Firewire Drive : Any benefit to FW800 vs FW400

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sprynmr

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• Jan 21, 2005

• #1

I'm looking at OWC's drives, and wondering if there is any benefit to getting a FW800 drive over a FW400 drive. They both have the same buffer size, and probably the same actual hard drive. As far as I know, the limiting speed is the hard drive read/write mechanism and not the Firewire connector. Anyone know any different?

Thanks,
Bob

 

B

Blue Velvet

Moderator emeritus

• Jan 22, 2005

• #2

I'm not a technician but...

Our Lacie Big Disk Extreme duplicates our Retrospect backup at about 3/5 the time in FW800 as opposed to FW400.

When I bought it home over the Xmas holidays, I was geting sustained write speeds from my G4 of about 50-55mb/sec on FW800.

 

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sprynmr

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• Jan 22, 2005

• #3

Interesting... thanks!

 

dejo

Moderator emeritus

• Jan 22, 2005

• #4

I have both FW400 and FW800 drives from OWC. The 800s have noticeably faster transfer speeds. I usually get around 2GB / minute.

 

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sprynmr

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• Jan 23, 2005

• #5

dejo said:

I have both FW400 and FW800 drives from OWC. The 800s have noticeably faster transfer speeds. I usually get around 2GB / minute.

Click to expand...

Thank you Dejo. That helps my decision a great deal.

~Bob

 

maya

macrumors 68040

• Jan 23, 2005

• #6

dejo said:

I have both FW400 and FW800 drives from OWC. The 800s have noticeably faster transfer speeds. I usually get around 2GB / minute.

Click to expand...

If only the iPods supported FireWire 800. 🙂

 

virividox

macrumors 601

• Jan 23, 2005

• #7

yeah backing up is much much much faster

 

Steven1621

macrumors 6502a

• Jan 24, 2005

• #8

I find that FW 400 is fast enough for anything I do. When I bought my drive, I wanted the ability to use it on several different computers. FW 400 was the better option since it is far more prevalent in comparison to FW 800. Yes, FW 800 is twice as fast as FW 400, but FW 400 isn't that slow...

 

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JzzTrump22

macrumors 65816

• Jan 24, 2005

• #9

FW 800 is a hell of a lot faster then FW 400.

 

homerjward

macrumors 68030

• Jan 24, 2005

• #10

maya said:

If only the iPods supported FireWire 800. 🙂

Click to expand...

if you get the griffin dock connector --> fw800 cable does it still go at 400 speeds?

 

2

26139

Suspended

• Jan 24, 2005

• #11

Here ya go...

homerjward said:

if you get the griffin dock connector --> fw800 cable does it still go at 400 speeds?

Click to expand...

Yes, it will run at the slower connector (400). There is no way you can get 400 FW bus to run at 800 speeds, the dock connector just lets you plug a FW 400 plug into a FW 800 port.