[chihiro]

hi

which is better and faster FireWire 800 vs eSATA when coping files on external hard drive ,please?

thanks

[Big Mac]

eSATA is faster because it's the native interface of the drive, but Firewire is more convenient assuming your Mac has it because no Mac has eSATA out of the box.

[CharlesS]

Get an enclosure that supports all of FW800, USB 2.0, and eSATA. That way, if Apple removes FireWire completely in the future, you can get a new machine and still use your hard drive with eSATA if Apple's added it by then, USB if they haven't.

[Big Mac]

That makes sense. The problem is that such enclosures are far more expensive than straight eSATA enclosures, so it's a lot cheaper to get an eSATA only or eSATA/USB enclosure if your Mac has eSATA. Can you find a triple interface enclosure for less than $150?

[mduell]

eSATA: Simpler (no protocol translation, lower chance of corruption/etc), faster (higher bandwidth and lower latency), and much cheaper.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

That makes sense. The problem is that such enclosures are far more expensive than straight eSATA enclosures, so it's a lot cheaper to get an eSATA only or eSATA/USB enclosure if your Mac has eSATA. Can you find a triple interface enclosure for less than $150?

$150! What, are you buying LaCie or something?
$40 with FW400 or $70 with FW800
But I'd save the $20 and go with USB2/eSATA; I've never seen the appeal of IEEE 1394 for mass storage.

[Big Mac]

Oh, I guess I was thinking about the price I paid for my dual drive enclosure.

[MyMac8MyPC]

Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a Firewire 800 to eSATA cable/adapter?

This week I'm getting a new Macbook Pro and it has Firewire 800, but our enclosure has eSATA so I need some way to connect them... Thanks.

[CharlesS]

I'm sure that such a thing should exist somewhere (after all, that's essentially what's going on inside those FireWire drive enclosures you see), but frankly, if you've got a MacBook Pro and you want to connect an eSATA hard drive, you'll get the best performance if you just get an eSATA ExpressCard and connect it that way.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by MyMac8MyPC 

Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a Firewire 800 to eSATA cable/adapter?

This week I'm getting a new Macbook Pro and it has Firewire 800, but our enclosure has eSATA so I need some way to connect them... Thanks.

$35 eSATA ExpressCard/34 is the way to go.

[B Gallagher]

Since it's plugging into the ExpressCard port, what would the speeds on that eSATA card be like compared with built-in eSATA?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by B Gallagher 

Since it's plugging into the ExpressCard port, what would the speeds on that eSATA card be like compared with built-in eSATA?

About the same; ExpressCard (1x PCI Express, or 250MBps) is faster than your external drive.

[Smokerz]

That's all Bs...in the real world firewire 800 will yeild 68M/sec and sata 71M/sec slightly faster but what you give up is hot swapping and DU losin it on esata partitioning, not always but once would be enough to lose a hard drive.

[CharlesS]

I thought eSATA supported hot swapping.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Smokerz 

That's all Bs...in the real world firewire 800 will yeild 68M/sec and sata 71M/sec slightly faster but what you give up is hot swapping and DU losin it on esata partitioning, not always but once would be enough to lose a hard drive.

While FW800 tops out of 60-80MBps (depends on implementation), I've seen eSATA 3.0Gb/s sustain over 150MBps with a cheap multi-drive enclosure.
eSATA supports hot swapping; some OSs do not. I have no idea what you're talking about with partitioning.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by mduell 

...I've seen eSATA 3.0Gb/s sustain over 150MBps with a cheap multi-drive enclosure.

I'm curious, what was the limitation there? Drive performance, RAID performance, controller, ... ?

[amazing]

shootout:

http://barefeats.com/mbpp10.html

[Ted L. Nancy]

I was mildly surprised that Apple didn't include eSATA on the new MBPs. I realize that much depended on space to put things, but I would have been less surprised if eSATA replaced a USB port or even the FW800 port, given that Apple has a history of being forward-looking and able to argue that the older technologies could be supported via the card slot.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Simon 

I'm curious, what was the limitation there? Drive performance, RAID performance, controller, ... ?

Likely the RAID controller; this was just with the cheap SiI RAID10 chips.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Ted L. Nancy 

I was mildly surprised that Apple didn't include eSATA on the new MBPs. I realize that much depended on space to put things, but I would have been less surprised if eSATA replaced a USB port or even the FW800 port, given that Apple has a history of being forward-looking and able to argue that the older technologies could be supported via the card slot.

I think eSATA should be included with pro Macs. At the latest when bus-powered eSATA becomes prevalent.

But at the same time it's those pro Macs that can be easily expanded (PCIe cards, EC/34 cards). And I think it's better to give people the choice of getting such a card than forcing an extra port onto everybody (IMHO the same applies to FW800). So it's really the iMac I think needs the eSATA port. It's being bought by people who could make use of it and at the same time there's no expansion options to add it later.

But I'm guessing Apple's stance is that it's not really required with USB3 on the horizon. Sure eSATA is more efficient than USB3 (no bridge required) but with disks coming nowhere near the 3 Gbps USB3 will be pushing (in theory it's 4.8 Gbps, but you can cut that number in half for real-world performance) that won't really be a concern. Also thanks to USB's popularity cost will be low and it's quite likely the extra bridge chip cost can easily be offset by savings due to production scale. I'm pretty certain Apple already came to the conclusion the consumer market simply doesn't need eSATA. And the pros can add it if they want.