Firewire/USB 2.0

[crabbyman]

I recently thought about this...I am probably completely wrong and I want to be proved so. Please help me here


The theoretically max thorough put on a Firewire/USB2.0 connection right now is around 480Mbps...or is it 480MBps. I am not sure how Mb and MB compare..but if you have a hard drive in a cage...whats the purpose of having the firewire if its that high? I mean..most ata drives only achieve bursts of 100MBps or is it Mbps? Either way..doesnt it negate any effect that the higher speed connection does have for transfering data? Or is the lower speed of ata because of some cabling problems?


Lots of questions I know..but help would be nice...

Those drives are expensive...and I was just wondering if they were faster..why not make all your HDs Firewire/USB2.0??

 

[VBboy]

Huh?
1 MB (Megabyte) = 8 Mb (Megabits), because
1 Byte = 8 bits.

Firewire is also for digital videocameras and other devices. Besides, the bus allows more than one device to simultaneously transmit or receive data, so if you got 2 devices, then the bandwidth for each = Max Bus Bandwidth / 2. And if you have 10 devices...

Like if you are printing and scanning and using the Zip drive and a mouse, all on the same USB, then the bandwidth is devided.

 

[Mingon]

whats strange is that firewire2 runs at twice the speed of firewire 1 - what drive is ggoing to hit that speed? raid external firewire cages?

 

[VBboy]

Again, FireWire is meant exclusively for external drives. Video cameras need to transmit full-screen, full-motion video with sound, and that is enormous bandwidth, unless you want to do host compression (i.e. on the camera itself). Additionally, you can have solid-state "drives" work via FireWire, such as some kind of a 10 GB flash disk drive.

 

[crabbyman]

But what is the advantage unless you are rich and have a lot of video editing? Plus aren't most Firewire HDs still ATA spec drives??

 

[majewski9]

yeah firewire is really useful for Digital video but other than that USB 2.0 / 1.1 is more suited. Actually firewire is better than even USB 2.0 for external HD's.

 

[ahabeger]

Yeah most firewire drives are just firewire-ata converters, if you look hard enough you might be able to find just the electronics without a case that does this. There isn't enough of a market for a HD manufacturer to make HDs that are natively firewire. If a business is doing video editing and they want to use computers chances are they will spring for the firewire. The rich & video editing people have to have a way to connect their high speed devices.

Something that I would like to see would be in depth benchmarks of firewire networking, as all I've found are this and this wich are more advertisement than review. A review that included processor utilization, multiple firewire chipsets (if there are any), a better representation of 100 Mbit, and multiple NICing. With how many motherboards come with firewire onboard this could be a good cheap way to link small networks.

 

[dejitaru]

External drives can be faster, but not to the limit of the spec.
Firewire drives exist that it's the current standard and a lot easier than SCSI. The device itself will be the bottleneck.
Apparently, there is little market for a true firewire device, yet the hype is there (the first rev of Power Macintosh G4s had internal firewire ports).

Mb/s = MHz

At high speeds, cables can self induct, that is crosstalk.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: dejitaru
Mb/s = MHz

This is wrong. I don't know what you're trying to compute.

 

[crabbyman]

So in conclusion... current, off the shelf firewire is slower than ATA HD's? I mean...I guess I can see the portability and I know its fast for network *PS2 have them for networking*...but isn't that just diminishing returns? Do video editors tote around their HD's a lot? I mean if ATA is faster or the same speep since the HD's are limited..why not just stick with ATA?

 

[dejitaru]

I don't know what you're trying to compute.

Then how could you say it's wrong, professor?

 

[majewski9]

USB 2.0 speeds are 480 megabits and not bytes. Secondly they are moving to SATA for HDs that is more like USB/firewire.

480 / 8 = 80MB right? That is pretty good but remeber that is a maximum and not sustained rate.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: dejitaru

I don't know what you're trying to compute.

Then how could you say it's wrong, professor?

You don't know exactly how burnt you will get by sticking your hand into a fire, but you know it will hurt. Same way, this formula is wrong. Main reason for that is that you can transfer more or less than one bit per clock tick or per Hz.

 

[dejitaru]

You don't know exactly how burnt you will get by sticking your hand into a fire

I'm well aware of what would happen. I could even make a sketch or describe the sensation though it has never happened. That's predictable.

A bit is either on or off. One bit per second is one pulse every second. Once per second is the very definition of Hz.

I'm not talking about clock speed.

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: dejitaru

You don't know exactly how burnt you will get by sticking your hand into a fire

I'm well aware of what would happen. I could even make a sketch or describe the sensation though it has never happened. That's predictable.

A bit is either on or off. One bit per second is one pulse every second. Once per second is the very definition of Hz.

I'm not talking about clock speed.

MHz = freqency. MB/s = data transfered per second. They have nothing to do with each other other than time. therefore the statement is incorrect. There is nothing to dispute. Also, derogitory statements (even though well vieled) are not welcome in HT. If you disagree, cool. post about it. don't be a dick. This part of AT works differently than every other forum.