertised USB specification and is a function of many variables, including overhead. Actual throughput in practice is typically up to 35 - 40MB/sec for USB 2.0 and may exceed 400MB/sec for USB 3.0. NEC recently demonstrated its new USB 3.0 controller transferring 500MB in 4.4 seconds or “only" 113.6MB/sec. Symwave and MCCI claim to have demonstrated over 270MB/sec data throughput at the Intel Developer Forum in September 2009. Therefore, we can come to conclude that expecting actual SuperSpeed data rates approaches 400MB/sec will be in vain. People may have a USb flash drive which can read at 26MB/sec and write at 6.6MB/sec and is typical of flash drives in late 2009. These data rates are within the actual High-Speed data rate. While faster USB 3.0 flash drives are on the way that can take advantage of the SuperSpeed data rate. 2. Hot-swappable devices and data corruption I don’t know whether the data corruption happened to you, but it happens to me sometimes. That one cannot read any photo or articles in my USB flash drive may caused by improper removing the using USB device capable of writing data. Anyway, we have a few ways to minimize the risk of data corruption and to protect data in it. ?Verify write-back caching is off ?Pay attention to device LEDs ?Safely remove or eject the device You can take following steps: first, verify that write-back caching is turned off for the USB device; second, to verify write caching status, open Device Manager and right-click on the USB device. Third, select Properties from the drop-down list. As you know, USB and USB flash drives are created to help us, so minor problems can be easily solved. For instance, you do not have to worry about the limited length of the cable of USB 2.0. If that is not long enough for your requirements, you can buy one or more USB hubs or special cables. There are two types of hubs: powered and unpowered. By the way, higher power draw devices may require a powered hub.