The idea behind Turbo USB is to increase the speed of the USB connection by maximizing the efficiency of communication between plug and port. I had the chance to test the Turbo USB driver a few weeks back on my own Buffalo drive. Running through benchmarks with HD Tach, I saw about a threefold increase in the burst speed, and about a 2-3 percent drop in overall CPU usage. It sounds like they've got something good going on there, but unfortunately when actually transferring files, I didn't see much of a difference either way, but as this wasn't a drive specifically bundled with the Turbo USB driver, I'll reserve judgment, especially since the benchmarks seem promising.

We'll soon get one into the PC Mag labs and have our Lead Desktop Analyst Joel Santo Domingo give it a whirl. If this tech really works as advertised, here's hoping that Buffalo licenses it out to all the portable hard drive manufacturers, because in the world of file transfers, faster is always better. We'll be sure you know more by the time these drives go on sale, sometime in early September.

Post by Matt Safford