I'm planning on purchasing a portable external hard drive (around 80 gigs). What are the advantages/disadvantages between usb and firewire drives?
thanks!
thanks!
Abstract said:Well, Firewire (FW) is about a squillion times faster than USB, and FW2 is 10 squillion times faster. So guess which is the worst?
believo said:I'm planning on purchasing a portable external hard drive (around 80 gigs). What are the advantages/disadvantages between usb and firewire drives?
thanks!
vraxtus said:Except USB 2.0 is much faster than FireWire 400...
vraxtus said:Except USB 2.0 is much faster than FireWire 400...
übergeek said:firewire 400 is WAY faster than USB 1.1.
But another heads up for LaCie drives, i love mine
Although my Maxtor one makes less of a fuss in terms of noise and other stuff like that, my LaCie D2 drive is übersexy hehe.
Depends on your need(s) though.
I was about to get a USB 2.0 external drive because I wanted to use it with my PC and my PC didnt have a FireWire 400 port. But hey, Firewire rocks. I got a firewire card for my PC and now I'm happily using the 4+ external drives all over my desk hehe.
Not true! I had to get data off of shot iMac with only USB ports, I was able to boot off the external USB drive and copy the data off of the computers HD. It depends on how old the computer is, older PBs do not support USB booting.Finiksa said:USB drives are NOT bootable, 'nuff said.
Horrortaxi said:Are you talking about USB 1.1 or USB 2? If 1.1 don't even consider it. If 2 then it's a pretty fair fight. USB 2 is theoretically faster than Firewire but Firewire is designed for constant transfer whereas USB likes short bursts of data. In the real world will you notice any difference? Probably not.
What kind of Mac do you have? That'll answer the question of whether you even have to worry about USB.