Tighten your seat belts. Data transfer is going into overdrive as the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus, better known as USB, prepares to make a tenfold jump in speed.

That means the vast sea of USB devices — from HD camcorders to hard drives and music players — will be able to transfer music, video, photos and other data much, much more quickly.

The new standard, the first update to the USB specification in eight years, will also deliver greater power efficiency and the ability to recharge a wider variety of gadgets — and it will most likely mean the death of the competing standard known as FireWire.

To get a sense of the speed increase, consider this: Transferring high-definition video of 27 GB, the amount on a standard Blu-Ray disc, takes about 10 minutes with the current USB 2.0 standard. With USB 3.0, it will take just about a minute.

The new spec will support data transfers at 4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps), nearly ten times faster than the current standard’s 480 megabits per second and six times faster than FireWire 800. It’s also 400 times faster than the 12Mbps offered by the original spec, USB 1.0.

USB 2.0 is also known as “Hi Speed USB,” while USB 3.0 will have the confusingly similar moniker “SuperSpeed USB.”

The new USB 3.0 connectors and devices will be compatible with older USB ports (on devices using USB 2.0 and 1.0) but they will be limited to the older ports’ slower speeds.

The first USB 3.0 devices probably won’t show up until the end of 2009 or early 2010, say analysts. But users can get a glimpse into future devices sporting SuperSpeed USB as early as the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January.

USB 3.0 offers better specifications for power management. “We will move to an interrupt-driven architecture where your PC can ignore the connected device till the latter actually does something,” says Kleynhans. “That can really lower the power consumption.”

It also has better power output, 900 milliamps compared to 100 milliamps with USB 2.0. That means up to four devices can be charged from a single USB port and charged faster.

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