USB 2.0 vs Firewire External HD

[sblake]

Which is better? Pro's and Con's. I have an extra hard drive and I want to put in an external enclosure. Anybody got an opinion?

 

[Elledan]

Firewire will use fewer CPU-cycles. Further there aren't any major differences, since things like bandwidth become quickly irrelevant when talking about an external HD. Both Firewire and USB 2.0 will provide the features you want.

 

[SocrPlyr]

remember that with usb bandwidth is shared, so if you hook something else to the same channel it will share the bandwidth, also if you hook a usb 1.1 device to the same channel it reverts to the pathetically slow 12Mbits/sec (argree w/ the previous posts as well)
other than that it is a toss-up...

Josh

 

[human2k]

I read somewhere that the way firewire sends data, its more reliable than usb 2.0 (it was some video magazine about external HD's for video transfer). Also firewire is proven good by many professionals for video editing and stuff.

 

[krackato]

I love my firewire harddrive. Hasn't given me any problems. Never tried USB 2.0, but I'd say go Firewire since it's a more proven technology.

 

[Jerboy]

<< I love my firewire harddrive. Hasn't given me any problems. Never tried USB 2.0, but I'd say go Firewire since it's a more proven technology. >>




FireWire is actually "serial SCSI" and has all the advantages of SCSI such as handling advanced queueing and independence from CPU. USB 2.0 is still USB at heart and does have all the cons of USB other than 11MBit per sec transfer rate.