usb2 v firewire 400/800 v usb3 v 1gig ethernet

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Hi all, i am very curious to know of the various speeds of the external add ons we can use, primarily the various connections we can use for Backing Up our valuable data via Time Machine ?

USB2 is the slowest that i do know, but then next up is Firewire 400 and Firewire 800, even Firewire 800 is very Slow compared to USB3 !!!

Somewhere in between all this must be 1 gigabit Ethernet ?

Is there official estimate of the Maximum speeds of all these connections

PS. When do NEW Apples get USB3 ?

Tim
 

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Wikipedia has the specifics on all of the bus speeds. But technical specs often don't tell the whole story.

For example, while USB2 is rated for 480Mb/s, in reality it can't do sustained transfers at that rate. In fact, it's rare that it can even spike to those kinds of speeds. FW400 is so named because it's rated at 400Mb/s, but unlike USB2, it can actually sustain 400Mb/s, so in effect, it tends to be significantly faster in practical use.

For an external hard drive, FW800 has pretty much all the bandwidth you need for a traditional hard drive. Now, if we're talking SSD or a RAID system, you'll be able to saturate the bus - but typically, a standard drive will not be able to saturate FW800.

Gigabit Ethernet has a ton of overhead and will pretty much never do a sustained transfer at 1000Mb/s (as the name implies) on consumer-grade equipment (servers and enterprise-spec network gear and cabling are a different story).

USB 3 will be integrated in the Ivy Bridge chipset which will likely emerge on new Macs later this year. For now, Thunderbolt is the highest bandwidth external connection option out there on Macs (and outperforms USB3 significantly - though the two are NOT competing standards, but complimentary technologies).

If you just want to run backups to an external or maybe keep some large files off your internal drive, FW800 is your best bet at the moment.
 
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thank you friend i couldn't have asked for more, brilliant.

I haven't got anything to plug in my Firewire 800 socket at the moment LOL.

What i do have at the moment is a USB 2 WD My Passport 1TB drive and a WD MyBookLive 3TB NAS drive, i use both of these, to alternately back up using Time Machine.

I connect the MyBookLive to my MBP directly with an Ethernet cable, which as you say, is supposed to be up to 1000 mb/s so maybe that is a bit better than FW800 ?

I thought that the Thunderbolt Port is only for Graphical Implementations NOT Data

tim
 
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Thunderbolt is a data path. Data includes graphical data ;)

Think of it that way. It's essentially an extension of the PCIe bus, with displayport data on the same cable.

This is why you plug the Cinema display into the thunderbolt port and it also has a USB/FW hub in the display (along with audio).


Right now there are precious few thunderbolt compatible drives. That will change, especially as we see PC manufacturers adopting it this year. I can state that ~300GB of data transferred from a FW800 external drive in about 1.5 hours last night. That includes the overhead of Migration Assistant.
 

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I thought that the Thunderbolt Port is only for Graphical Implementations NOT Data

tim
Thunderbolt handles both graphics and data simultaneously on the same cable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface) Early on most of the devices available were either displays or adapters to make existing displays work but I think some hard drives have begun to appear and other devices are starting to appear. CES: Thunderbolt peripherals gather steam | Macworld
 

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I connect the MyBookLive to my MBP directly with an Ethernet cable, which as you say, is supposed to be up to 1000 mb/s so maybe that is a bit better than FW800 ?

I would be shocked if a single Ethernet connection of any sort could outperform a FW800 device. Your MyBookLive is essentially a NAS, so there's a lot of overhead both with the physical and network protocols. It's really designed to be a shared drive sitting on a network, not as a direct peripheral.

I thought that the Thunderbolt Port is only for Graphical Implementations NOT Data

tim

Thunderbolt can pretty much be anything you want it to be. It's pretty much a universal interconnect and a direct bridge to the PCI Express bus. Right now, selection of peripherals is kind of limited, but the sky's the limit when and if it gains mass adoption.
 
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Your MyBookLive is essentially a NAS, so there's a lot of overhead both with the physical and network protocols.

I only use the direct ethernet connection because i found the performance achieved by plugging it into my router, despite the router having 1 gigabit LAN, so slow to be almost non existent !!!

So i am trying to convince myself, that out of the two back up drives i do have, and am using regularly, the ethernet cable and NAS drive, complete with it's overheads, is faster than my USB drive.

Thanks, i also, NOW know a lot more about Thunderbolt, before i knew nothing !!!

tim
 
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Usb 3.0 vs ThunderBolt

AH yes ThunderBolt. Usb 3.0 is, has been out for some time now. Mac is behind. As a video geek, i'm aware of the other guy's (pc) offering 3.0 usb port, and it is FAST. Picture this, you go out and purchase a new hd. camcorder as of now camcorders have NO 3.0 usb set up. Then Mac adds the 3.0 usb in March 2012. Oh what a mess. Mind boggling. Yes 2.0 will work with 3.0 but will be slow. As per camcorder. info. and other similar sites. If anyone out there in Mac land knows for sure that newer camcorders will be out with the 3.0 usb set up please let us videographers know. Marketing, that wonderful word, will it help Mac and ThunderBolt?HHHHHMMMMM. Will we have to buy a new camcorder to fit in to T.B.? The ThunderBolt speed is twenty (20) times faster then 3.0.
Will we have to purchase electronics that will be compatible with T.B.?. or will we still have to content with 2.0 What's a Mac person to do. There is also AVCCAM which works very well on my four year old Mac Book Elite.
H.D. import is ssssllllloooooooowwwww. But it does the job. My new (not yet) MacPro
will really kick video. New mac's do not have idvd. They finally figured it out. Import hd vid. put in to toast THEN burn to (1080) bleu ray ext. burner. Thank you Cupertino Ca.
Boring you say! Ha not for us pro video geek people. Fear not, i will be going to Mac and find out out the rest of the story. usb, t.b.video hd. Have a great 2012 all.

Tryon
 
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You can actually just get a (non-existent at this moment) Thunderbolt > USB3 adapter. Thunderbolt is just a bus extension, so you can relatively easily manufacture any PCIe compatible device and attach it to it.

I have a USB3.0 device on my W520, it's pretty much useless at this point as well btw ;)

Hey, Thunderbolt to expresscard.. right here ;)

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html


This, is why Thunderbolt is DIFFERENT than usb3.
 

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