USB 2.0
USB · 3 specs
Direct Answer
USB 2.0, released in April 2000, added a 480 Mbit/s High Speed mode on top of USB 1.x's rates -- a 40x jump that made USB viable for external hard drives and other high-throughput peripherals for the first time. It remains the fallback data rate on many budget cables and low-power devices today.
Source: USB-IF · Last reviewed Aug 28, 2026
Specs
| Released | April 2000 |
| High Speed | 480 Mbit/s |
| Backward Compatible | Yes (USB 1.x Full/Low Speed) |
The Speed Jump That Made USB Storage Practical
USB 2.0's 480 Mbit/s High Speed mode, published April 2000, was a roughly 40x increase over USB 1.1's 12 Mbit/s Full Speed -- the jump that made USB genuinely competitive with existing external storage interfaces and turned USB flash drives and external hard drives into practical mainstream products rather than novelties.
Despite being over two decades old, USB 2.0 signaling remains widely used today: it's the baseline every subsequent USB generation stays backward-compatible with, and it's still the effective data rate on many cheap cables, chargers, and low-power accessories that were never built to carry SuperSpeed signaling.