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  1. Member
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    I am looking for a external hard drive to put HD movies on. What is faster USB Firewire or eSata?


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    Tomshardware had a very good article on this. Here is the link.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-firewire-esata,2534.html
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  3. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    eSATA is fastest overall, and should give you speeds close to an internal drive.
    Firewire is faster than USB II for sustained transfers (i.e. larger files).
    USB II is more universal, and can be accessed by a range of devices, including consoles and media players that do not support firewire or eSATA.
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  4. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by neworldman View Post
    I am looking for a external hard drive to put HD movies on. What is faster USB Firewire or eSata?


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    Compressed HD files require little in sustained rate. Even BluRay requires only 35 Mb/s ( ~10MB/s) maxiimum sustained rate. Even the slowest laptop drive can handle that as can all three of the connection standards.

    "Fastest" would only apply to copying files. eSATA is fastest but most media players want USB2.
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  5. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    eSATA would be exactly the same speed as an internal drive. All mine are. I have both SATA>eSATA backplane adapters (Those use the SATA specification) and real eSATA directly from the motherboard and another from a PCI eSATA adapter. The eSATA specification uses differently designed shielded cables and connectors, along with higher driving voltages and higher sensitivity that allows 2 meter cables. SATA allows only 1 meter cables.

    I don't use FireWire much lately, but both FW and USB 2.0 have been fast enough for all my HD playback. But FireWire and SATA are faster for data transfers.
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