External Drives Fire wire vs USB 2.0

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I have a 500GB WD My Book USB2.0. All I read is how slow and no good USB external drives are. Should I just sell it and get a fire wire external drive?
Also,
I ordered a 13" MBP and I'm not quite sure if I want to load almost 60GB of music onto the 160GB HD. I have a WD 160GB portable HD that I could put the music on but then I would have to have it connected to sync my iphone. Would having all that music on my MBP slow it down or affect it's performance?
What are my options?

Thanks for any input.
 
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Personally, I am using an external hard drive that operates on Firewire 800. In terms of transfer speed, it is significantly slower than firewire naturally, but it isn't something that'd bother you very much, truth be told. It is slower, but not slow enough for you to want to smash it or something. If you truly want to sell it, that's fine, but it is not entirely necessary I think.

And, having 60G worth of music all on your MBP is not going to slow down your performance.
 
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I have a 500GB WD My Book USB2.0. All I read is how slow and no good USB external drives are. Should I just sell it and get a fire wire external drive?
Also,
I ordered a 13" MBP and I'm not quite sure if I want to load almost 60GB of music onto the 160GB HD. I have a WD 160GB portable HD that I could put the music on but then I would have to have it connected to sync my iphone. Would having all that music on my MBP slow it down or affect it's performance?
What are my options?

Thanks for any input.

USB 1.0 = slow

USB 2.0 = fast
 
T

todd51

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I think USB 2.0 would be fine. There are always big debates on whether or not USB 2.0 is faster or not that Firewire. I believe the USB is listed as being capable of 480mb/s but it definitely can't sustain a transfer speed of that rate. I think for moving big (or a lot) of files, Firewire will sustain a higher speed and therefor be faster.

USB 2.0 should be fine enough, I probably wouldn't go out and buy a new external drive just for having a Firewire connection.
 
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^ That's correct. Theoretically USB 2.0 is faster than firewire 400 but will never really sustain a constant speed which is why when you want to transfer video to your computer, you use firewire to keep this constant data stream therefore giving you constant quality. Firewire 800 (as the name implies) is x2 faster than firewire 400 but unless your device has an 800 port, the speed is limited to 400Mbs.

USB 2.0 is absolutely fine for music etc. on external drives.
 
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Personally, I am using an external hard drive that operates on Firewire 800. In terms of transfer speed, it is significantly slower than firewire
That's an achievement.
 
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I use Firewire for Time Machine and to clone my macbook.

USB is slower, IMHO.
 
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I have a 500 gig portable drive that can use USB 2 or Firewire 400 connections.
Firewire 400 is consistently faster and steadier than USB 2 for Time Machine and general backups.
 
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It really is worth upgrading to FW, if for no other reason that the ability to boot from it.
 

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