Does USB 3.0 have the potential to replace SATA?

USB 3.0 will be offering an amazing boost in speed, 10 times that of USB 2.0. This will ultimately offer new advantages for networking and devices that need high transaction rates. But most of all, it may revolutionize the way hard drives operate. USB 3.0 will be able to achieve 4.8gbit/s versus the current SATA connectors that are able to do 3.0gbit/s.

Follow up:

I am not familiar with very specific facts about SATA or USB. However, I am able to say that an external hard drive works extremely well with USB. The biggest advantage for USB over SATA, is that a drive can be switch off, and then turned back on, without the need of a system reboot. This is a potential time saver when it comes to maintenance of hard drive failure.

Since USB 3.0 will appear is such large abundance like 2.0, replacement parts and general servicing will be cheaper than SATA. Not only this, but mother boards may have more than just 4 ports(Like most SATA), but 6 or even 8. If USB can be used to connect a hard drive, who is stopping it from appearing for CD Rom drives and other internal devices?

USB 2.0 has the ability to provide sufficient amounts of power to devices. Even though USB 2.0 cannot power a hard drive alone, 3.0 may very well be able to. This may very well mean less wires in computer cases.

USB 3.0 also leaves space for speed improvement. Hard drive technology is not able go 4.8gbit/s yet, but it leaves an entirely new window for media center PC’s and video game. The future of video gaming alone will require very high definition textures. Loading textures will eat up lots of hard drive bandwidth as it is being loaded into the memory. As hard drives get larger and larger every year, higher exchange rates will be required in order to do operations such as defragmentation, backup, and file transfer. Servers will also benefit greatly from the speed boost as they have to handle very large amounts of data (This would be cheaper than current high speed solutions).

USB 3.0 connector will look just the same as any 1.1 or 2.0 connector. However, internal USB probably will not look the same way we see standard type A adapters. Internal USB will probably look more like Mini-A, creating an entirely new connector. This adapter will probably be more focused on better power supply and more stable transfer rates.

USB 3.0 has very much potential in driving not only new kinds of devices but may very well be the next hard drive connector. Now, all we have to do is see if companies decide that USB 3.0 is a better than other alternatives.
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