USB2.0 vs FW400 HDD

[mrgreen4242]

I'm looking to get a HDD enclosure to go with a mini. I was looking at FW devices, as I had assumed they'd be the speediest, but it occured to me that USB2.0 is technically faster than FW400... now, that doesn't make it so... I was wondering if anyone could point me to some benchmarks for USB2.0 drives vs FW400 ones, on a G4 (preferably mini) system. barefeats had some tests comparing FW drives to the internal drives on the mini, but I didn't see any mention of USB2.0 enclosures.

There's a lot of USB2.0 only enclosures out there that are very cheap compared to the FW ones available, so I was hoping to save a couple bux

Thanks!

 

[dav]

http://barefeats.com/usb2.html


USB is only 480 megabits per second in tiny bursts, not for sustained transfers..

Apple states that the USB 2.0 ports on their Macs support transfer rates up to 480 megaBITS per second (Mbps), which translates to 60 megaBYTES per second (MB/s). The most we saw was 144 megaBITS per second or 18 megaBYTES per second.

Think about it. FireWire 400 is rated at 400 megaBITS per second (50 megaBYTES per second) -- 80 megaBITS slower rating than USB 2.0 -- yet when exact same drive/enclosure is plugged into the FireWire 400 port, it goes almost twice as fast!