It’s not often that a computer interface remains relevant over the course of a full decade, but that is exactly what USB 2.0 has accomplished since its release in April 2000. Over the past few years however, our media-dominated culture has experienced incredible growth and file sizes have increased exponentially and the aging interface simply can’t keep up in a number of tasks.

Other interfaces have challenged USB 2.0 over the years but none have been successful in dethroning it. It appears the only true successor to USB 2.0 is a revision of itself aptly called USB 3.0, dubbed “SuperSpeed.” USB 3.0 supports theoretical transfer rates of up to 5 Gbit/s.

A majority of current USB 3.0 devices are all external hard drive enclosures which is what we'll be looking at today in the form of StarTech’s 3.5” SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. If your motherboard doesn’t support USB 3.0, which is likely the case unless your computer is relatively new, StarTech also offers the 2-Port PCI Express USB 3.0 Card which utilizes a spare PCI Express slot.