Zip drive with firewire or usb 2.0???

[Jincuteguy]

I want to get an external Zip drive, but I dont know which one is faster
a) Zip drive with Firewire cable
or b) Zip drive with USB 2.0

I saw the transfer rate is the same, but Im not sure in reality they're the same. Any suggestions? thx.
Also, my question is basically general for all external devices that use firewire and usb 2.0.

 

[lameaway]

For the Zip drives the difference is probably nil, because the actual maximum transfer rate of the drive won't really stress either connection. USB2 has a theoretical maximum tranfer rate of 480mbps vs. FireWire's 400, but who knows how that translates into real-world performance. Um... flip a coin?

 

[JHeiderman]

Tomshardware.com did a review a couple months ago (it might have been a year ago at this point) on external harddrives. They tried the drives with Firewire and USB 2.0. Basicaly, even though the firewire was slower on paper it was much lower latency and actually beat USB 2.0 for overall performance and usage.

Not sure if any of this matters for a Zip drive because I am pretty sure a zip is going to be so slow in comparison that either one would be fine.

- J

 

[ViRGE]

Part of that descrepency between USB and Firewire is that USB is host based, meaning that it takes computational effort from the host while in Firewire, the chipset will do all of the work itself. The best analogy would be that USB is WinFirewire(ala the WinModem), although it's not quite that bad.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Part of that descrepency between USB and Firewire is that USB is host based, meaning that it takes computational effort from the host while in Firewire, the chipset will do all of the work itself. The best analogy would be that USB is WinFirewire(ala the WinModem), although it's not quite that bad.

The other problem is that USB 2 IDE chipsets have a brick wall speed limitation in about the 24 MB/s range. The fast Firewire chipsets will do almost 50% more.

But of course for zip, it's irrelevant because the max speed of zip is less than 4 MB/s. Probably more like 2 IIRC.

 

[0roo0roo]

isn't the comparison more like ide to scsi? with firewire being like scsi of ocurse.

 

[ViRGE]

Not really, USB supports an insane number of devices per root port, just like Firewire, so they basically have the same functionality.

 

[Jincuteguy]

So in order to use FireWire, i need the Firewire card and Firewire cables right????

 

[ViRGE]

If you don't already have a firewire port(via either an Audigy, on the mobo, etc), yes, and the same thing goes for the cables. Both should be rather inexpensive.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Are you going to be using this ZIP drive on just your machine or using it on other machines as well(Taking to friends, work, etc)? If just your machine, then Firewire would perfectly suffice and you will have the Firewire ports available for other things down the road(Vid capture, iPod, etc.). If you are going to be using this drive over a number of machines, USB may be the better option as your odds of all the machines you use it on having USB is pretty good. Even if only USB 1.1, as the ZIP drive will be backwards-compatible.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Originally posted by: Jincuteguy
So in order to use FireWire, i need the Firewire card and Firewire cables right????

Yes, But if your PC does not allready have USB 2.0, Then you will still need USB 2.0 card and cables. Both about the same pricewise.

 

[Linux23]

Originally posted by: GonzoDaGr8
Are you going to be using this ZIP drive on just your machine or using it on other machines as well(Taking to friends, work, etc)? If just your machine, then Firewire would perfectly suffice and you will have the Firewire ports available for other things down the road(Vid capture, iPod, etc.). If you are going to be using this drive over a number of machines, USB may be the better option as your odds of all the machines you use it on having USB is pretty good. Even if only USB 1.1, as the ZIP drive will be backwards-compatible.

this is very true, even though I hate anything made by Iomega.