Anybody think USB 2.0 is more reliable than firewire?

[steffi]

I've been having a lot of problems booting with external FW devices attached. Sometimes you get a "ghosted" login panel, other times a black login panel and sometimes a regular login panel that doesn't accept any mouse clicks.

I've just changed to USB 2.0 since these devices are triple interface and everything appears to be working again.

I understand the benefits of FW 800 but I have to say that USB 2.0 just seems to be a whole lot more reliable for me right now.

 

[6-0 Prolene]

Never had a problem with FireWire. It's still my favorite.

 

[MacDawg]

Never had an issue with my FW800 external HDD attached

 

[spinnerlys]

Firewire performance depends on the chipset of the external HDD, so if you bought a cheap external HDD, you might also get a cheap (thus less quality) chipset, which might explain the erratic behaviour.

What Mac do you have?


Have you tried an SMC reset with it yet? That worked for me when problems with an external HDD occurred.

Btw, USB 2.0 does not even come close to the speed of FW800.

 

[GGJstudios]

FW800 is 100% reliable for me. MUCH better than USB for external drives.

 

[steffi]

Never had an issue with my FW800 external HDD attached

The fact that when I have this hardware plugged in with FW800 and I get two-three different login panel experiences is troubling. I will come back to try to diagnose this further but for now I need to get some work done and USB 2.0 is letting me continue. The goal is probably to reinstall SL from scratch and then I expect my problems to disappear but it's odd that only FW devices are affected by whatever the problem I'm having is.

 

[Bill Gates]

I have never had a problem with any of my FireWire drives related to connectivity. I don't think that one interface is more reliable than the other per say; I think it's dependent on the controller in both the host device and the peripheral in use. If USB works better for you then you should continue using it.

 

[scottness]

Firewire 400/800 is reliably much faster than USB 2 when transferring large amounts of data.

 

[jjahshik32]

I love firewire the best!

 

[steffi]

Firewire performance depends on the chipset of the external HDD, so if you bought a cheap external HDD, you might also get a cheap (thus less quality) chipset, which might explain the erratic behaviour.

The two devices in question are

G-Technology G-DRIVE SSD RAID and daisy chained to that is G-Technology G-DRIVE mini HD with a western digital 640 GB drive inside it.

What Mac do you have?

MacBook Pro 13.3 Unibody

Have you tried an SMC reset with it yet? That worked for me when problems with an external HDD occurred.

I did PRAM reset I'll look into SMC

Btw, USB 2.0 does not even come close to the speed of FW800.

Yes I'm aware of that but I had consistently bad behaviour when using firewire. I'll come back to FW after I get my Time Machine backup finished. USB is hopefully a temporary solution for now.

 

[Sun Baked]

Yes I'm aware of that but I had consistently bad behaviour when using firewire. I'll come back to FW after I get my Time Machine backup finished. USB is hopefully a temporary solution for now.

If you have a FW chipset and firmware that work with the current version of the OS, all is dandy.

However, Apple has been known to update their OS and render some chipsets problematic with the OS.

Usually cured by a Firmware patch on the FW device.

If you have an older device that the manufacturer refuses to update, the device is problematic or unusable.

Have one myself that got punted with Leopard, the way it slept no longer was supported by Apple so the OS thought there is a bus error and keeps pinging the device ... crashes the OS when the error log gets too big.

So I have a FW/USB device that only works under USB now, if I want to leave it in long enough for the drive to sleep it has to be USB -- though FW works for short term use fine.

Quite a few realized FW got the short stick with Time Machine.

 

[steffi]

Yeah I don't think these devices are really supported anymore. Also I have an OWC Voyager drive dock but that is plugged into as USB as it's also problematic when used with Firewire. It's got a second Firewire port on it but it doesn't pass thru bus power which I find annoying.

If you have a FW chipset and firmware that work with the current version of the OS, all is dandy.

However, Apple has been known to update their OS and render some chipsets problematic with the OS.

Usually cured by a Firmware patch on the FW device.

If you have an older device that the manufacturer refuses to update, the device is problematic or unusable.

Have one myself that got punted with Leopard, the way it slept no longer was supported by Apple so the OS thought there is a bus error and keeps pinging the device ... crashes the OS when the error log gets too big.

So I have a FW/USB device that only works under USB now, if I want to leave it in long enough for the drive to sleep it has to be USB -- though FW works for short term use fine.

Quite a few realized FW got the short stick with Time Machine.