External Hard Drive question

firewire has a faster average transfer rate, so yes, it is definitely better for editing....

there are a lot of good firewire enclosures out there. so worse case scenario if you don't find a good external with firewire: buy an internal and put that in an enclosure that has firewire. you actually will get a longer warranty that way.

Firewire vs. USB Architecture
FireWire, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

Hi-Speed USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower data flow control)

Chasealicious said:

I work with digital video and am looking to replace my 200GB external work drive. Problem is, 90% of the drives I'm seeing now are solely UBS 2.0, not firewire.

Click to expand...

The reason for all the USB drives is that cheap PC don't have firewire.
Firewire is faster but just as importently firewire is less CPU intensive so it does not slow down other things

These guys will have what you need at a good price
http://eshop.macsales.com/

try Lacie they have lots of FW drives

http://www.lacie.com/products/family.htm?id=10007

Get an enclosure with FW and USB ($35-50), then you can put whatever HD you want in there, and swap them out.

i have a maxtor which has both firewire and USB 2.0. i use it for all my video editing.

Firewire400 may have a lower top speed than USB2, but unlike USB2, it's constant. If your drive does 50Mbps, then FW will keep it at 50Mbps, whereas USB2 will go from 20Mbps to 50Mbps to 10Mbps to 50Mbps etc etc. This makes Firewire a lot better for video and audio, as you want a constant stream, rather than a few higher-res stutter-shots.