external hard drive, USB 2 or fire wire ?

T

the snake

[H]ard|Gawd
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i just got an encloser that i can run either USB 2 or firewire, which interface would be faster and use less system resources ?

useing a WD 250 IDE drive on the system in my signature, any thoughts on this storage guru's ?
 
Firewire (IEEE1394a) drive enclosures typically have better throughput and lower CPU utilization. I couldn't say for your enclosure specifically, but from my experience my Bytecc enclosure gets about 30MB/sec with Firewire, and ~20MB/sec with USB2. USB2 has a higher theoretically speed (480Mbs vs 400Mbs), but 1394a is better suited due actually being a serial implementaion of SCSI-3.
However, controllers vary, and for more universal use USB2 is better to go with due to 1394a being less widespread on PCs. So, if possible I would say go for an enclosure with both if possible.
 
From what ive read the past couple days, FireWire is the way to go because of less cpu utilization. I bought a 60gb 7200rpm drive for my laptop and the one thats already in there will go into a Mapower firewire/usb2.0 enclosure. Ill be using the firewire whenever possible and usb since not all computers come with FW.
 
i have an encloser with both interfaces,so maybe i should just test it with HD tach and see what works better, never knew about the firewire being like SCSI, intersesting.
 
the snake said:
i have an encloser with both interfaces,so maybe i should just test it with HD tach and see what works better, never knew about the firewire being like SCSI, intersesting.
Click to expand...
Well if you do, keep an eye on your CPU utillization when you run your tests... and see what you can see.
 
the snake said:
i have an encloser with both interfaces,so maybe i should just test it with HD tach and see what works better, never knew about the firewire being like SCSI, intersesting.
Click to expand...
Well, it uses the SCSI command set (things like read, write, test unit ready, etc.), but other than that, they are very different (at the physical and link level). So don't expect all Firewire implementations to be as CPU friendly as SCSI - though some definitely are.
 
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