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View Full Version : USB vs. FireWire (IEEE 1394)


kylera
11-10-2007, 05:00 PM
Numbers say that USB 2.0 and FireWire are neck-to-neck. I want to invest in an external hard drive, but don't want to get another USB hub -- I'd rather use the FireWire hub that's still empty and lonely. Would that affect the hard drive in any manner?
Sega-17
11-10-2007, 05:59 PM
Numbers say that USB 2.0 and FireWire are neck-to-neck. I want to invest in an external hard drive, but don't want to get another USB hub -- I'd rather use the FireWire hub that's still empty and lonely. Would that affect the hard drive in any manner?


I'm no expert, but I actually did a little research on this recently. On paper, USB and Firewire are close (with USB 2.0 edging it out slightly), but in use, Firewire has a better sustained rate of data transfer, making it the superior method in the end.
evildragon
11-10-2007, 06:32 PM
Firewire is no joke, it's very fast, even if your talking about Firewire 400 vs USB 2.0 480.

USB uses the CPU to do the communications, this is an obvious bottleneck. Firewire on the other hand, have a dedicated controller that does the communications, thus the CPU is not involved and there is no bottleneck.
Joe Redifer
11-10-2007, 06:45 PM
Yeah, Firewire 400 (or Firewire 1) is better than USB 2. Firewire 800 is even better than that!
kylera
11-11-2007, 04:25 AM
Huh...I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Much thanks!
TmEE
11-14-2007, 10:59 AM
Whoa, I got a new PC, and it has lots of FireWire ports, now if I get something, it'll be FireWire... but unfortunately, FW is not very common...
Joe Redifer
11-14-2007, 06:55 PM
I've never seen an external hard drive that didn't have firewire... unless it was a cheap piece of trash.
evildragon
11-14-2007, 07:09 PM
My drive enclosure ONLY has Firewire. Two firewire ports infact.
extrarice
11-15-2007, 05:47 PM
I also recommend going with FireWire instead of USB for external HDD.
evildragon
11-15-2007, 06:19 PM
Generally Firewire is better at everything, but mice and keyboard are ok with USB. Flash sticks are ok with USB too, because the write and read spead of the NAND chips used in them aren't fast enough anyway.

USB: Master, Slave relationship.
Firewire: Peer to peer.

Firewire is SO cool, you don't even need a computer! Two drives can communicate to each other without a computer.