New to this forum. Many (including Craig Anderton) advise to put audio
and sample files on separate drives, even USB 3.0 thumb drives, to lighten main
drive/system resources. Can’t seem to find answer to this question: regarding
"real world" transfer speeds, how does a USB 3.0 thumb drive compare to a 7200 RPM USB 3.0
(eg. Seagate) external storage drive, vs. my internal e-sata 7200 RPM system
drive? (X3 Producer: 6-month old Dell XPS, i7-4720, quad-core 3.8 MHz, 16G Ram, Win 8.1).
Thanks much.

Welcome to the forum!
I don't know the answer to your question, but you don't need USB 3 to multitrack to an external HDD, USB 2 is fast enough.
I don't know, where the delelopment has taken us today, but not very long ago the biggest benefit of  SSD/flash was faster reading, not so much writing.

The problem w/ thumb drives is the read/write speed - some are verryyy ssslllloooowww.  You would have to check them individually.  The USB slot itself is fast enough but you'll have to pay for a faster thumb drive.
 
@

A USB Thumb drive is nowhere near the speed of a USB3 HD.
With a USB3 HD (connected to an Intel USB3 controller), you should see the full speed of the HD.
ie:  If the HD would sustain 150MB/Sec connected via SATA-III, you should see 150MB/Sec connected via USB3.
USB3 tops out ~550MB/Sec sustained.
 
FWIW, "e-SATA" stands for external SATA.  
Internal SATA drives are just referred to as SATA HDs.
 
e-SATA (external SATA) is typically limited to SATA-II (which really isn't much of a limitation with conventional HDs).
That being the case, USB3 would have more bandwidth.
With that said, USB enclosures often have firmware that (automatically - with no ability to change) put the HD into sleep mode after a brief period of inactivity.  This is a royal PITA if used for anything but backup/transfer purposes.
Intel SATA-III controllers (internal SATA ports) offer the most bandwidth.
 
Think of Flash Drives as a means of portable transfer.
That's their designed purpose... 
They offer nowhere near the speed of a fast conventional HD and certainly nowhere near the speed of a fast SSD.
 
A fast 2.5" SSD sustains ~520MB/Sec when connected to an Intel SATA-III controller.
When connecting to 3rd-party SATA-III controllers, this figure typically drops to ~360MB/Sec sustained.
 
In short, just make sure the bus you choose isn't limiting performance.
A conventional SATA HD will perform about the same (MB/Sec sustained) when connected via: Intel SATA-II, Intel SATA-III, e-SATA, and Intel USB3.
 

AT
The problem w/ thumb drives is the read/write speed - some are verryyy ssslllloooowww.  You would have to check them individually.  The USB slot itself is fast enough but you'll have to pay for a faster thumb drive.
 
@

+1

Thumb drives are the modern equivalent of cassette tapes. They stored data. They were writable. They were (usually) readable. They were portable. But it wasn't storage I could access in real time.
 
I installed Native Instrument's K9 Ultimate from their distribution external hard drive plugged into a front USB 3 port on my XPS 8500. That worked great.
 
My biggest concern is, while having 6 USB 2 ports and 4 USB 3 ports, I don't know how many physical USB hubs I have. I never did get an iLok to work reliably on my system. I have a MIDI keyboard on USB. I have a Logitech unifying wireless receiver (for keyboard and mouse) on USB. I have an HD webcam with a mic on USB. I have a Tascam audio i/f on USB. Now I'm gonna stick some mission-critical USB storage device into that? Not me.
 
I'd go with a second physical hard drive if you have an open slot and connector for one.
 
But that's just my opinion. And if you gave me a nickel for it, I'd have to give you some change.

All my working drives have been replaced with Intel SSD's and I hope I never have to go back. Less heat, faster and able to take an accidental jolt without fear. My 1 TB Black drive is used for long term storage. I had the guys install a hot swap bay on my tower and I can plug in hard drives like 8 track tapes. Backup has never been easier. I will get that drive bay installed on any new machines in the future.

Hi John,
 
FWIW, You can do the same thing with a USB3 docking station (easily swap SATA drives for quick/easy backup and data shuffling).

I don't know, I find the "8-track" analogy kinda catchy.

The Windows device manager will tell you how many USB hubs you have.

It's easy to add more, just get a USB expansion card. I've found I get the best audio interface performance out of a PCIe USB interface, rather than using a port on the motherboard.

If you want to check the speed of various drives there are free programmes that can do this - just google for drive benchmarking software. Another way is to zip up loads of data into one enormous multi-gigabyte file then start transferring it around drives and time how long it takes. Though that won't tell you what the seek time (how long it takes the drive to move from one file to another) of the drives is like, and for accessing lots of small files (like samples) seek time can affect things more than the sequential transfer rate.

USB sticks often have good seek times but poor reading/writing performance for large fiiles. Window's speed boosting swap technology, introduced with Vista, which uses a USB drive for some swap file functions and a SATA drive for others is based on that difference. Small swaps get written to the USB and larger ones to SATA. It's irrelevant technology if you have a system SSD but can improve swapping performance otherwise. It does tend to wear USB sticks out quite quickly though because it means they get a huge number of write/erase cycles.

tlw
The Windows device manager will tell you how many USB hubs you have.

It's easy to add more, just get a USB expansion card. I've found I get the best audio interface performance out of a PCIe USB interface, rather than using a port on the motherboard.

From the following, how many physical USB hubs do I have, which are USB2 and which are USB3, and which USB ports are connected to which hubs? See my problem? There's no "map" in Dell's documentation anywhere, and the CSRs are clueless (because they have no manual to look the answer up in!).
 
I will absolutely look into the PCIe route. Any recommendations on cards? Thanks.
 

 
I'm guessing 3 physical hubs, 2 USB2 and 1 USB3 (the xHCI hub), with all 4 USB3 ports (2 front/2 back) on the USB3 hub, the top 2 USB2 ports on one USB2 hub, and the back 4 USB2 ports on the other USB2 hub.
 
But who knows? No one at Dell that I talked to, that much I know.