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Should I buy an external 320GB USB or Firewire for my MBP?
- Thread starter matthewp
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I've found FW to have a much better bandwidth than USB. maybe bandwidth is the wrong term, and maybe it's just my imagination though.
Make Your Own And Make It FW800 NEVER USB 2.
Where are you? Do you have Fry's handy?
Make your own for way less money. NOT USB. It is Radically slower. Only FW and FW 800 would be best.
Where are you? Do you have Fry's handy?
DEFINITELY FW! I have lots of external drives, both USB & FW (5 USB & 2 FW4)... FW4 is always faster. Ive tried lots of programs and methods for moving around large amounts of data (~2GB), and FW has out-performed USB every time. Now... FW800 is supposed to be faster still... havent had a chance to play with it yet.
It also depends on what you are looking for... a portable drive? or a stationary drive. FW doesnt power the bus... so for a portable you would have to carry around a PSU in addition to the drive. I buy from Fry's & Newegg.com. Hope that helps!
It also depends on what you are looking for... a portable drive? or a stationary drive. FW doesnt power the bus... so for a portable you would have to carry around a PSU in addition to the drive. I buy from Fry's & Newegg.com. Hope that helps!
Really....?? May be time to get some new portables... altho I was holding out until FW8 gained a little more in the market... dont know why its not...
I think cause it is too expensive to gain much market share. I was waiting for it to drop but then just bought a usb hdd cause i dont really care that much about the speed. But to each is his own. I dont do much video editing and stuff. if you do, then get FW. It is the better choice.
The questions no one has asked:
1) What are you using the drive for? Movie editing? Music? Document storage?
2) Are you going to have multiple drives? Do you need to daisy chain them (plug one drive into another)?
Sometime the extra cost of a FW drive is not worth it if you can get a steal on a usb drive that you will back up document to once a month. It depends on your use of it and the price.
1) What are you using the drive for? Movie editing? Music? Document storage?
2) Are you going to have multiple drives? Do you need to daisy chain them (plug one drive into another)?
Sometime the extra cost of a FW drive is not worth it if you can get a steal on a usb drive that you will back up document to once a month. It depends on your use of it and the price.
I was just testing the different connection speeds for on my Lacie triple interface hard drive yesterday. The results are....
Score in xBench.
FW 800: 45
FW 400: 35
USB 2.0: 14
Internal HDD: 33
Time it took to transfer a 730 MB file from the external to the internal HDD.
FW 800: 20 seconds
FW 400: 25 seconds
USB 2.0: 45 seconds
You should really spring for FW 800. It's a huge difference.
Score in xBench.
FW 800: 45
FW 400: 35
USB 2.0: 14
Internal HDD: 33
Time it took to transfer a 730 MB file from the external to the internal HDD.
FW 800: 20 seconds
FW 400: 25 seconds
USB 2.0: 45 seconds
You should really spring for FW 800. It's a huge difference.
If you would like to use the HD as an AirDisk (with the new model AirPort Extreme), it would have to be USB 2.0.
Just throwing that out there in case you're considering doing that.
Just throwing that out there in case you're considering doing that.
You won't notice much of a difference between FW400 and FW800 due to the limitations of system hardware and read/write speeds of drives. FW800 really shines in RAID set-ups, but even then the speed differences aren't that huge at current tech levels. Best to save the money and get the FW400 drive.
But I definitely agree on FW vs. USB. USB is quite a bit slower.
