[toffe]

Hi, im about to buy an iBook, and have ordered some equipment aswell.

A 250Gb external hardrive for making backups, and storing digital photos (maby some digital films, but not that often).
When i ordered i tried to look on the web which one is faster usb2.0 or firewire 400.

I saw that usb2.0 should be faster and i ordered such a harddrive
(LaCie 250Gb, designed by porshe with usb 2.0 for �166,90)

but then a friend told me that i should have bougth the one that had firewire 400 instead
(that one was for �181,90) since firewire 400 for mac is faster than usb 2.0

I changed the order, so now an external harddrive of 250Gb for �181,90 is coming to me

(the reason i did'nt buy one with both usb and firewire is that they wer much more expencive, and the reason i want the porsche designed one is that 1. they look cool, 2. i also bougth a LaCie Dual layer dvd-burner, of the same design = you can pile them on top of each other)

I now ask. Did i buy the rigth stuff? - i can still change the order
I will buy an iBook 12"

[Ambassadeur]

I'm pretty sure you did the right thing. If I remember correctly, USB 2.0 is faster according to the specs, but in real life FW 400 beats it by some margin. I do not know why exactly, but there is some technical reason to it...

So relax and look forward to your new iBook. (Typing this on my iBook 12" 1.2 GHz right now - I bet you'll enjoy yours as much as I do mine!)

[broxy5]

There is the isuue in previous thread about only being able to boot from a firewire drive, and you can not from USB.

[D'Espice]

There's exactly two reasons why a Firewire harddrive will be better than a USB 2.0 harddrive. First of all, you will not be able to boot from a USB drive. For some weird reason, Apple did not include the booting code for USB devices in their firmware, hence you can only boot from Internal and External Firewire drives. And second, the Firewire Protocol is capable of DMA, which means that in order to access a Firewire devices, the CPU does not have to do anything. With USB 2.0 however, every disk access command has to be processed by the CPU. You do the math

[toffe]

Ok, thanks. I'm glad i changed the order to firewire.
Knowing what i know now, i would always feel a bit dissappointed if i stuck with the usb.
I'm glad that this forum exists.

[SSharon]

If I remember correctly from another thread the reason that firewire is faster is because usb was initially only intended for low bandwidth devices and was later 'hacked' to go from 12mbps to 480mbps. Firewire on the other hand was always intended for highspeed, contsant file transfers like from digital video and audio sources.
In my own non-scientific tests I get about 30mb/s firewire and about 26 mb/s usb2. These numbers change depending on whether I am sending large video files or thousands of mp3's. When its the mp3's usb closes the margin on speed and I assume its because it is better at burst transfers.

Anyway, you did the right thing so don't worry.

[Ω]

FW is definitely the go. Daisychaining is also a good thing�

[turtle777]

FW

-t

[MrEUser]

I agree that Firewire can be faster than USB2.0. I am just curious. I sware I have seen people boot ibooks from USB connections. I must just be confused..

[tooki]

Originally Posted by D'Espice

There's exactly two reasons why a Firewire harddrive will be better than a USB 2.0 harddrive. First of all, you will not be able to boot from a USB drive. For some weird reason, Apple did not include the booting code for USB devices in their firmware, hence you can only boot from Internal and External Firewire drives. And second, the Firewire Protocol is capable of DMA, which means that in order to access a Firewire devices, the CPU does not have to do anything. With USB 2.0 however, every disk access command has to be processed by the CPU. You do the math

The firmware can do USB booting, but the Mac OS X bootloader doesn't support it.

tooki

[trip]

my 2 cents

1. firewire will help re-sale value a few years dwn the road when USB is obsolete.
2. if you ever intend to hook it up to a digital cable box, firewire ports are enabled and USB ports often are disabled. Obviously you don't need it for that purpose, but it adds to the re-sale value.

You did the right thing. To me it seems like the USB-ports are not integrated as good as the FireWire-port into the system architecture. I use a FireWire-HD for my music collections, and it is much faster than comparable USB-based products.

[toffe]

Thanks a lot guys for the feedback...
I'm still waiting for the delivery. The store had the usb-drives at the store with delivery the same day with on some campain, and the firewire drive had a couple of weeks delivery time. I havent ordered my iBook yet so i'm cool.

[trip]

On this topic, does anyone have any advice on the best product for the best price ?
I too am looking into buying a 250 gb firewire external drive.

PLease & Thanks,

I recommend an enclosure for HDs (3,5") because of better price, more space (2,5" HDs are limited to 100 GB) and the ability to expand space with a new HD. I use a Samsung HD; to me it seems like a good choice. It is pretty quiet.

[hcorf]

firewire connectors also tend to mess up less, i had a usb2 hdd and the connector broke, now i have an 80gb hdd with my old divx collection which is now useless.

can anyone recommend a firewire enclosure with two bays.

Also, i am interested in this daisy chain concept, does it mean i can buy a firewire enclosure, and then attach the ipod to it, so i dont have to swap cables?

Also, anyone tried one of those wifi hdd's? how fast are they? and is there any way to attach a usb2 hdd to an airport extreme box to act as a file server?

[toffe]

Hi all. Just wanted to say that i now have recieved both my external LaCie 250 gb firewire hard drive and my external LaCie d2 DVD burner both designed by porshe.

One thing though, when i bougth them, i thougth that they would be the same size and that you could pile them on top of each other. You can pile similar sizes on top of each other and it'l look nice. But the hard drive was so much smaller than the dvd burner (which isn't bad either) but i tohugth that they would be the sames sizes.

oh well....

Now i just have to order an iBook soon... (my current pc-laptop has only 4-pin firewire)...

Thanks for all the info and help.

[ChasingApple]

Firewire is the way to go, I have used USB 1.1 and 2.0 for a good long time but hands down firewire is way faster, and the computer doesnt come to a standstill while its transfering

Just remember "Target Disc Mode" is your friend once you add another Mac

[0s and 1s]

I love Target Disc Mode....transferring data from old to new Mac is so easy, I even taught my 7yr. old nephew how to do it.

[theTechyDork]

i would pick the firewire one simply because i have more devices for USB, so the HDD wouldn't take up a port that I might need for something else.

[toffe]

Note. On my current laptop i have only usb1, and when i burned a dvd with my new usb 2.0 dvd burner it took 83 minutes....
That says something about usb 1