External HD - Firewire or USB 2?

Benito · Nov 15, 2006

I'm looking at getting an external HD for Back-up.

Am I better off getting something with firewire interface, or is USB 2 just as good/fast?

Cheers!

alucard · Nov 15, 2006

USB 2.0 is fast but Firewire is faster.

Benito · Nov 15, 2006

Just looked up my system specs (1st gen intel iMac), and my firewire bus is rated at 400 Mb/sec. Would that still be quicker than USB 2?

caribiner23 · Nov 16, 2006

USB 2.0 has a spec raw data rate of 480 Mbit/sec. I have a couple of external USB 2.0 drives and have yet to see anything close to that.

To test this, I ran a backup on my MacBook (using SuperDuper) twice: once using my external firewire enclosure and once using my external USB 2.0 enclosure. Both enclosures contain exactly the same type of hard drive. To back up 55 GB, the firewire enclosure took under an hour; running the same job on the USB 2.0 drive, it ran for an hour and a half and was only about halfway through the job when I stopped it.

Go Firewire. You won't regret it.

wytwolf · Nov 16, 2006

USB 2.0 is rated at a max speed of 480Mbps and firewire 400 has a max of 400Mbps(no MBps). In theory usb 2.0 should be 20% faster. In reality firewire is usually about 5-10% faster depending on the device. Firewire works better then usb when working on sustained throughput. USB's max is usually only acheived in bursts.

But firewire externals and enclosures are usually a bit more expensive, but worth it in my opinion. USB is more widely used though.

I feel firewire is going the way of the beta max video tape. It was a better quality alternative, but was not as popular as VHS. Computer world is like high school, it's a popularity contest.

Dark · Nov 17, 2006

usb 2.0 > firewire a
firewire b > usb 2.0

Any external hdd will work at the same speed REGARDLESS of USB2.0 or FirewireA/B simply because there are no 400mb/sec hard drives. (the only variable is the speed of the hdd)

I run a 2.5" USB2.0 sata 120gig drive.

caribiner23 · Nov 17, 2006

Dark said:
Any external hdd will work at the same speed REGARDLESS of USB2.0 or FirewireA/B simply because there are no 400mb/sec hard drives. (the only variable is the speed of the hdd)

Then why do my USB 2.0 external enclosures consistently run at 1/2 to 1/3 the speed of my Firewire 400 enclosure? Both USB and Firewire enclosures have identical Western Digital drives inside, partitioned identically.

Also, I have this enclosure which has both USB and Firewire ports. Regardless of whether this is connected to a MacBook, iBook, or my PC, the USB side is consistently slower than the firewire side.

I wont argue with the concept of the speed limitations of hard drives. I do believe, however, there is an issue with the way USB handles resource contention differently than firewire.

My personal experience tells me that Firewire 400, in practice, is faster than USB 2.0.

Dark · Nov 17, 2006

caribiner23 said:
I wont argue with the concept of the speed limitations of hard drives. I do believe, however, there is an issue with the way USB handles resource contention differently than firewire.

Yes, usb and firewire both handle the transfers and resources differently. I cannot speak for my mac but on my PC I dont notice a difference...though I am not running drive testers so its plainly an observation. I do know that extended transfers containing alot of data (while connected via FW800 on my windows machine) results in the machine locking up. This seems to be a known error from what my co-workers are telling me.

technologist · Nov 18, 2006

Dark said:
usb 2.0 > firewire a
firewire b > usb 2.0

More Like
FireWire 800 >> FireWire400 > USB2 >> USB1

FireWire was designed for high, sustained data transfers, like digital video. USB was designed to be a hot-pluggable bus for mice and printers. Speeding up the peak bandwidth of USB to get USB2 doesn't change the fact that it wasn't designed to handle sustained transfers.

Dark · Nov 18, 2006

technologist said:
More Like
FireWire 800 >> FireWire400 > USB2 >> USB1

FireWire was designed for high, sustained data transfers, like digital video. USB was designed to be a hot-pluggable bus for mice and printers. Speeding up the peak bandwidth of USB to get USB2 doesn't change the fact that it wasn't designed to handle sustained transfers.

Well then explain why both of my FW800 drives (one being lacie) lock up during a large backup/transfer on two of my servers. We've tried multiple configurations and get the same error.
When one of the drives is connected to a usb2.0 port we dont have any issues with it completing the entire transfer.

wytwolf · Nov 18, 2006

Maybe it's the firewire port that's flakey??

Dark · Nov 20, 2006

wytwolf said:
Maybe it's the firewire port that's flakey??

we thought that, but its the same on both machines.

gblader · Nov 20, 2006

caribiner23 said:
Then why do my USB 2.0 external enclosures consistently run at 1/2 to 1/3 the speed of my Firewire 400 enclosure? Both USB and Firewire enclosures have identical Western Digital drives inside, partitioned identically.

Also, I have this enclosure which has both USB and Firewire ports. Regardless of whether this is connected to a MacBook, iBook, or my PC, the USB side is consistently slower than the firewire side.

I wont argue with the concept of the speed limitations of hard drives. I do believe, however, there is an issue with the way USB handles resource contention differently than firewire.

My personal experience tells me that Firewire 400, in practice, is faster than USB 2.0.

+1
Sometimes my firewire doesn't even work correctly, but works faster. When I looked up the speed of firewire and USB, some sources were saying that USB2.0 was faster????? I don't get it.

Benito · Nov 20, 2006

Seems like the best bet is to go for an enclosure with both options, then I can make up my own mind as to which runs better on my machine. Thanks for your input everyone!

schweb · Nov 20, 2006

technologist said:
More Like
FireWire 800 >> FireWire400 > USB2 >> USB1

FireWire was designed for high, sustained data transfers, like digital video. USB was designed to be a hot-pluggable bus for mice and printers. Speeding up the peak bandwidth of USB to get USB2 doesn't change the fact that it wasn't designed to handle sustained transfers.

technologist is completely correct. For sustained high-speed transfer, Firewire is the preferred option.