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External drive. USB 2 or Firewire 800

GGJstudios said:
As the OP has a 2006 iMac that doesn't have USB 3.0, they'll get better performance from FW400.
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If your reading comprehension was better, you'd see that that's exactly what I said.

In the UK there seems to be a big price premium on FW drives. The OP doesn't need the extra 30% speed for his purpose, so USB 3 has the better price - and better future compatibility with any upgrade to his Mac.
 
Ok supplementary question then (and an amount of devils advocate here).

Given that speed of large file transfer is not a huge problem as a) I'm patient and b) 99% files will be arriving over the network from wireless to gigabit will I see the benefit of Firewire 400 when the files are sucked back by iTunes to push to the network? The reason I ask is that previous to this setup I had 2.5" HD caddies connected directly to DVD/BD players and never had a problem with transfer speed when playing off them. I do realise this is a direct comparison but wondered what your experience was?

Thanks.
 
firestarter said:
If your reading comprehension was better, you'd see that that's exactly what I said.
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My reading comprehension is fine, thanks. It's not exactly the same. You recommended USB 3.0 only. I was referring to a drive with FW800, FW400 and USB 3.0 connectors, so the OP could run on FW 400 for now and use USB 3.0 in the future if they upgraded.

angelsguardian said:
Ok supplementary question then (and an amount of devils advocate here).

Given that speed of large file transfer is not a huge problem as a) I'm patient and b) 99% files will be arriving over the network from wireless to gigabit will I see the benefit of Firewire 400 when the files are sucked back by iTunes to push to the network? The reason I ask is that previous to this setup I had 2.5" HD caddies connected directly to DVD/BD players and never had a problem with transfer speed when playing off them. I do realise this is a direct comparison but wondered what your experience was?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Many have successfully used USB 2.0 without lagging problems, depending on the data transfer requirements. You may or may not experience any performance issues using it. For large transfers, FW is faster, but as you have only FW400, the difference won't be as significant as if you had FW800, which is 2-3 times faster than USB 2.0. If you're patient for now, going with firestarter's suggestion for USB 3.0 would work for you. You'd be operating at USB 2.0 speeds on your iMac, but would have access to 3.0 speeds if you use that drive with a 3.0 enabled computer.
 
GGJstudios said:
If you're patient for now, going with firestarter's suggestion for USB 3.0 would work for you. You'd be operating at USB 2.0 speeds on your iMac, but would have access to 3.0 speeds if you use that drive with a 3.0 enabled computer.
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Thanks. The only likely hardware change for this part of the network in the medium term is if this iMac can't cope when my wife restarts study (only set this up since she finished for this year and this is all home based work) then I'll have to add something else to serve iTunes. Having said that it would be something old again, I would imagine either a 17" iMac or Mini hidden with the rest of the network hardware. From what I can see of prices here my budget for this wouldn't stretch to anything with FW800. If I'm right the lowest price with that would be a white 24" iMac or 2009 on Mini which are too big or too pricey or both.
 
angelsguardian said:
99% files will be arriving over the network from wireless to gigabit
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Wireless 'g' is too slow to stream movies reliably. Wireless 'n' is fine for streaming, but in the real world its data rate will never outstrip that of USB2.

At the end of the day, your disk interface isn't going to be what's throttling the data rate in this setup.
 
I meant files arriving to storage as in from conversion on my MBP.

I do stream wirelessly and it works perfectly in 1080p to ATV3.
 
GGJstudios said:
Yes, macrominnie is correct.
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Apple tells us a different story (iMac Mid-2011, click to enlarge):

specs_connections20110505.jpg


macrominnie said:
Only the 24 inch model of the late 2006 iMacs have a FW800 port. The rest have FW400 only.
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No (see above).
 
Just buy a GoFlex drive.

You can get an USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FW800, eSATAp, Thunderbolt interface when you need it.
 
"External drive. USB 2 or Firewire 800"

Neither.

Get USB3 instead.

It's backward-compatible with USB2, and soon all Macs will be able to utilize it's greater speed.

Firewire is rapidly becoming a dead-end. Two years from now, I doubt any Macs will still be sold with a built-in firewire port (exception may be the MacPro towers).

Firewire was a great technology, and I still rely on it for backup drives and for my audio interface, but its days are numbered, just like old SCSI before. The writing is on the wall....
 
I have a similar question to the OPs-- does anyone know of a FW 800 enclosure that's reasonably priced? The cheapest one I find is this one from newegg and it's almost half the cost of a new external drive. I wanted something temporary until the TB to USB 3.0 hubs start rolling out.
 
GGJstudios said:
As the OP has a 2006 iMac that doesn't have USB 3.0, they'll get better performance from FW400. If you buy a drive that has multiple connectors, it would be expandable, although I'm not finding any FW800/FW400/USB 3.0 drives yet. Still looking.
Click to expand...

Only Seagate GoFlex ultra portable HDD has thunderbolt, USB 2.0/3.0 and FW800 all you need is to change upgradable adaptors.
 
To finish the thread off this is what I did. As ever finances got a little tighter rather than a little easier! So I bought a Hitachi 1Tb USB drive (got lucky here as the vendor really missed their delivery target and refunded the item then the courier delivered anyway) which streams everything perfectly well. Ok file copy is not as quick as it could be but it's fine and streaming is perfect. I followed the same line with a small WD My Book for Time Machine for 3 machines which works perfectly over the network.

Thanks for your help.
 
For someone that has only usb 2.0, is it worth to buy a firewire case for external hd? Will be faster if I need to process some raw files from aperture?

Thanks
 
etsi said:
For someone that has only usb 2.0, is it worth to buy a firewire case for external hd? Will be faster if I need to process some raw files from aperture?
Click to expand...
What do you mean, "For someone that has only usb 2.0"? Do you mean your computer only has USB 2.0 ports? If so, you can't use a Firewire connection, so why buy a drive with a Firewire port?
 
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