Firewire vs USB 2

[jared 0]

Which is better - by the looks of the promotional graphs on the USB 2 card box it might be faster than firewire but who can trust a box with a sketchy graph with the explination written in Japanese.

Anyone like to comment. Its likely to be used for video cameras, DVD-rs and external hard drives.

[Plucky 0]

Definately go firewire. Much faster. It's too late to explain, but I do a lot of video editing and it is much, much better and faster than USB2. I believe you need a 1394EEE card and wire to make it work. any decent dig vid cam these days has an outlet for it.

 

What program are you using for your downloads? that also makes a difference.

[snowboard_freak 0]

I haven't had much experience with USB 2 but it would have to beat firewire I reckon. I use it on my Mac, mostly for my iPod and it is damn quick, as it is with video stuff as Plucky has already mentioned.

[nzlegend 1]

I think firewire is better, but USB2 will be more universal. Its the same old story Mac is better but the PC standard more widely used. Also many people get mislead they see USB2.0 offers 480Mbps to Firewires 400Mbps. They think wow USB2.0 is faster, maybe under ideal situations with a super fast computer and fast peripheral device.

And remember Mbps (megabits)is not MBps(megabytes)

divide the number by 8 to get the real Megabyte answer.

I have USB2.0 connecting my External CD-RW and HDD its good enough, but the speed of your computer impacts the speed of transfer. My second computer (older - less spec) is really slow when I hook the USB2 up.

(Both of my computers I have to connect using a USB2.0 PC Card - so that could also slow things down too)

I know all the Video enthusiasts webheads rave about Firewire.

 

I just tested my external HDD, it took 85 secs to transfer a 884Mb video file.

thats 10.4Mb a sec or 83.2Mbps. So as you can see that is way below the promised 480Mbps! ( but still better than than the 12Mbps ceiling of UBS 1.1).

[enderzero 0]

For all intents and purposes it is hard to say one is "faster" than the other. That is not to say that they don't have their own pluses and minuses.

 

Firewire tends to be very fast across the entire bus for point to point data transfer (i.e. good for external hdd). You will most likely see a more sustained high data transfer rate.

 

It is also a little more expensive than USB 2.0 for: cabling, interface, and integration (meaning the hardware might be a tad more as well).

 

USB 2.0 is more common and more systems ship with USB 2.0 integrated than Firewire.

 

It is also backwards compatibe with USB 1.1 meaning you can plug your mouse and keyboard into the same bus as your external hard drive.

 

There are hundreds and hundreds more USB devices from drives and input devices such as joysticks to printers and biometric security.

 

It is much easier to integrate a USB hub into a device than firewire hub, making it considerably more common to daisy-chain devices. Plus USB hubs tend to be cheaper than firewire hubs. If you have an iPod and HDD you will also have to buy a 5000￥ hub to access them both at the same time (assuming you only have a single firewire port).

 

Firewire is the de facto standard for digital video cameras but almost all digital still cameras use USB 1.1.

 

The maximum cable length for firewire is 4.5 meters. USB 2.0 is 5 meters and USB 1.1 is 3 meters.

 

There are 2 types of firewire cables/connectors. One is 6 pin and one is a much smaller 4 pin. The 6 pin provides power and the 4 pin does not. This means that if you have an iPod hooked up to your computer via a 4 pin firewire cable it will not charge the iPod at the same time. With a 6 pin it will.

 

I personally like firewire a lot. However most of the things I have just listed here seem to point to USB 2.0 as a slightly better choice. To me it seems like kinda a toss up. I have a firewire external hdd and an iPod. My notebook is my first computer I have had with firewire built in. I have had a couple computers with USB 2.0 and of course USB 1.1 has been a standard on all PCs for 6 years.

 

Neither one is going anywhere soon so get whatever you can get a better deal on or whatever is already in your computer. However, 1394b AKA Firewire 800 is on its way out now which will offer double the transfer rates (theoretically).

 

Hope something in here helps.