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
Actually, Firewire does all of its bus negotiation internally. That was the main breakthrough in its development. USB2 still allows the CPU to do the negotiation. For Firewire, that does make every operating system and firmware upgrade somewhat dicey, since you have two systems that need to communicate and negotiate speeds. oth, on large data transfers, the CPU can simply tell FW to negotiate its own data transfers on the bus, while USB2 has to continually bug the CPU to let it handle its negotiation.
Oh, and for Favre, I personally prefer the little thin white FW cables that Apple used to supply with their iPods.
So I want to buy an external hard-drive to help out my iBook's meager storage capacity, and I feel pretty comfortable with the Lacie (Porsche design) models available at my campus computer store. Nick
Don't want to start a firestorm, but I will share an experience. Free advice is usually worth what you pay for it.
Two years ago I bought a Lacie Firewire drive to store tons of graphics. Loved it for two months (until I had all of the stuff I needed most on it) and it crashed.
First hard drive crash in 25 years.
Lacie was way less than helpful. Took the drive to a "recoverer." Ordered a second on to transport the data to. The second one was DOA.
Lacie didn't even take them back. Wanted me to pay for a third one. So many calls and so many problems with company, I got mad, threw them both away, ate the investment, lost the data.
They have a good rep. I just won't touch them again.
Glad to see someone has brought up the barefeats tests. That's a very useful site. Indeed, whereas on Wintel, you're going to notice minimal difference between USB2 and FireWire, FireWire 400 on the Mac is still close to twice as fast as USB2. Apple has a long way to go to get its USB2 drivers right -- rather like the immense amount of time it took them a few years ago to get zip right in both HFS and FAT32 in OS X. I don't expect full parity between USB2 and FireWire 400 but I do expect USB2 to eventually get very close to FireWire 400 on the Mac as it is on the PC.
On a choice of hard drive, try Other World Computing for one. They do some good external backup drives and their support is good except that at some times of the day they aren't great on hold times. I have a LaCie and have had no trouble so far, but I got a great price on it and probably would have gone with OWC but for that sale. If you go OWC or TransInternational, to take two good examples, you should seek Oxford 911 FireWire or Oxford 922 FireWire chipsets.
Glad to see someone has brought up the barefeats tests. That's a very useful site. Indeed, whereas on Wintel, you're going to notice minimal difference between USB2 and FireWire, FireWire 400 on the Mac is still close to twice as fast as USB2. Apple has a long way to go to get its USB2 drivers right -- rather like the immense amount of time it took them a few years ago to get zip right in both HFS and FAT32 in OS X. I don't expect full parity between USB2 and FireWire 400 but I do expect USB2 to eventually get very close to FireWire 400 on the Mac as it is on the PC.
Actually, I wonder if the differences between HFS+ and NTFS come into play in this situation. After all, NTFS can include compression as part of its copying scheme. Perhaps NTFS has optimized compressed copying for USB2 and not for Firewire.
After all, NTFS can include compression as part of its copying scheme. [..] NTFS Compression
That's the first time I hear of this, and that link says nothing of the effect. It talks about transparent file compression, not on-the-fly copying compression.
Just a thought but I read in a review that some windows systems have a faster way of processing USB 2.0 than others. Not sure what this is about.
Anyway, I'm happier with Firewire. I just bought FW cards for my windows laptop and the companies windows tower to make it easier to transfer data via a FW hard drive. Til now I've been using a USB thumb drive and it has been slower than molasses.
Comments
Originally posted by webmail
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
Actually, Firewire does all of its bus negotiation internally. That was the main breakthrough in its development. USB2 still allows the CPU to do the negotiation. For Firewire, that does make every operating system and firmware upgrade somewhat dicey, since you have two systems that need to communicate and negotiate speeds. oth, on large data transfers, the CPU can simply tell FW to negotiate its own data transfers on the bus, while USB2 has to continually bug the CPU to let it handle its negotiation.
Oh, and for Favre, I personally prefer the little thin white FW cables that Apple used to supply with their iPods.
Personally I was kind dissapointed when I got my firewire 800 disk, that the cable wasn't twise as thick. It's acually tinner, scandal!
Originally posted by nickgb3
So I want to buy an external hard-drive to help out my iBook's meager storage capacity, and I feel pretty comfortable with the Lacie (Porsche design) models available at my campus computer store. Nick
Don't want to start a firestorm, but I will share an experience. Free advice is usually worth what you pay for it.
Two years ago I bought a Lacie Firewire drive to store tons of graphics. Loved it for two months (until I had all of the stuff I needed most on it) and it crashed.
First hard drive crash in 25 years.
Lacie was way less than helpful. Took the drive to a "recoverer." Ordered a second on to transport the data to. The second one was DOA.
Lacie didn't even take them back. Wanted me to pay for a third one. So many calls and so many problems with company, I got mad, threw them both away, ate the investment, lost the data.
They have a good rep. I just won't touch them again.
On a choice of hard drive, try Other World Computing for one. They do some good external backup drives and their support is good except that at some times of the day they aren't great on hold times. I have a LaCie and have had no trouble so far, but I got a great price on it and probably would have gone with OWC but for that sale. If you go OWC or TransInternational, to take two good examples, you should seek Oxford 911 FireWire or Oxford 922 FireWire chipsets.
Originally posted by theapplegenius
But photoeditor, iPod transfers speeds via USB are very close between PC and Mac. Mabye Windows needs to write some better FireWire drivers, eh?
I think that is mainly caused by the limitations of the iPods drive. Does anyone have any info on the drives specs?
Originally posted by photoeditor
Glad to see someone has brought up the barefeats tests. That's a very useful site. Indeed, whereas on Wintel, you're going to notice minimal difference between USB2 and FireWire, FireWire 400 on the Mac is still close to twice as fast as USB2. Apple has a long way to go to get its USB2 drivers right -- rather like the immense amount of time it took them a few years ago to get zip right in both HFS and FAT32 in OS X. I don't expect full parity between USB2 and FireWire 400 but I do expect USB2 to eventually get very close to FireWire 400 on the Mac as it is on the PC.
Actually, I wonder if the differences between HFS+ and NTFS come into play in this situation. After all, NTFS can include compression as part of its copying scheme. Perhaps NTFS has optimized compressed copying for USB2 and not for Firewire.
NTFS Compression
Originally posted by elehcdn
After all, NTFS can include compression as part of its copying scheme. [..] NTFS Compression
That's the first time I hear of this, and that link says nothing of the effect. It talks about transparent file compression, not on-the-fly copying compression.
Anyway, I'm happier with Firewire. I just bought FW cards for my windows laptop and the companies windows tower to make it easier to transfer data via a FW hard drive. Til now I've been using a USB thumb drive and it has been slower than molasses.
Originally posted by ZO
firewire is better because it has a cooler name... end of discussion...
How could we all have overlooked that firewire has the coolest name ever.
Both thicker cable and cooler name!!!
Done deal, sold, case closed, agreed.