Calling all external hard drive users....

[John]

I was reading an ATI Xpress 200 review and noticed they had provided some USB 2.0 performance tests using a hard drive in an USB 2.0 external enclosure. I decided to download HD Tach 3 (free version) and run some of my own tests.

I have a DFI NF4 Ultra-D w/ USB 2.0 & Firewire. What's strange is that the onboard Firewire port works, but it corrupts my data after a few hours. You can read about it here.

I now have a Zonet ZFN2600 PCI Firewire card, and everything is peachy. I'm using a Bytecc 3.5" Aluminum enclosure w/ a Seagate 160GB 7200.7 drive.

USB 2.0 Benchmark using the onboard ports

* Notice the 14% cpu utilization.

Firewire Benchmark using the PCI card

* Notice the 0% cpu utilization.

The read speeds seem fine, but the cpu utilization seems extremely high on the USB 2.0 port. I tried a few different USB ports and they produced similar results.

If you have an external USB or Firewire hard drive please post your results.

 

[halfadder]

Interesting. So in your case, Firewire was faster. This is the opposite of the Apple iPod, where people are finding USB2.0 to be faster than Firewire.

You're using Firewire 400 (IEEE-1394a), right? Not the faster Firewire 800 (1394b)?

 

[John]

Yes, the Zonet ZFN2600 is Firewire 400.