Daisy chained FireWire or Hubbed USB 2.0, which is better/more stable, reliable?

[tornadobox]

I've got an external DVD+/-RW drive which can connect through FireWire or USB 2.0 (right now I have it connected through FireWire to my laptop). I will be getting an external 200GB hard drive (do lots of home video type DVD storage/editing for burning to DVD later on) with both FireWire and USB 2.0 connectors. I will either be daisy-chaining the drives through FireWire, or getting a USB 2.0 hub and connecting them to the laptop that way.

My question is, if anyone knows, which setup would be faster/more reliable for burning from the external hard drive to the external dvd burner? FireWire daisy-chain or USB 2.0 Hub?

Thanks!

 

[alexruiz]

It shouldn't matter... I suggest to save the money and daisy chain them with firewire.....

Edit: Firewire will be FASTER reading and writing to the hard drive..... the burner will work the same in both scenarios.

 

[tornadobox]

thanks for the reply, I managed to find a review, and yes firewire is faster than USB 2.0 in read/write with a hard drive! Interesting it's only rated at 400mbps while USB 2.0 is 480mbps...but oh well. So, does anyone have an opinion to the contrary (the opinion that USB 2.0 would be better)? If so, please let me know why!

Thanks!

 

[samgau]

USB has a higher overhead.... and the CPU usage is also higher...

 

[tornadobox]

Originally posted by: samgau
USB has a higher overhead.... and the CPU usage is also higher...

What exactly is a higher overhead? I'm not too familiar with USB or FireWire devices (which is why I'm asking )

 

[poppyq]

Originally posted by: samgau
USB has a higher overhead.... and the CPU usage is also higher...

Don't those two statements basically mean the same thing in the current conversation? heh It has a higher overhead but it uses more cpu time.

 

[jamesbond007]

FireWire definitely...400Mbps of up/down bandwidth while USB2 is only 240Mbps up and 240Mbps down. (They combine the upstream and downstream to equate the ever-so-popular 480Mbps. :disgust:

And as already mentioned, FireWire will use less CPU power.

 

[omega2]

Jamesbond007, where is the source you read this from? I am also interested in which interface would be best for external storage. From the typical reading and writing, i find it's little difference between the two interface. But what about if you had multiple external storage devices, which would be faster then (I don't have multiple external storage device, so therefore I personally don't know)?

 

[Dug]

USB hubs are as reliable as wet paper bags.
Go with firewire.

 

[MWink]

I know many people will argue that Firewire is better but my personal experience has been the opposite. I have used both Firewire and USB 2.0 hard drives and the USB 2.0 enclosures have been more reliable. I had some problems with my Firewire enclosure that once resulted in the entire drive being corrupt. I also had problems when I tried to use my NEC 4X DVD+RW in the firewire enclosure (it didn't work at all). My USB 2.0 enclosures on the otherhand have worked flawlessly. In the benchmarks they came out almost identical with the USB 2.0 ever so slightly faster. All of this has just been MY experience but for now I'm sticking with USB 2.0.