External Hard Drive: Firewire or USB 2.0 (Poll)

WooDaddy

Senior member
Jan 4, 2001
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I'm in the process of making a HTPC. I currently have an external USB 2.0 drive that I use for external MP3 and occassional DVD temporary storage. I've noticed that whenever I burn DVDs from the external drive that if I do anything that accesses that same drive it seriously reduces the speed at which my buffer fills - it's obviously not good for random file access.

I currently have a cheap USB 2.0 hub that I plug my iPod and the external drive in. Obviously, if I were to access both at the same time, the bandwidth will be cut in half.

So here's the question: Should I just use a separate USB 2.0 port and attach another external device so I don't have to worry about the bandwidth reduction or is firewire a more viable alternative? Does firewire have better bandwidth management (maybe to the scale of IDE buses or SCSI?)? I always see Firewire associated with media transfer such as in DV camcorders, etc. I'm wondering if it's a better bus for this purpose.

Thanks in advance ATers.
 

WooDaddy

Senior member
Jan 4, 2001
358
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Update: I just found out my motherboard, Chaintech 7NIL1, has 6 USB 2.0 ports of which 4 are headers only. No on-board firewire. Is it ok to assume that each port has it's own bus and doesn't bandwidth-share with the others?