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ide vs firewire vs usb2 for ext. HD

R

rizzo56

Member
how well would a normal desktop ide hd in an external case connected to the computer using firewire or usb2 perform compared to ide? would things be horribly slow?
 
Performance is around the same(assuming you're using a good chipest) since the HD is slower than the bus, but you'd probably want to go with Firewire over USB since FW doesn't require the CPU draining host processing work.
 
Well IDE will be hands down the fastest as for USB2 or Firewire I don't know if your motherboard supports both read up on it a bit, I think in general tests they perform the same though.
 
Firewire is quicker - and can run 2.5" based external storage without a psu, unlike most usb2.0 devices (yes I know some can but very few).
 
Firewire has less overhead, so it'll be slightly quicker.....but I personally went with USB 2.0 just because of the backwards compatibility. Almost all computers nowadays have at least usb 1.1....whereas most do not have firewire unless its been added (eg: Soundblaster Audigy, firewire card, etc). New motherboards have firewire built-in, but most older ones do not.
 
Originally posted by: rizzo56
would firewire be noticebly faster than ide?
Click to expand...

no firewire1(max output 50MB) and usb2(Max output 60MB) are both slower then IDE.
then you have Firewire2 (max output 100MB) but i havent seen any enclosures yet with firewire2. it also requires a new cable aswell..
 
It's not going to be noticably faster in the night and day sense, but with a USB drive, you can more or less forget about doing anything else while you're copying to/from it.
 
LED: thanks for the link.
It seems like the enclosure is only $70 at newegg. not bad..
Also the B11 adapter( from internal SATA to e-sata) is like $10.
 
you will notice no difference between firewire and usb when it comes to HDD transfer speeds. if you want to compare the HDD speed when in an enclosure to when it is inside your case, the inside wins. and ata66 is 66 megabytes per second, and usb 2.0 is 480 megabits or 60 megabytes per second. if you're bursting, internal ide is faster. obviously ata100 burst speeds are faster than ata66 burst speeds. the chipset doing the translation in the enclosure will slow things down a lot, and it's hard to analyze what chip what enclosure has.

note: for the most part usb2.0 is cheaper than firewire when it comes to enclosures.
 
Originally posted by: Mday
you will notice no difference between firewire and usb when it comes to HDD transfer speeds. if you want to compare the HDD speed when in an enclosure to when it is inside your case, the inside wins. and ata66 is 66 megabytes per second, and usb 2.0 is 480 megabits or 60 megabytes per second. if you're bursting, internal ide is faster. obviously ata100 burst speeds are faster than ata66 burst speeds. the chipset doing the translation in the enclosure will slow things down a lot, and it's hard to analyze what chip what enclosure has.

note: for the most part usb2.0 is cheaper than firewire when it comes to enclosures.
Click to expand...
Nice in theory but not true at all.

Firewire 400 has a real-life limit of about 35 MB/s. USB 2.0 has a real-life limit of about 25 MB/s with currently available chipsets IIRC.

ie. Both will hold back a fast hard drive, but a USB 2 enclosure will hold it back much more.

If you want max speed you need Firewire 800, but that's $$$, about as rare as external SATA. The next best thing is Firewire 400.
 
By the way, if you do get Firewire 400, you need the Oxford 911 chipset (in the enclosure) for max speed. The other Firewire chipsets are as slow as USB 2.
 
For my laptop I went with a 200 GB firewire drive from WD. If you get fire wire, make sure its a 6 pin one. My HD is powered by an external psu, so the damn thing never turns off. Its spinning at full speed 24/7 unless I unplug it. But when you plug it back it makes the click of death, but sometimes it doesnt die. So far Ive lost this drive twice and had to RMA it back. Both times were because I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
 
Originally posted by: StevenRFrancis
For my laptop I went with a 200 GB firewire drive from WD. If you get fire wire, make sure its a 6 pin one. My HD is powered by an external psu, so the damn thing never turns off. Its spinning at full speed 24/7 unless I unplug it. But when you plug it back it makes the click of death, but sometimes it doesnt die. So far Ive lost this drive twice and had to RMA it back. Both times were because I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you're saying.

6-pin carries power, but not enough for a 3.5" drive. 6-pin is useful for portable laptop Firewire drives so you don't need an extra power supply. It doesn't matter if it's 4-pin or 6-pin for a 3.5" desktop drive though since either way you'll still need external power.

My 3.5" enclosures have power button.
 
Fastest--->Slowest, based on the USB 2.0/Firewire enclosures I've used.

IDE = 30-40MBps
Firewire = 20-30MBps
USB 2.0 = 10-20MBps
USB 1.0 = don't even think about it.

USB 2.0 is a joke....sooooo slow. I have a USB 2.0 HD and 48x CDRW and yeah, that both work just fine. The transfer rates on the HD are slow as balls though. The firewire drives I've used have been significantly faster.
 
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