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Which would be a faster....

G

gregnash

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 8, 2005
Messages
2,164
....interface for a external backup drive. I have a 2.5" 60gb PATA drive sitting around collecting dust and figured I would put it to use for photos. For the external drive would I see much of a transfer rate difference between Firewire and USB2.0? Thanks for your help.
 
I used to be under the impression that Firewire (400) is faster than USB2.0. I am no longer sure about this. FW800 would certainly be faster than either of the two alternatives.
 
Given the variance in speed of controller chipsets, it's probably safest to buy a dual-interface enclosure and try it both ways. That way there's less possibility of buying the wrong thing and being stuck with it.
 
I'd go FireWire. I have a Sony external DVD-RW that is USB 2.0 and FW400/FW800 capable, and even FW400 is faster than USB 2.0 (and bogs my machine down much less than USB 2.0, to boot)
 
Cool thanks for the info guys. I was still under the impression that Firewire was faster but I wanted to make sure, thanks for the support.
 
I did some recent testing with a 160GB Maxtor ATA133 16MB drive housed in an external USB 2.0/Firewire 400 enclosure. CPU usage was nil for either interface, and people that lay claim to the statements about CPU bogging issues with USB 2.0 probably are doing something wrong or... well... I don't know what their issues are but it's a non-issue for me and most anyone else, that's all.

Transferring a single 1GB VOB file I have for testing purposes, I formatted the drive clean with NTFS from a Command Prompt (Quick Format), then copied the file using Explorer from the internal 160GB Seagate IDE ATA133 drive to the external.

The Firewire 400 interface did the job in about 23 seconds or so (I was timing with my wristwatch, soooo...). That works out to about 45MB/s overall.

I reformatted the drive again from the Command Prompt, again a Quick Format, and did the same transfer test. The USB 2.0 interface did the transfer in 24 seconds flat, give or take a glance from the screen to the wristwatch.

HDTach 3 showed me the following:

With the Firewire 400 interface, that Maxtor drive did average read speeds of 48.5MB/s (theoretically the max that interface can support, so it was maxing out the interface) and the burst speed was 49.6MB/s - right where I would expect it.

With the USB 2.0 interface, the same test showed average read speeds of 48.4MB/s, and a burst speed of 49MB/s flat.

Sooooo... theoretically the USB 2.0 interface should have edged out the Firewire 400 by a slight margin accounting for the extra 80 megabits per second over Firewire 400's top speed of 400 Mbps, but in this testing that extra 80 Mbps didn't do much of anything.

CPU usage for the Firewire 400 interface was 2.9%; USB 2.0 was 3.1%, so negligible as measured by HDTach 3.

Just some impromptu test results. I'd say these sorts of things have a great deal to do not only with the hardware itself but the efficiency of the Firewire and USB 2.0 drivers - always make sure you have the latest, obviously.

Hope this helps...
 
1GB isn't a big enough test sample IMO. Try 5 or 10GB and see if you get the same results. Also, your images are missing - you did mean to insert the HDTach graphs, correct?
 
The difference for most people is going to be neglegible. Just look to the motherboard reviews here on HardOcp and your see the same results. The speed difference will be more determined by your motherboards controller than anything else. some have better ability than others. Okay so a 1gb file might not be enough to tell the difference between 22mb/s and 22.5mb/s, but so what. how often are your files that large and on an external drive rather than your host drive and if they are they are storage, you are not working from them. USB2.0 = Firewire 400 IMHO, depends more on platform Mac/PC. if you have the money look to Firewire 800 if you need the speed or eSata for even bettter performance. Cost/Performance issue.
 
Ok thanks for the information guys!!!! So I basically have two different drives that I am "thinking" of using. One is a 60gb 5400rpm EIDE notebook drive and then I have a 160gb SATA150 Standard drive. This is going to be used to back up all the photos that we have on the computer listed in my sig plus any wedding/engagement photos. I do not care about music as that is easily replaced, more than likely I will throw my bachelors and master program stuff on there too. Needs to be both Mac and PC compatible.


Edit: Another quick question, what is the easiest way to make this external be easily seen by both my lappie (when I get it) and my desktop. I am not necessarily talking making it a network drive but plug-n-play as well.
 
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