What is Firewire?

[brewerbob]

I'm looking for a link about firewire. What is it, how much is it, pros vs. cons etc. You can help educate the ignorant masses, start with me!!

 

[BeauJangles]

It's like USB, only faster. The downside to it is that it isn't as supported as USB. Sorry I don't know much more then that.

 

[brewerbob]

My uncle does video editing and says he has a HDD plugged into it. I thought the bottleneck was the seek time of the drive not the xfer rate. What am I missing?

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

dont jump on my ass if this isnt right, but i think USB 1.0 is like 1.x megs a second, where firewire is something like 400.

 

[John]

What is firewire?

 

[brewerbob]

BrunoPuntzJones
i think USB 1.0 is like 1.x megs a second, where firewire is something like 400. You were close; USB 12M , Firewire 400M.

John
Thanx for the link. I've only gotten as far as the above info but I am reading the rest now.

 

[LXi]

<<My uncle does video editing and says he has a HDD plugged into it. I thought the bottleneck was the seek time of the drive not the xfer rate. What am I missing?>>

Uh... no. When you're dealing with only 1 or 2 files, you're not going to do a lot of seeking anyway. The big challenge is to transfer these humongous files at a quicker time, so the transfer rate becomes the important thing.

 

[brewerbob]

Still nothing about HDD trying to keep up (seek times). The write-up was a little too non-weenie, I would have like a few more details with out the PhD desertation (spelling isn't my thing, obviously).

 

[Oyeve]

A very potent drink given to native americans hundreds of years ago to get them drunk so we can steal their land. Oh..........I thought you said Firewater.

 

[brewerbob]

LXi
I think I'm gettig to the problem now. In order to xfer a file doesn't the HDD have to "seek" where the file is? And also "seek" the info in the file?

Or are you telling me there is a seek time and read/write time? In either case I thought the bottleneck was the drive not the pathway.

 

[CQuinn]

I think you are confusing different aspects of hard drive performance.

>> In order to xfer a file doesn't the HDD have to "seek" where the file is?

Yes, that is placing the read/write heads over the section of the drive that the data is stored in, and waiting for the platter to spin
around to the spot where that data starts.

>> And also "seek" the info in the file?

No, once the head is in postion, it only needs to read or write the data, the time involved for this is too small to be counted.
That is reffered to as sustained transfer, since the heads don't have to be moved (much) for this action.

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In a nutshell, USB (1.0) (Invented by Intel) was a replacement for standard PC serial and Parallel connections like for your Mouse,
Keyboard, Printer, some scanners, and such devices. It was considered an improvement over the slower speeds of serial and
parallel ports, but not fast enough to handle tasks like real-time video streaming. It also runs using the CPU to process data.
USB is 12Megabits per second maximum transfer, or about 1.5Megabytes per second. In the real world you hardly ever
get close to the maximum transfer rate.

Firewire (IEEE1394), was designed (by Apple) as a replacement for proprietary high performance connections that were used
for such things as direct transfer of data from a digital video camera to a workstation. Each Firewire device has an independant
controller to handle data tranfer; this helped the initial spec have a faster rate than USB 1.0, and allows devices to work indepently
from the CPU, but also made Firewire devices more expensive. And since more people use the lower-speed devices, USB gained
early popularity. While Firewire was built more into cameras and high-end AV equipment (and Macs).
Firewire is 400Megabits per second maximum transfer, or about 50 Megabytes per second.

There is some overlap in the devices that can be used with both standards, which is why you can see some items that have
USB and Firewire versions, or have both connectors on the single device. But Firewire gives such devices a much higher
max speed to work with, and is more than fast enough for an external hard drive or other such device as a storage point.

The advantage for your Uncle is not the speed though, as any ATA100 or SCSI-3 connection will still offer more bandwidth.
The advantage is it gives speed and expandability without having to open up the case on his system to place another
drive inside. And portability if he needs to take that video work with him to another machine.

USB 2.0, is a new revision of the USB spec that increases the speed of the bus to about 480 Megabits (60 MB/s), which will
bring it into the same range as Firewire. But USB 2.0 devices are just starting to appear, and there as some disadvantages
in switching over to it from USB 1.0 or Firewire. There is a planned update to the Firewire spec as well.