do Kingston usb3 flash drives have compatibility issues?

[clone767]

i' m about to buy a Kingston 16gb usb flash drive and came down to the 2 following:

1. DataTraveler R3.0 (DTR30/16GB) - usb 3
usb2 write speed - 25mb/s
usb3 write speed - 30mb/s

2. DataTraveler R500 (DTR500/16GB) - usb 2
usb2 write speed - 20mb/s


i would rather buy the R3.0 due to usb 3.0, but i 'm wondering if there could be any compatibility issues with some dvd players and/or other devices. the thing is because the R3.0 must be a newer model, there aren't any reviews for it on the us, german amazon or anywhere else that i could find ...

i wouldn't want anything slower than R500's write speed (20mb/s) though, since copying large video files would take too much time, and other than that, both sticks have nearly the same price and a shock-resistant rubber casing with the latter being a must for me since i' m an avid runner.

[aedipuss]

the usb 3 stick will function in a usb 2 device fine. just at a reduced speed. like this one of mine.

[clone767]

thx a lot for the reply aedipuss. since it's not probable that compatibility issues will arise, i' ll go with the usb3 stick

[turk690]

I have not actively used USB3 devices. But if USB2 speeds were already supposed to top 480mb/s (60mB/s), and USB3 maxes at 10x that, then the actual speeds reflected in the charts above look uninspiring. This made me look elsewhere on the net for more info. I have found that a lot of things have to come together just to get even 200 to 300mB/s transfer rates: USB3 chipsets on both host and device, the correct drivers, and the right cables. There is an interesting article here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3-uas-turbo,3215.html. IMHO if even 4 years down the line after it was introduced one cannot still just casually plug a supposedly USB3 device into a USB3 host and get consistently even just 20% of the promised data transfer speed without going to great lengths to prepare all sorts of drivers, cables, other h/w, etc then USB3 cute blue connectors are just a show. But one can probably say the same thing of USB2.

[clone767]

well, turk690, the DTR30/16GB (usb3) stick writes at 5mb/s higher usb2 speed (25mb/s) vs the DTR500/16GB (20mb/s) and at the same time the DTR30 sells a couple $/€ lower than the DTR500, probably because of all the reasons you mentioned, there is more demand for the usb2 sticks.

but, if the DTR30/16GB (usb3) has faster usb2 speed and is cheaper, it appears a better deal as long as there are no compatibility issues with any devices like older dvd-players which was my only worry anyway, and at the same time i keep my options open, in case i buy at some point a motherboard or other hardware with usb3 ports

from reading other threads, the most important compatibility issue i came across, appears to be the formatting of the flash drive, which should be fat32 instead of ntfs. older dvd-players i understand will not recognize ntfs for example.

[breeza]

Hi,

Did you get one of the r3 sticks in the end and if so did you have any compatibility issues?
I want to get one and use it in my car stereo but was a bit worried that I may have compatibility issue with it.

[handyguy]

They are backwards compatible.