External hard drives: USB or Firewire?

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Prozac1964

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
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Hi everyone, I want to purchase an External Hard Drive but I want to know what the techs here at Hard Forum think.

Which is better, USB or Firewire. I will mainly be using it to back up my hard drive, but I do want to get the best for the money, if you know what I mean. ;)

Any ideas? Thanks, Prozac :)
 
ESATA is better but that would require you to have that port.. I would look into cases with two or more of the following: USB3 / ESATA/ firewire.

With that said with backups you probably are not going to get anywhere near the maximum drive write speed so either would work.
 
Firewire is the better choice of the two, hands down. Getting an enclosure that supports USB as well will give you more portability. Firewire 400 will give you close to 40MB a second, 800 will be about 80MB a second. USB 2.0 will struggle to reach 30, probably closer to 20. USB 3.0 is also an option, but could be expensive if you need to add a host adapter to your system. And like was said above, eSATA is best, allowing the drive to run at the same speed that it would if connected internally.

Dustin
 
but I do want to get the best for the money,
Click to expand...

Then don't buy the premade junk.

Buy whatever HD you want, buy a decent external case, and put the drive in the case.;)
 
>> buy whatever HD you want, buy a decent external case, and put the drive in the case <<

I second this suggestion.

Do you have eSATA?
 
dustNbone said:
Firewire is the better choice of the two, hands down. Getting an enclosure that supports USB as well will give you more portability. Firewire 400 will give you close to 40MB a second, 800 will be about 80MB a second. USB 2.0 will struggle to reach 30, probably closer to 20. USB 3.0 is also an option, but could be expensive if you need to add a host adapter to your system. And like was said above, eSATA is best, allowing the drive to run at the same speed that it would if connected internally.

Dustin
Click to expand...

My USB 2.0 portable (meaning notebook) external HDD easily sustained 47 megabytes per second.
 
How did you measure that? I believe 30MB/s is about all you can get. It definitely is all I see with mybooks, USB sticks, other external enclosures ... and desktop machines at work.
 
yeah 47MB a second over USB2 seems unlikely. I've personally never seen nor heard of over 30 sustained.

Dustin
 
I was transferring some really large multi-gigabyte files from a secondary internal drive that wasnt being accessed by anything else at the time.
 
I bought a couple of WD Passports with 750GB 2.5" HDs. They backup at around 25MB/s sustained, which ends up as over 4 hours for ~330GB. Right now, I wish I went the eSata route, though that would have required adding an eSata card to the case.
 
esata is great for 3.5" drives. But it doesn't supply power so if you ever opt for 2.5" drives you'll want usb or firewire for true plug n play, not needing to plug it into the wall.

USB 3.0 obviously will be awesome, whenever enclosure companies start getting their butts in gear.
 
leagle said:
I've had really good luck with this enclosure.

This question gets posted all the time. Here's a a relatively recent thread with information that you may find useful.
Click to expand...

Thanks...nice enclosure...once I'm fully educated, I think I'll be building my own.

Hard Forum is the best if you want to learn about something you DON'T know about.:)
 
rive22 said:
esata is great for 3.5" drives. But it doesn't supply power so if you ever opt for 2.5" drives you'll want usb or firewire for true plug n play, not needing to plug it into the wall.

USB 3.0 obviously will be awesome, whenever enclosure companies start getting their butts in gear.
Click to expand...

Theres only at least 8 different models to choose from....
 
DocSavage said:
I bought a couple of WD Passports with 750GB 2.5" HDs. They backup at around 25MB/s sustained, which ends up as over 4 hours for ~330GB. Right now, I wish I went the eSata route, though that would have required adding an eSata card to the case.
Click to expand...

I add this tray-less and eSATA bracket to my computer. I'm back up/copy file at 115MB/sec

Pretty happy with speed

In order hot swap the HDD, remember set SATA in ENHANCE mode in the BIOS.
Do not use compatible or legacy mode

**
 
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