FW400 vs USB external drive speeds

[randomlinh]

So, my external FW drives seem significantly faster than the few USB ones I have. Has anyone noticed this?

Using MBBench, FW400 is sitting anywhere between ~27MB/s->32MB/s. My USB drives get like 12MB/s. Even with everything unplugged from the hub, and direct to the iMac.

Now, the FW enclosure is the Newertech ministack v2, so presumably it has a decent chip in it. The USB side... a couple of no names, and the ministack in USB mode... they all are slow as dirt relative to the FW.

No, I understand the overhead with USB, but am I completely missing something here? Or are people satisfied with the external USB drives on their macs? I'm guessing I'm in the minority in using external storage, but still, it seems so painful.

In fact, it seems more painful than it was when I was on XP. I just haven't had time to test it really.

 

[aphex]

FW > USB

http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm

 

[randomlinh]

heh, yes, I know FW > USB, but the discrepancy was not that noticeable that I could recall under XP. I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but my USB drive is just some backup drives.

But I just bought a SATA drive, and can't use it in my Freenas box. I wanted to make sure I'm not doing something stupid before having to spend nearly 2x as much on a firewire enclosure for it.

 

[TheStu]

I have noticed slow transfer rates from my USB enclosure as well. It is hard to compare speeds between Vista/XP and OS X since I have found OS X's time to transfer estimates to generally be accurate, and Windows fluctuates wildly around, and it seems that depending on how the files are composed (a few large files, or lots of little files) that also alters Windows' transfer rates.

But I digress. I have almost always notice USB to be significantly slower than firewire, so if the speed is important to you, get the FW enclosure, icydock makes a really nice one I hear, right around $60 for it I believe.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: TheStu
I have noticed slow transfer rates from my USB enclosure as well. It is hard to compare speeds between Vista/XP and OS X since I have found OS X's time to transfer estimates to generally be accurate, and Windows fluctuates wildly around, and it seems that depending on how the files are composed (a few large files, or lots of little files) that also alters Windows' transfer rates.

But I digress. I have almost always notice USB to be significantly slower than firewire, so if the speed is important to you, get the FW enclosure, icydock makes a really nice one I hear, right around $60 for it I believe.

yeah, I've seen it. I might try the galaxy network one mentioned in the other thread, but it would render my PATA drives useless. Or get the non networked one. I need something w/ a quiet fan since it will run full time w/ my system. The newertech one is ideal, but painfully expensive.

 

[bearxor]

I'd go plain old USB. I don't notice any significant difference between FW400 and USB 2 when I transfer files around the office. Vista Machines are noticeably slower at copying files, but thats because of changes in the windows file copy system, not the devices themselves.

The Mac heads, including the one I work with still claim FW has a higher consistent throughput and, while this may be true (it is), unless you're doing something that requires such a high throughput, it's useless, IMHO. Heck, even streaming HD video has a really low throughput compare to USB 2 or FW400.

I should also note that I do notice a huge difference between desktop drives in enclosures and laptop drives in USB=powered enclosures. I usually just use USB-powered drives and they ARE slower than desktop drives in enclosures, for obvious reasons.

 

[randomlinh]

Well, I'm doing large data transfers w/ these drives, so the speed is important to me (to an extent.. I do have to worry about cost.. haha). So I usually notice it quite a bit.. especially when I hit update for my backup aperture library.

I'm also running a VM on my current FW drive, heh

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: bearxor
I'd go plain old USB. I don't notice any significant difference between FW400 and USB 2 when I transfer files around the office. Vista Machines are noticeably slower at copying files, but thats because of changes in the windows file copy system, not the devices themselves.

The Mac heads, including the one I work with still claim FW has a higher consistent throughput and, while this may be true (it is), unless you're doing something that requires such a high throughput, it's useless, IMHO. Heck, even streaming HD video has a really low throughput compare to USB 2 or FW400.

I should also note that I do notice a huge difference between desktop drives in enclosures and laptop drives in USB=powered enclosures. I usually just use USB-powered drives and they ARE slower than desktop drives in enclosures, for obvious reasons.

I usually do large data transfers, so I prefer FW400, but honestly, I have never noticed any serious issues streaming even 720P content over my 802.11g connection from my desktop, and that is with gimped SATA drives (my desktop only supports SATA150, all my drives are SATA 3Gb/s).

 

[Pabster]

eSATA > Firewire > USB

I've noticed very little difference between the latter two with day-to-day work, but with large files and large transfers, Firewire is definitely superior. (Though eSATA trumps them all.)

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Pabster
eSATA > Firewire > USB

I've noticed very little difference between the latter two with day-to-day work, but with large files and large transfers, Firewire is definitely superior. (Though eSATA trumps them all.)

this has been one of my biggest gripes w/ my iMac... no way to get eSATA.