Interesting, USB vs firewire discussions always seem a bit too passionate to me. It's as if we were talking about political or religious extremism.
One thing to look at is what platforms you plan to use the drive with. While FW is theoretically the supperior architecture, on the WinTel side of things a whole bunch of money has been sunk into USB. USB on windows quite frequently out performs FW. On the Mac it is a different story. Apple's implementation in both hardware and software favors FW.
Don't believe the hype about either one always being the better choice or even being obviously supperior. Both are healthy and competative technologies. A specific implementation of either standard can make all the difference. All USB2 bridges, controllers, and drivers are not created equal.
Sorry, but if you're drive supports both usb2 and firewire, there will be no difference in speed. NONE.
1. your hard drive inside the case can't even transfer data at 1/100 the speeds that usb2 and firewire offer.
2. In independing testing (search google usb2 vs. firewire) usb2 has come out on top, as lower power consumtion and MORE stable with bigger chunks of data. Doesn't it say something to you when the CREATOR of firewire drops support for it's own protocal in favor of USB2? THINK ABOUT IT.
Sorry, but if you're drive supports both usb2 and firewire, there will be no difference in speed. NONE.
1. your hard drive inside the case can't even transfer data at 1/100 the speeds that usb2 and firewire offer.
Interesting.
Except it's totally wrong.
USB 2.0 High Speed has a theoretical 480 MBit/s; FireWire 400 and 800 have theoretical 400 or 800 MBit/s, respectively. Because FireWire is entirely self-controlled and thus doesn't have nearly as much latency and management issues as USB, it is in practice faster, even in its 400 MBit/s version. Sometimes the difference is negligible; sometimes it is huge.
This Barefeats test, for example, shows that FireWire 400 is in fact roughly twice as fast as USB 2.0 High Speed, and FireWire 800 is thrice as fast.
Now, 8 MBit/s are 1 MByte/s, and because of latency and everything, you can usually substract 10-30% off the theoretical speed to get the real speed. Because of that, you get 50 (FW400), 60 (USB2) or 100 (FW800) theoretical MByte/s, but in practice, both FW400 and USB2 hover at around 40 MByte/s max. FW800 comes out to 70-80 MByte/s, if you're lucky.
What do modern hard drives offer? Well, recent 3.5 inch drives are in the 700-900 MBit/s range, in theory. In practice, you won't really get to that speed much.
That is a far cry from the "1/100 speed" you claim, however.
Quote:
In independing testing (search google usb2 vs. firewire) usb2 has come out on top
That's interesting too. And again, it's wrong. Almost all tests I've seen show USB2 and FireWire400 either close to each other, or with FW on top. I have never seen USB2 on top. And certainly never significantly either.
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, as lower power consumtion
Lower power consumption? Well of course! Because with USB, most of the processing is actually done by the CPU of your computer! So the power consumption in the end isn't different, if not even worse, since your CPU isn't exactly optimized to do such a job.
Quote:
and MORE stable with bigger chunks of data
The opposite is the case. FireWire is very, very stable. USB is not.
Quote:
Doesn't it say something to you when the CREATOR of firewire drops support for it's own protocal in favor of USB2? THINK ABOUT IT.
Apple was involved in creation, yes. However, they have not "dropped support" for their "protocal[sic]". They have dropped support on the iPod, yes. The reason for that is fairly simple and you have, sort of, cited it yourself: the hard drive in the iPod (or the flash memory in the iPod nano) are so slow in writing that FireWire doesn't provide any advantage whatsoever. The only advantage it could provide is letting the iPods boot, but because of the iPod's internals' design, you shouldn't be doing that anyway.
1. Find a drive, with a plater that uses ATA, SATA, or SCSI that copies more than 480mbs per second. I double dare you.....
2. Firewire on the mac is often plagued by bugs. Do I use firewire? Yes. I often compare firewire to a ferrari, fast, cool, and plagued with annoying little bugs. Every OS update released by apple in the last 5 years, the updated contains firewire "fixes"
3. prove me wrong.
For the record tom's hardware showed LESS than a 1 second difference in performance between the two technologies....
Just the max transfer rate of my 200GB Samsung ATA HD running in an external FW800 case.
Isn't it 6 bits to a byte, so 480Mb/s = 80 MB/s? [EDIT: apprently not ]
Webmail: Firewire was most likely abandoned in the iPod for reasons of either cost or size, or possibly both. The only reason Apple did not instead abandon USB is because USB is far more common in the Windows world. Otherwise, it is still very much supported by Apple (bug fixes should be evidence of that, however prolific they might be).
How would you like to prove your other assertions, maybe you could try some type of support such as links?
If it makes you feel any better... it hasn't always been 8 bits per byte. There was a time when the term wasn't standardized yet. But even then, I don't recall any systems based upon 6 bit bytes.
Honestly, I can't say why I thought that, shows what I know. I even took a programming class (really basic C++ stuff) a while back that went over this kind of thing along with hexadecimal etc at the beginning... And yes, I am happy to know that it hasn't always been 8 bits standard. Am I allowed to blame this slip up on dyslexia, perhaps?
I've got an external drive with USB2, FW400 and 800, I can say without doubt USB is thrashed on all counts. USB also bogs down the system a lot more. As far as I understand it, doesn't firewire have a processor that aids in the data transfer, whilst USB relies completely on the CPU?
I've got an external drive with USB2, FW400 and 800, I can say without doubt USB is thrashed on all counts. USB also bogs down the system a lot more. As far as I understand it, doesn't firewire have a processor that aids in the data transfer, whilst USB relies completely on the CPU?
This is correct. Every bit that is transferred via USB must pass through the CPU. FireWire devices contain their own intelligence and therefore can function without accessing your CPU. For example, you can connect your FireWire-enabled camcorder to your FireWire-enabled HD set-top box to display your wedding video without ever turning on your computer.
get a hd for backup that supports at least usb and fw 400 the difference in price isn't much and that's what i did. you lead through example ha ha.
i just bought an iomega 250 usb/fw. maccentral has a review, but i went to newegg and epinion for real world experience and ease of use. the reality is living with this drive for some time and give yourself flexiblity.
Your slightly off, read the article on Tom's hardware and you will see with firewire the CPU still spiked to 100% when he was using all the copying power. Firewire still uses the cpu.
USB 2 is nearly identical in it's processing power, it has chips that process it off of the cpu as well. Many cameras connect based on mini-usb connectors.
Look up a diagram on usb, and you will see chips that process just like firewire. Better yet go to usb.com
Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Me
This is correct. Every bit that is transferred via USB must pass through the CPU. FireWire devices contain their own intelligence and therefore can function without accessing your CPU. For example, you can connect your FireWire-enabled camcorder to your FireWire-enabled HD set-top box to display your wedding video without ever turning on your computer.
I don't have any particular affiliation to either standard, but speaking from real life experience, capturing video footage of camcorders with both USB2 and firewire connectors, USB2 has always had dropped frames when transferring, and firewire never has.
I'm an admin on a video editing forum , and the amount of times people have come onto the board and asked us about why their frames have dropped when capturing on USB2, which has then been fixed by them using firewire instead, has been a LOT. SO much so that we created this emoticon:
(yeah it's geeky. so sue me :P)
I'm not sure where you're getting your info from webmail - no one's saying firewire is perfect, but from my experience, and the experience from other people, you really are wrong!
(and of course USB.com are going to say USB is better. they're not exactly independent are they? )
Seems such a silly, inconsequential thing to get all wound up about! Why does it matter, I mean really?
Comments
One thing to look at is what platforms you plan to use the drive with. While FW is theoretically the supperior architecture, on the WinTel side of things a whole bunch of money has been sunk into USB. USB on windows quite frequently out performs FW. On the Mac it is a different story. Apple's implementation in both hardware and software favors FW.
Don't believe the hype about either one always being the better choice or even being obviously supperior. Both are healthy and competative technologies. A specific implementation of either standard can make all the difference. All USB2 bridges, controllers, and drivers are not created equal.
Originally posted by webmail
Sorry, but if you're drive supports both usb2 and firewire, there will be no difference in speed. NONE.
1. your hard drive inside the case can't even transfer data at 1/100 the speeds that usb2 and firewire offer.
2. In independing testing (search google usb2 vs. firewire) usb2 has come out on top, as lower power consumtion and MORE stable with bigger chunks of data. Doesn't it say something to you when the CREATOR of firewire drops support for it's own protocal in favor of USB2? THINK ABOUT IT.
What a nonsense
Originally posted by webmail
Sorry, but if you're drive supports both usb2 and firewire, there will be no difference in speed. NONE.
1. your hard drive inside the case can't even transfer data at 1/100 the speeds that usb2 and firewire offer.
Interesting.
Except it's totally wrong.
USB 2.0 High Speed has a theoretical 480 MBit/s; FireWire 400 and 800 have theoretical 400 or 800 MBit/s, respectively. Because FireWire is entirely self-controlled and thus doesn't have nearly as much latency and management issues as USB, it is in practice faster, even in its 400 MBit/s version. Sometimes the difference is negligible; sometimes it is huge.
This Barefeats test, for example, shows that FireWire 400 is in fact roughly twice as fast as USB 2.0 High Speed, and FireWire 800 is thrice as fast.
Now, 8 MBit/s are 1 MByte/s, and because of latency and everything, you can usually substract 10-30% off the theoretical speed to get the real speed. Because of that, you get 50 (FW400), 60 (USB2) or 100 (FW800) theoretical MByte/s, but in practice, both FW400 and USB2 hover at around 40 MByte/s max. FW800 comes out to 70-80 MByte/s, if you're lucky.
What do modern hard drives offer? Well, recent 3.5 inch drives are in the 700-900 MBit/s range, in theory. In practice, you won't really get to that speed much.
That is a far cry from the "1/100 speed" you claim, however.
In independing testing (search google usb2 vs. firewire) usb2 has come out on top
That's interesting too. And again, it's wrong. Almost all tests I've seen show USB2 and FireWire400 either close to each other, or with FW on top. I have never seen USB2 on top. And certainly never significantly either.
, as lower power consumtion
Lower power consumption? Well of course! Because with USB, most of the processing is actually done by the CPU of your computer! So the power consumption in the end isn't different, if not even worse, since your CPU isn't exactly optimized to do such a job.
and MORE stable with bigger chunks of data
The opposite is the case. FireWire is very, very stable. USB is not.
Doesn't it say something to you when the CREATOR of firewire drops support for it's own protocal in favor of USB2? THINK ABOUT IT.
Apple was involved in creation, yes. However, they have not "dropped support" for their "protocal[sic]". They have dropped support on the iPod, yes. The reason for that is fairly simple and you have, sort of, cited it yourself: the hard drive in the iPod (or the flash memory in the iPod nano) are so slow in writing that FireWire doesn't provide any advantage whatsoever. The only advantage it could provide is letting the iPods boot, but because of the iPod's internals' design, you shouldn't be doing that anyway.
1. Find a drive, with a plater that uses ATA, SATA, or SCSI that copies more than 480mbs per second. I double dare you.....
2. Firewire on the mac is often plagued by bugs. Do I use firewire? Yes. I often compare firewire to a ferrari, fast, cool, and plagued with annoying little bugs. Every OS update released by apple in the last 5 years, the updated contains firewire "fixes"
3. prove me wrong.
For the record tom's hardware showed LESS than a 1 second difference in performance between the two technologies....
Originally posted by smalM
What a nonsense
Originally posted by webmail
1. Find a drive, with a plater that uses ATA, SATA, or SCSI that copies more than 480mbs per second. I double dare you.....
First of all, you were talking about "1/100". SO it would only have to be faster than 4.8 MBit/s to prove you wrong.
Second, I'll just go ahead.
Here's one from Hitachi that has 817 MBit/s.
2. Firewire on the mac is often plagued by bugs.
Nice generalization there. Too bad I've been booting off FireWire non-stop for months on this machine, without problems.
Every OS update released by apple in the last 5 years, the updated contains firewire "fixes"
Every 20th update, maybe.
Originally posted by webmail
Oh yeah? I challege you to prove me wrong.
1. Find a drive, with a plater that uses ATA, SATA, or SCSI that copies more than 480mbs per second. I double dare you.....
webmail first of all that's 480Mb/s!
Mb/s = Megabit per second
MB/s = Megabyte per second
480Mb/s = 60 MB/s.
Just the max transfer rate of my 200GB Samsung ATA HD running in an external FW800 case.
Originally posted by smalM
webmail first of all that's 480Mb/s!
Mb/s = Megabit per second
MB/s = Megabyte per second
480Mb/s = 60 MB/s.
Just the max transfer rate of my 200GB Samsung ATA HD running in an external FW800 case.
Isn't it 6 bits to a byte, so 480Mb/s = 80 MB/s? [EDIT: apprently not
Webmail: Firewire was most likely abandoned in the iPod for reasons of either cost or size, or possibly both. The only reason Apple did not instead abandon USB is because USB is far more common in the Windows world. Otherwise, it is still very much supported by Apple (bug fixes should be evidence of that, however prolific they might be).
How would you like to prove your other assertions, maybe you could try some type of support such as links?
Originally posted by Lupa
Isn't it 6 bits to a byte, so 480Mb/s = 80 MB/s?
No, it's 8.
If it makes you feel any better... it hasn't always been 8 bits per byte. There was a time when the term wasn't standardized yet. But even then, I don't recall any systems based upon 6 bit bytes.
Originally posted by mattyj
I've got an external drive with USB2, FW400 and 800, I can say without doubt USB is thrashed on all counts. USB also bogs down the system a lot more. As far as I understand it, doesn't firewire have a processor that aids in the data transfer, whilst USB relies completely on the CPU?
This is correct. Every bit that is transferred via USB must pass through the CPU. FireWire devices contain their own intelligence and therefore can function without accessing your CPU. For example, you can connect your FireWire-enabled camcorder to your FireWire-enabled HD set-top box to display your wedding video without ever turning on your computer.
Originally posted by theapplegenius
you're joking, right?
Yes. But I do like the feel of the firewire cable.
get a hd for backup that supports at least usb and fw 400 the difference in price isn't much and that's what i did. you lead through example ha ha.
i just bought an iomega 250 usb/fw. maccentral has a review, but i went to newegg and epinion for real world experience and ease of use. the reality is living with this drive for some time and give yourself flexiblity.
USB 2 is nearly identical in it's processing power, it has chips that process it off of the cpu as well. Many cameras connect based on mini-usb connectors.
Look up a diagram on usb, and you will see chips that process just like firewire. Better yet go to usb.com
Originally posted by Mr. Me
This is correct. Every bit that is transferred via USB must pass through the CPU. FireWire devices contain their own intelligence and therefore can function without accessing your CPU. For example, you can connect your FireWire-enabled camcorder to your FireWire-enabled HD set-top box to display your wedding video without ever turning on your computer.
I'm an admin on a video editing forum , and the amount of times people have come onto the board and asked us about why their frames have dropped when capturing on USB2, which has then been fixed by them using firewire instead, has been a LOT. SO much so that we created this emoticon:
(yeah it's geeky. so sue me :P)
I'm not sure where you're getting your info from webmail - no one's saying firewire is perfect, but from my experience, and the experience from other people, you really are wrong!
(and of course USB.com are going to say USB is better. they're not exactly independent are they?
Seems such a silly, inconsequential thing to get all wound up about! Why does it matter, I mean really?