USB 2.0 or Firewire?

[crokett]

My brother is looking for an external HDD and/or possibly a DVD burner for his laptop. As far as I know his laptop only has USB v1.x Assuming he will get a PCMCIA card should he go with USB 2.0 or Firewire for his external devices? He is looking to store .mp3 files and use the DVD burner for backing things up.

I do not know a great deal about Firewire. The attraction for USB is it is more or less plug n play - he is not all that knowledgeable regarding computers.

[sacherjj]

For video editing, I use ADS external drive tanks. I need to have 2 terabytes online sometimes, to do final renders. I use both Firewire and USB2. I get far better transfer rates with Firewire and seem to have less issues with it. While USB2 has a higher theoretical throughput, most people get better actual with Firewire. That being said, in your brother's case, I would go with USB2. The reason is that it is more compatible. It can be used with slowere USB 1.0/1.1 machines, it just won't be fast. This can be handy at times, when needing to copy some files off of an older computer. Also more devices are USB, so the USB 2 will probably speed up other things as well.

[LinuxRandal]

PC or MAC?
Dvd burner, USB on PC, 1394 (Firewire TM) on MAC
For the Hard drive, they have some that are in an external case, with a network port (if he uses things like high speed net access and has a router). Or go USB, but with the network one, you could plug it into a hub, with the laptop, and use the dvd burner, through the usb at the same time. There are also external cases, that you put your own drive in (dvd, hard drive, etc) that have BOTH USB and 1394 (Firewire).

[sacherjj]

I use the dual mode ADS drive tanks. One thing I forgot to mention. My first external hard drives were the smaller ones from the drive manuf. (Maxtor, Western Digital, etc.) The problem with these is the on/off switch is the dinky little cord that plugs into the back. There were too many times that the cord wiggled loose. The ADS drivetank has a standard computer power connector and an on/off switch. That way you don't have to pull the cord to power down.

There really isn't a Firewire push for Mac anymore. All new Macs are USB centric, and iPods come with USB instead of Firewire now. I think Apple realized that Firewire lost the battle for the masses.

[jziegler]

Honestly, for what he's using it for, a USB 2 drive connected to the laptop's USB 1 port should do the job OK. MP3 files don't need a lot of bandwidth to transfer, so the higher speed isn't important. As for backups, yeah, they will take a long time, but it's also something that you can start and walk away from (or do overnight). If it ends up being too slow, that's when you get the USB 2 PCMCIA card.

Of course, the network drive isn't such a bad idea either. That can be pretty fast too.

Jim

[TJG]

If it's a choice of one or the other, I would go with USB 2.0 because more devices support it, and it will serve the needs well. Choosing one or the other will save some cash when buying the adapter card, but there are adapter cards that have both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports. They run a little more, but they are still reasonable. I've seen ADS and Adaptec USB/Firewire PCMCIA cards, and I'm sure other brands probably have them as well.

[crokett]

Hmm... hadn't thought about a networked HDD. I don't suppyse they make networked DVD burners? A hub doesn't cost all that much if he doesn't have one.

thanks for the info - I will recommend USB 2.0 device and tell him better performance if he springs for the 2.0 card.

[sacherjj]

One other thing to consider is if the laptop supports two slots, a USB card will typically stick out. You can then only use a slim card with a dongle attached.

I believe I have a USB2 card for a laptop sitting around. If you go that route, let me know. I would be willing to let it go for just over postage.

[dlminehart]

I believe that one basic difference between FireWire and USB is that the USB throughput is dependent on the CPU speed of your computer, while FireWire is not. With a fast enough CPU (e.g., 2GHz+), throughput will be pretty similar.

[LinuxRandal]

Forwarning as a backup drive (throughput)

I should mention something on the throughput issue. I have an mp3 player that acts like an external hard drive. It is USB 2.0 and when transfering large amounts of data your transfer can flood the write buffers, and you will only go as fast as the DRIVE itself, will let you. I believe they use a 4200 rpm in this player (Iriver) for the heat issues, so it is a slower, 2.5mm drive.

[LCHIEN]

for general use the USB version will be muchmore flexible
with the plug and play and mostly the fact that every computer in the last four or five years running Win 2000 and XP can communicate with the drive. Firewire is ,much, much less available, maybe 10% or less of computer support this (I suspect its much less).

Firewire may give better speed, perhaps, but if you can't connect it to
other computers easily or intend to just use it with one computer, why not just buy a FAST internal drive.

The key to USB is the portability in terms of both weight/ease of transport AND the ease of connecting to other computers.

[drumpriest]

I have many firewire devices. Standard "firewire" is 400mbps, where-as USB2 is 480 mbps. There is a firewire spec for 800 mbps.

I personally have 2 firewire hard drives, a firewire DVD burner, a firewire video editing system, and most importantly, a firewire digital audio interface.

I regularly stuff 8 tracks of 24 bit 96 khz audio data across a single firewire bus to a firewire hard drive. Both firewire and USB2 have ample throughput for miniDV video editing, which is about as good as it gets for a home user.

Some devices are only available in each of the formats. For instance, you arn't going to find any USB2 DAWs (digital audio interfaces). Video editing is mostly a firewire standard.

Also, firewire probably has much better than 10% of market saturation on computers made over the past several years. It may be called IEEE 1394, or iLink, depending upon which company makes the computer.

Either is a fine choice for a PC, as they are both easily added if not stock available. In laptops, Loring is probably correct, if you get the cheapest dell, it'll have USB, and not firewire.

USB 1.1 - 11 MBPS
USB 2.0 - 480 MBPS
FIREWIRE400 - 400 MBPS
FIREWIRE800 - 800 MBPS

Average data rate of miniDV video is somewhere around 3.5 megs/sec or 28 mbps.

[mpc]

I have a couple of those external disk drive cases... that have both USB2 and Firewire (400) connectors. The throughput for long backup jobs is slightly better with Firewire (cuts backup time by ~10%). But adding a USB 2.0 hub to the computer will make it talk to many more devices compared to adding Firewire.

Firewire's strength is continuous data - e.g. video. USB is a "packet" style protocol with a lot more overhead... on the order of 20% of the available bandwidth is gobbled up by overhead. So that "480 Mbs" rating of USB 2.0 is really on the order of 400 Mbs just like basic Firewire.

Adding USB 2 to any PC is a smart move; adding Firewire makes the most sense for video editor or video camera buffs.

What op sys is running on the system? Win98SE supports Firewire directly; USB 2.0 support can be added via drivers included with the USB card. As I recall, Windows NT and 2000 are similar. XP supports USB 2.0 natively, or maybe it's XP + Service Pack 1.

mpc