Is it worth installing a USB3 expansion card on an old HP Pavilion?

[map_guy]

I have an old HP Pavilion a6650f that has a M2N68-LA (Narra3) Motherboard. I wanted to back up this computer to a USB3 drive.

It has two PCIE slots, I think they are first generation PCIE slots, but not sure. I put in a HP super speed QT587AA USB3 expansion card and installed some TI driver I found on the HP site.(I made sure to power it with a sata y adapter off one of the hard drives.)

It seems to be running OK, but the speeds when reading a USB drive don't seem much better that the USB2 ports. I get ~25MB/s using the USB3 port and ~17MB/s using an onboard USB2 port.

Did I pick a bard driver, or is the 1st generation PCIE card limiting me to USB2 speeds?

EDIT: Not sure it matters. On the 4 SATA ports I have a DVD Drive, Blueray drive, the SSD boot up disk, and a SATA HD. My IDE ports are free.

 

[t53186]

Probably wont get the speed increase you had hoped for considering all the hardware is vintage

 

[boosted1g]

PCI-E v1.0 gets 250MB/s per lane.
While this is not enough to "max out" USB 3.0 spec, it is more then enough to max out the read/write speed of even 2 magnetic HDDs.

Most USB 3.0 flash drives do not even top out USB 2.0 spec. Many can only read at 40MB/s (so 320mbps which is less then the 480 mbps max of USB 2.0), and writing speed is usually in the 20s.
You have to get a fairly high end USB 3.0 drive to actually write faster then the USB 2.0 spec.

Thus the short answer to your quesiton is that the USB 3.0 is still an upgrade in yoru old HP, its just that the drive iteself can not perform at USB 3.0 speeds.

 

[map_guy]

So I was testing with a USB3 Flash drive, would testing with a USB3 HD drive be a better test?

 

[boosted1g]

Yes a USB 3.0 Hard Drive has much better chances of exceding USB 2.0 speeds.
Anything above 60MBPS would be above USB 2.0 speeds.