Is firewire faster than USB for loading songs on an IPOD?

[Cawchy87]

This is the card I am getting. (not from that website)

http://www.pcpartsohio.com/BookDetail.aspx?item_id=421

Are there faster firewire cards out there? Will this do fine for transfering songs onto an ipod?

Thanks !

 

[halfadder]

IEEE-1394a is traditional FireWire 400... 400 Mbit/sec, this is what almost all Firewire devices use (including iPod, DV camcorders, and HDV camcorders).

IEEE-1394b is FireWire 800.... 800 Mbit/sec and a different shaped connector. This is mostly seen on higher end external hard drives and external RAIDs. Apple PowerBooks and Apple G5s have this port built in too.

iPod only uses FireWire 400, so stick with that. You can get an iPod -> FW800 cable, but it only runs at FW400 speeds.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There is also a "Firewire-100" speed, 100Mbit/sec. Some ancient chipsets will only do that speed. But 400 is the most common speed today.

 

[helpme]

Looks like that card will be fine. As halfadder said, there is both Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. The iPod only needs firewire 400.

 

[Cawchy87]

Would firewire actually be fast than USB 2.0 for his Ipod tho?

acording to this: http://www.choice.com.au/viewA...=100274&tid=100008&p=3

They would roughly be the same.

 

[Dennis Travis]

In some of the tests I have seen Firewire was a bit faster at Sustained transfers of large files. With my IPod Mini I tried the USB 2 with my P4 and Firewire with my Mac G4 and it seems faster with the G4 with Firewire. I would compair it on the same system but the G4 is old and does not have USB 2.0 but it seems like almost a second faster on the larger songs. I did not measure it with a stopwatch but that is what is seemed like. The tests I recently read seemed to back up what I am seeing. Will try to find the URL.

 

[Cerb]

With devices like DAPs, the bridge chips used make more of a difference than the interface.
However, FW is faster.
Also, Apple helped make FW, and loves FW, so FW will likely be noticeably faster on an Ipod, if just for that.

 

[Accord99]

For the iPod, you're completely limited by the HD.

 

[Tostada]

Like Accord99 is implying, there is absolutely no reason to get a 1394 card for your iPod if you already have USB 2.0.

Technically, FireWire 400 is 400mbps and USB 2.0 is 480mbps, but in practice FireWire 400 is faster. Still, it's not a significant difference in most cases.

From an article on Tom's:

"With FireWire, we achieved an excellent maximum data transfer rate of 38 MB/s. USB 2.0, on the other hand, maxed out at just 32 MB/s."

http://www6.tomshardware.com/s...wd_external_hd-09.html

If a 7200RPM WD2500JB is hitting 32 MB/s on USB 2.0, the chances of your iPod being limited by either interface are pretty slim. That would be about 5-10 songs per second.