Firewire 800 Realistic Speed

[Vihzel]

If I do get a Macbook Pro, I will have to buy an external hard drive as 500GB wont be enough to hold all of my media. I was wondering how much faster Firewire 800 is in comparison with USB 2.0. I know that USB 2.0s dont run at their fastest speed, so I was wondering if Firewires are the same too. What would be the typical speed then? I need to know if it would be a better purchase since its pretty significantly more expensive than USB hard drives.

Thanks.

 

[Penn Jennings]

If I do get a Macbook Pro, I will have to buy an external hard drive as 500GB wont be enough to hold all of my media. I was wondering how much faster Firewire 800 is in comparison with USB 2.0. I know that USB 2.0s dont run at their fastest speed, so I was wondering if Firewires are the same too. What would be the typical speed then? I need to know if it would be a better purchase since its pretty significantly more expensive than USB hard drives.

Thanks.

Comparing my OWC FW 800 dual drive bay to a WD 1TB USB 2.0 (480 Mbs) drive... I can copy files in less half the time. So I would conclude that FW is actually twice as fast.

 

[diablo2112]

Benchmark and comparison data here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/906616/

 

[Macsavvytech]

Firewire = awesome

I've Got a WD Passport Studio on Firewire i get 90-100MBps
On USB i get a average of 40-50MBps
Personal experience tells me that i doubt USB will be much if at all faster then Firewire.USB3.0 is advertised at 110MBps.... I doubt it will be that fast however USB 2.0 = 480Mbps which is 60MBps. 50-60MB may not sound like much however USB 2.0 been getting perfected for a while.

Anyway get a Firewire drive !!!!!!

Edit:
My i7 and SSD may bias the copy speed though

Edited Edit:
i tested copying again and got 80Mbps So maybe 100MBps is optimal only.

 

[gatepc]

With my FW800 Lacie drive I get around 70MB/s to 80MB/s sustained transfers it should be plenty for anything you need to do.

BTW the same drive when using USB I only get a transfer speed of around 18MB/s

 

[Vihzel]

Will different Firewire external hard drives produce different results in data transfer rate?

 

[Pentad]

FW rocks compared to USB 2.0!

I have two of the WD Studio 500 Gig drives for backing up my stuff. It is so much faster than USB. I don't know how people stand using USB 2.0 to copy large files. I don't mean that as a fanboy type comment, its just a huge time factor...



-P