Ext Hard Drive question

[MikeS]

Firs I hope I am in the right forum.

I have a WD external hard drive that has two USb & Firewire ports but I just looked at the specs on data transfer rates and they list USB as having rates up to 480 Mbps & Firewire up to 400 Mbps?

I guess I'm missing the point of the Firewire, can someone explain this to me. It thought that the Firewire was a faster medium. I use the ext HD to transfer files to my computer/iPod and was hoping that using a Firewire between the two would speed this? What benefits do Firewire give, if any?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire under Firewire 400.

Grumpy

 

[Paperdoc]

In some actual measurements of data transfer rates here at Tom's, USB2 (spec says 480 Mb.s or 60 MB/s) actually ran 27 to 32 MB/s. Firewire 400 (aka IEEE 1394a) outperformed a bit around 36 to 39 MB/s. Apparently USB spends more time managing the multi-user bus, whereas Firewire was designerd to facilitate uninterrupted data streaming (like video). But for access to an external drive, the difference will be small because you are not USUALLY moving a long sustained data stream. If you have the choice and it's free, I guess Firewire is a bit better.