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USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0 Transfer Speeds

7th February 2019 By Paul Marsh

Introducing USB3.0

USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0 Transfer Speeds

Since around 2005, USB2.0 has been the dominant standard for connecting external devices such as hard disks, tape drives, digital cameras, memory sticks, wireless cards etc.

If you have connected any external device to a computer over the last 10 years, the chances are that you will have used USB2.0

More recently, USB 3.0 has begun to emerge. Any newly purchased computer will likely have USB3.0 ports.

USB2.0 versus USB3.0 Transfer Speeds

The main improvement is transfer speed: USB2.0 has a maximum speed of 480 mbps (megabits per second)

Whereas USB3.0 is capable of a whopping 5 Gbits/s (5000 mbps), or a 10x speed increase.

This means that if it takes an hour to transfer some data to a USB2.0 device, it could take as little as 6 minutes using a USB3.0 device.

This means that copying data to an External Hard Drive, Digital Camera, Printing a large Document, accessing USB Memory Sticks are instantly up to 10 times quicker!

So if you have a large amount of Data, it will be noticeably quicker, although if only a small amount of data to copy, then you might not necessarily seen much apparent difference

As with previous versions, USB3.0 is fully backwards compatible, therefore any USB2.0 device will work when plugged into USB3.0 ports. USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0

Another major advantage is that USB3.0 devices will work with USB2.0 ports, though obviously at a decreased transfer speed. Therefore, it will not be necessary to replace computers, or add an expansion card, just to use these new devices. USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0

Be aware that when using a USB 3 device and plugging it into a USB 2 port, it will not operate at the maximum potential speed and will instead operate at the ports speed, this being USB 2 speed. The same applies for USB 1.1

If your computer doesn't have on on-board USB 3.0 ports, you are likely able to install a USB plug-in card if you have a compatible internal slot within your computer. USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0

Would you like to Read our Article on comparing USB 1.0 and USB 2.0?

Hard Disk – Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

7th January 2019 By Admin

Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

The Hard Drive inside a computer is the device that hold all the files and data that make your operating system run, as well as holding all of your personal documents, photos, music, videos and other files. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD.

They commonly look like a solid rectangular lump of metal from the outside, but inside of the average Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is a complex setup of magnets, spinning disks and an extremely precise actuator arm and head. Hard Disk Comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

The traditional Hard Disk works by using one or more fast spinning (typically between 5400 and 10,000 rpm) magnetically coated platters.

A head on the end of an actuator arm skims above these platters by a miniscule amount. Typically between 3 and 100 nanometres, or a distance 800 times smaller than the width of the average human hair.

The head reads and changes the polarity of blocks on the magnetic coating in order to store data in tracks across the disk as it spins. The time it takes for the head to move to the correct track on the disk to read or write is known as seek time, and in the common desktop Hard Disk, will take around 9ms.

Everything is Stored Magnetically

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire — Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

Because everything is done magnetically, the data is still stored even after power is taken away from the drive.

Unfortunately, due to the precise and delicate nature of standard Hard Disk Drives, they are all prone to failure at some point and it is inevitable.

Precisely when a drive is going to fail is unpredictable and with storage sizes of the drives being so large (Upwards of 8TB in some cases), often a lot of data can be lost within the blink of an eye.

Backing up data is always a good idea, even if the drive is very new, and can save a lot of frustration and anger when it does stop working.

Despite this however, traditional hard disks are still used in many computers from new as they offer a cheap method of storage. A 500GB drive can be purchased for as little as £35 and most low-end consumer machines will use this type of drive, though they are slowly being phased out in preference of SSD’s.

Drives with this sort of storage capacity are often shipped inside of newly bought mid-range computers, and with higher end computers commonly having 1TB and up sized drives.

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives (SSD) are becoming the normal storage type found in mid-range machines and are widely consider to be a better option than a traditional hard disk.

Advantages of Solid State Drives include no moving parts, completely silent operation, fast performance, cooler operation and better durability.

Solid state drives work in a similar way to a USB memory stick or the inbuilt storage in your mobile phone, where the data is stored on a chip as opposed to a spinning disk.

Because there are no moving parts to wait for, the operation speed of a Solid State Drive is often extremely quick when compared to its Hard Disk predecessor and are a worthwhile upgrade to any machine that will provide a noticeable speed increase.

Solid State Drive Disadvantages

Solid State Drives do have their downsides however, one of these is that should a Solid State drive fail, then it will normally fail suddenly with no prior warning like a traditional hard disk.

A traditional hard disk drive often may continue to work long enough after warning of a failure for you to back up any data before it fails completely. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

Solid State drives are a little more expensive per GB of storage, the extra cost is well justified.

If you buy a 500GB Solid State Drive, currently you would be looking at spending around £50 as opposed to £40 for the traditional hard disk counterpart. The performance difference between the two drives would be immediately noticeable, with the computer starting up far faster, applications loading quicker and files opening in an instant. Hard Disk Legacy vs Hybrid vs. SSD

Hybrid Drives

Hybrid Drives, or SSHD’s are also an option, though the market and choice for them is small.

They are designed to introduce some of the speed advantages of a Solid State Drive with the capacity advantages of a traditional Hard Disk Drive.

An SSHD will typically have around 8GB of SSD storage in it which it uses to intelligently cache the most commonly used and accessed files on the system. Hard Disk Comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

In most cases this will be the operating system boot files, meaning that the computer will start up faster, but may not load programs, games or files any quicker than a normal Hard Disk Hard Disk Legacy vs Hybrid vs. SSD.

Hybrid drives are largely redundant now, as the cost of SSDs is considerably less than when the Hybrid Drives were first released to fill a gap in the market.

NVMe SSD Drives

Finally, the most recent introduction to the storage market is NVMe SSD drives.

This is a step up again from the usual SATA connection SSD drives. Whilst a normal SATA SSD is no slouch, NVMe SSDs take the performance a step further, with both seek time and read/write speeds being considerably quicker.

This type of SSD looks a bit more like a RAM stick than a drive shaped like you might be used to. This is because it connects via an M.2 connector directly onto the motherboard, rather than by two cables and being held in a bay on the other side of the case.

If you are looking at upgrading to an NVMe SSD, it would first be worth checking if your motherboard not only has an M.2 slot, but also that it is NVMe compatible.

Alternately, you can purchase NVMe PCIe cards that will use an empty PCIe slot on the motherboard to adapt into an NVMe storage slot.

As this technology is relatively new and because of its performance advantages over everything else, it is the most pricey option available, and should probably only really be considered if you plan on using your PC for a heavily intensive workload where there can be no compromise.

Performance Comparison

IT Installation Services | Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire — Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire

Hard Drives in RAID Arrays

Hard drives, Hybrids and SSD can be used in RAID Arrays

Review our Article on RAID Arrays in Server Hardware

Century IT Services are based in Totton, Southampton. Hampshire and can help you with the installation or on going IT support of your computer, server and network.

We offer a broad range of IT Services covering, internet, email, anti-spam, anti-virus solutions, we are experts in virtually anything Microsoft Server based and have extensive troubleshooting skills. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD.

If you have an ever growing list of I.T niggles or need a server, or network installed, you have come to the right place. You can contact us on Tel. 023 80 070101 or email us at sales@century-it.co.uk for a confidential, no obligation discussion of your requirements

Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server

7th October 2018 By Admin

What is the benefit of Connecting my Android Phone

You are likely want to connect your Android phone to your company’s Exchange Email Server so you can access your work email, Contacts and Calendar on your Mobile Device. Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server

Preparation

Setting up a Microsoft Exchange email account on an Android device is a very easy task.

As long as you have a couple of details to hand, can be done in a about a minute. Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server

To set up the Exchange account, you firstly need to go into the Android’s main settings menu.

This should look something along the lines of what is shown below. You need to find the “Accounts” section of the settings list.

Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server - Step1 — Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server – Step1

When you’ve found this, you need to tap on “Add account” and choose “Microsoft Exchange Activesync” from the following list that is shown.

Choose settings for Microsoft Exchange Server – Step2

The following screen of the Microsoft Exchange email setup will ask you for your Exchange email address and password that you would normally use with your computer.

Enter these, and then tap on the button down the bottom that says “Manual setup”

Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server - Step3 — Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server – Step3

User Login Credentials

This will provide you with the following screen asking for a few more details for the Microsoft Exchange email account.

“Domain\User name” is the field in which you need to enter your exactly what it asks, the domain you are trying to log into, and your user name. This is followed by your normal password in the next box down.

The “Exchange Server” box is the server that your Android device will try and log into to collect you emails. This for example could be along the lines of “remote.test.co.uk”

After the details are all filled in, tap on “Next” to proceed with the setup of the Microsoft Exchange account.

Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server - Step4 — Android settings for Microsoft Exchange Server – Step4

Final Steps

The Android device should then proceed to connect to the server and test the connection to the Microsoft Exchange email account and the server.

If it is successful, then the following options should be presented to you. These fields are filled in with the defaults, but can be changed by simply tapping on one and modifying the selection.

Review Android Account Settings - Step5 — Review Android Account Settings – Step5

This should conclude the setup of the Microsoft Exchange email account. Your emails should automatically be synced with the Android device. To access your emails, simply go into your main applications menu and click on the “Email” app.

Century IT Services are based in Totton, Southampton. Hampshire and can help you with the installation or on going I.T support of your computer, server and network. We offer a broad range of I.T services covering, internet, email, anti-spam, anti-virus solutions, we are experts in virtually anything Microsoft Server based and have extensive troubleshooting skills.

USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

7th August 2018 By Admin

Overview

Most computers or laptops nowadays usually have a selection of USB ports. USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

You can plug external devices into to extend the functionality of your computer system or laptop.

i.e. external hard disks, external tape drives, digital cameras, memory card readers, USB memory sticks etc.

Modern computers and laptops usually come with USB 2.0 ports as standard

Whilst much older computers only have the older technology USB 1.0

USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

USB1.0 vs. USB2.0 Performance

As with all technology, advances have been made over the years to improve speed and performance of USB Ports on Computers and Laptops.

To maintain backward compatibility, newer types of USB Ports come with the same type of connector as the older USB Ports, so older USB devices can still connect and operate.

The main difference between USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 is the performance or throughput;

The USB 2.0 ports are much faster than the earlier USB 1.0. Ports. USB 2.0 has an maximum throughput of around 480 mps (megabits per second)

Whilst USB 1.0 only has an average throughput of 12 mbps. That makes USB 2.0 as much as 40 times as quick as the older USB 1.0 standard

This means that if it takes around 40 minutes to transfer some files to a USB 1.0 device, using USB 2.0 it could potentially take only 1 minute. USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

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SATA vs SAS what are the benefits?

23rd June 2018 By Paul Marsh

SATA VS SAS

For many, there can be a lot of confusion when comparing different types of server solutions especially when it comes down the type of hard drives that your server might come with.

A server with SATA hard drives can be considerably cheaper when compared to a server with SAS hard drives.

Especially if your server quote has multiple hard drives or has a RAID disk subsystem.

But this seemingly interchangeable terminology can make all the difference to your IT investment.

SATA – Serial ATA

SAS – Serial Attached SCSI

Serial ATA was designed to replace the older IDE (EIDE) hard drives which were commonly found in most home computer and business workstations.

SAS has evolved separately from the SCSI standard, SCSI drives have traditionally been found in server solutions.

Many server manufacturers including HP and Dell offer entry level servers with SATA drives, with the mid-range and higher end servers coming with SAS hard drives.

According to Seagate, SATA drives are designed to have the following features:-

Capacity intensive
SATA vs SAS what are the benefits?
SATA vs SAS what are the benefits?
Low availability
Sequential reads
Seek time 9.5ms
Designed to be on 8 Hours a day, 5 days a week

Seagate SAS drives are designed for:-

Performance Intensive
High Availability
Random Reads
Seek time of 3.5 ms (15k rpm), 3.9 ms (10k rpm)
Designed to be on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week

From a computer support or network support point of view, many SAS drive solutions also include ‘hot swap’ options.

Which basically means that for many RAID solutions, you can simply replace a failed drive for a replacement without rebooting or interrupting the server or users.

What does all this mean?

Basically if you want good server performance and you don’t want disk I/O bottlenecks and prefer longevity over small price difference, always choose SAS over SATA.

If your requirements are for a small server in a very small office and are not worried about server performance and the larger capacity, cheaper SATA drives appeals to you then choose SATA.

Did you want to discuss your server requirements? For an informed opinion on server specifications and many other IT support subjects ‘Contact Us’

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For more Information on SATA vs SAS see the following links

http://www.seagate.com/

Seagate SAS VS SATA

Building Your Own Computer

23rd January 2018 By Paul Marsh

So what are the advantages behind building it yourself?

There’s a whole host of advantages to building your own computer.

As complex as it may sound, overall it’s a relatively simple clip and screw process.

You’re unlikely to have to pull out the soldering iron and any other tools besides a Phillips screwdriver or two.

There’s the advantage of the money it will save you.

Buying an off the shelf computer is by no doubt the easy way out of things. But if you choose to build your own, then you’ll find out that you’re going to be paying less for a machine that does more for you.

There’s also the psychological advantage once the computer is built.

When everything is put together and you plug it in for the first time and power it up, there’s a feeling of satisfaction knowing that you built it and you made it work.

Further advantages to building your own computer include that should you ever want to upgrade it, doing so should be a painless process.

The computer cases are designed for easy access and the components you put in are often more versatile.

What do you want your PC to do for you?

Each of us will want our computer to do something different for us.

You may just be looking to use a computer for simple web browsing and looking at family photos, playing a bit of music etc. etc.

You could want to build your computer to be the meanest machine out there, capable of running any game you throw at it at lightning speed without the slightest hesitation.

Whichever is the case, you can build a machine to meet your demands.

Are you building to a budget?

Chances are that if you’re planning on building the ‘mean machine’ I mentioned in the previous section, you’re not going to be too concerned on the money front.

Though it’s still going to save you a chunk of money going with a home build as opposed to buying a known branded gaming PC.

If you’re a home user who wants the computer for little more than web surfing and a listening to a bit of music. Perhaps are running on a bit of a tight budget.

You could still be saving yourself a fair bit of money for a machine running the same specification as the computer you saw on offer in the shop the other day.

So where do you start?

You need to plan what you are building! It’s going to be a real downer if you just pick parts off at random and when they all arrive become disheartened when your shiny new CPU doesn’t fit into your shiny new motherboard because the two are incompatible.

Putting together a shopping list for your new computer is almost essential. As a rough guide, below is a short list of the parts a generic home user will need: –

Motherboard
CPU/Processor
RAM
Hard Drive
Power Supply
Disk Drive
Case
Cables and screws
Operating System

…and if you’re planning on building a gaming machine you need to take into consideration the following items as well: – Graphics Card/s – Sound Card – 3rd Party CPU Cooler/Water Cooling/Fans

As a general rule of thumb when you find a part you want to include in your build, go back and check the motherboard specification.

All of the components lead back to here so you want to make sure that they’re all compatible!

It’s often a good idea to work out what processor you want first and then choose the motherboard based on the socket type.

It should narrow down your selection considerably and make life a lot easier too.

With computer parts, as with most things, you generally get what you pay for. It’s often worth spending a few more pennies going for a reliable brand as opposed to shipping cheap unbranded parts over from China.

How do I go about the build?

Once you’ve got your parts you can start piecing things together.

There’s not any particular order to do things in, but of course you’re going to want to put your CPU in before you try and put the heat-sink and fan in.

Once everything is plugged in correctly inside the case and all the components are screwed or clipped down securely, you can put all the cables in the back and start it up.

Your new computer’s not going to do much for the very first time you turn it on as no operating system is installed. This will most likely be in the form of a CD/DVD that you need to put in and boot up from.

Once the operating system is installed and updated, you’re almost good to go.

Make sure that you install any drivers that the components you bought may have come with so that everything works as it should and then you can sit back and admire your work!