is external 3.5" HD firewire faster than internal 2.5" ??

[macchiato2009]

Hi

I just upgraded my mac mini by replacing the stock HD (160 Gb Hitachi 2.5" 5400 rpm) by a Intel SSD for boosting its performance

but for storage,

i'm hesitating between replacing the superdrive with an optibay, the new drive would be a 2.5" 500 Gb 7200 rpm HD

and an external enclosure with firewire and 3.5" 7200 rpm sata drive


what would be faster between the 2 solutions?

thx

 

[Bennieboy©]

go for the internal route, firewire is fast but the HD bus speeds for the internal will still romp past it

 

[Hellhammer]

Internal definitely. USB of FireWire are nowhere near as fast as SATA is

 

[macchiato2009]

thx guys

i'm asking because my mini is brand new, keeping the warranty safe would be wiser at least for a few months...

and i was wondering if in general 3.5" drives are faster than 2.5"

so using the firewire would be useful to avoid removing original parts from my mini....


thx again

 

[BlackViper]

go for the FW

My G4 mini ran noticeably faster booting from a FW400 3.5 inch drive than the stock internal one. FW 800 is plenty fast unless you are using some kind of high-performance RAID. I would recommend a 3.5" external to get more storage for a lower price.

 

[flopticalcube]

My G4 mini ran noticeably faster booting from a FW400 3.5 inch drive than the stock internal one. FW 800 is plenty fast unless you are using some kind of high-performance RAID. I would recommend a 3.5" external to get more storage for a lower price.

You can't really compare a 4200RPM pata drive to a 7200RPM sata one. The internal drive will be faster.

 

[macchiato2009]

My G4 mini ran noticeably faster booting from a FW400 3.5 inch drive than the stock internal one. FW 800 is plenty fast unless you are using some kind of high-performance RAID. I would recommend a 3.5" external to get more storage for a lower price.

the G4 is a very old machine, its HD is a slow IDE drive and cannot be compared to actual SATA drives...


i'm looking for feedbacks about actual 2.5" internal sata vs 3.5 external sata via firewire