Great Debate: USB2.0 vs. Firewire

[Red96TA]

The 'quoted facts' for each shows USB2.0 ahead at 480mbps, while Firewire gets 400mbps...

As always, there are folks who swear the opposite....

[sitlet]

yes, theoretically usb 2.0 is faster than firewire, but firewire is much more stable than usb.

[thayne]

USB 2 isnt faster than Firewire 800..... 8)

[redwudz]

Just opinion, but I tried an external burner with my laptop and USB2 worked fine for CD, but choked on DVD burning. Firewire, even with my cheap laptop card worked first time,every time, no problems. I suppose it depends on the card, but Firewire gets my vote. If you are looking for an external box, get one with USB2 and Firewire. Might cost a few more dollars, but you should have a lot less problems.

[Faustus]

yes, theoretically usb 2.0 is faster than firewire, but firewire is much more stable than usb.

Also I can give an example of Using USB2.0 on a PC from personal experiance.

"YARG!... why does it say its a high speed device on a low speed port!?"
15min later....
"There now you work stupid hard drive!"


Example with Firewire...
"POOF! Done, I love you firewire!"


Who cares about 80mbps when the difference in easy of use is just HUGE.

[VideoTechMan]

USB is fine for basic stuff like keyboards (why a keyboard when most puters have a PS2 port), scanners, digital camera card readers, things like that that arent data-intensive. But when it comes to video work and heavy data crunching, or transferring in this case Firewire has my vote. USB you have too many issues having to deal with drivers and wondering whethere it will work properly....Firewire you pretty much plug it in and go and is more stable. And the 80mbps difference between the two interfaces isnt too much of a difference to make anyone scream.

VTM

[indolikaa]

Firewire.

[Cobra]

Firewire sounds much more cool, anyway.

[cjb1118]

More PC's have USB2 than Firewire, but I'd still say Firewire. 8)

[rallynavvie]

Bless Apple for bestowing upon us PC users the power of FireWire

A few things I've noticed between FireWire and USB2.0: as some have stated an external drive works so much better with FireWire than with USB2.0 (which I thought was only supposed to be 200Mbps transfer speeds for some reason), I believe FireWire can chain more devices to it, you can make a LAN using FireWire without any special adapters, and I've yet to see a DV camcorder that accepts commands from the computer via USB (only seen this done when connected with the FireWire cable). And with FireWire 800 out it leaves plenty of room for growth.

I heard a rumor that the next HDD technology is supposed to use a FireWire-like data interface instead of SATA or SCSI. But when will our computers be able to utilize that much bandwidth? Are 64-bit systems faster on bus speeds now?

[The village idiot]

Has anyone noticed how USB2 seems to eat a large protion of your computer's resources? At least with the one machine I have that has a USB2 controller. Something like 10% of the ram, and it also seems to require processor cycles, even if nothing is connected to the port. Maybe it's just my hardware. I don't even install the USB2 drivers now.

[waheed]

yes, theoretically usb 2.0 is faster than firewire

Only in theory.

Many people beleive that USB 2 is faster than Firewire but actually the opposite is true.

IN THEORY, USB 2 operates at 480mbps and Firewire at 400mbps but only in theory. These are the MAXIMUM operational speeds, i.e. speeds at which the maximum would reach, not normal operational speeds. in practice it would operate at a much lower speed. i read in a computer magazine that Firewire IN PRACTICE operates faster than UBS 2. (cant rememeber what normal speeds are) Compare with internet speeds, a 512K broadband connection does not always run at 512K, but usually at, say 200-300K. the same is true for Firewire and USB 2.

And yes, Firewire is much more stable than USB 2

[Faustus]

Well USB 2.0 onboard vs. Firewire on a PCI card does give USB an edge, there was a writeup on it in a PC magazine months ago. HOWEVER firewire is just WAY easier to work with.

As far as compairing the stats straight up its kinda like IDE vs.SCSI from way back in the day. One is more of a Pro bus and it shows. A 4x IDE cdrom drive would slowly copy data over at about 4x, while a SCSI 4x CDrom drive would show a steady progress bar the entire time... no jumps or stutters just... vrrooooooooooom done.

[Baldrick]

TGPO going to the pRono shop...
1 Tbps!

[ChrisX]

I got only one computer having firewire connection available.

I wouldn't know which is the fastest as I haven't compared the difference yet. I can buy a PCI firewire card for another computer?

What a firewire would connect too? Give me an example?

[mujahid7ia]

Firewire sounds much more cool, anyway.

yeah, but Firewire is registered by Apple so any companies who wnat to write "FireWire" on the boxes of their products have to pay royalties to Apple. Same thing with "i.Link" and Sony. IEEE 1394 is a bit unwieldly.

IMO, this is one of the reasons USB 2.0 is more widely used/supported. People don't know what the hell FireWire and i.Link and IEEE 1394 and stuff are, and they'll never figure out it's all the same, so they'll just go with a sure thing like USB.

[BJ_M]

firewire all the way-- i have firewire 1394b now (800 speed) on many external drives and awesome !

[ChrisX]

IMO, this is one of the reasons USB 2.0 is more widely used/supported. People don't know what the hell FireWire and i.Link and IEEE 1394 and stuff are, and they'll never figure out it's all the same, so they'll just go with a sure thing like USB.

Not many people know about firewire and I know very little about it except the speed as think should be faster than USB 2.0.

I have to research on this?

[Faustus]

I got only one computer having firewire connection available.

I wouldn't know which is the fastest as I haven't compared the difference yet. I can buy a PCI firewire card for another computer?

What a firewire would connect too? Give me an example?

Firewire ports on digital camcorders. Firewire hard drives, you can make a 400mbps network using a firewire cable between 2 computers. All sorts of things.

[Red96TA]

It's weird...

I use USB2.0 for my MP3 Player and Firewire for my miniDV....the speeds are comparable with eachother, but in the experience I had, installing the USB2.0 card was a PITA.

USB2.0 required SP1 (which BTW messed up the stability of my computer) After install, I started running into conflicts with the on-board USB ports (1.1) and the new USB card (2.0)....now, I have to use the on-board USB ports to UL from my camera and the USB2.0 card to UL onto my MP3 player. In theory, the 2.0 card should be completely backward compatible with my 1.1 camera

In contrast, I installed a CHEAP $5 Firewire and a CHEAPER $1.50 cable and UL from my miniDV with absolutely NO problems. Plugged in the card, XP said 'ok' and it was all over.

Long live Firewire...

[lynnsabcs]

I own a Pioneer A04 in a firewire enclosure and just bought an A06 in a USB 2 enclosure. The firewire enclosure was plug and play. The USB had software issues with RecordNow Max. Of course, RNM doesn't list the A06 as a supported drive.

Now that I have it working, burning a 4X, I like it.

LynnsABCs

[Conquest10]

"YARG!... why does it say its a high speed device on a low speed port!?"
15min later....
"There now you work stupid hard drive!"

I hate that. I was copying files the other day and the window just closed. It popped up saying cannot access the device. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Rebooted and tried again. Started fine but again shutdown. Then that high speed on low speed port shit came up. But the other devices I got hooked up on the same card work fine. I had to disconnect from the port and hook up through usb hub and haven't gotten problems anymore. Arg!

[RabidDog]

Firewire has been going for far longer..
re Usb2.0 problems... arent there different cables for usb1.1 and usb2.0? I know the plugs and sockets are the same.. also might it be that if you plug a 1.1 and a 2.0 into the same controller then it only works at the lower speed?? I might be wrong??

[slimmx]

I am going with firewire just because that is the only one I got out of 2. I have a firewire port on my audigy card which I use with my Ipod. FIREWIRE!!!!!

[Hardcoreruss]

Firewire here, both my external maxtors on it, never a problem.

[jeex]

usb was good when it first came out and there wasnt much competition except serial and parallel.. i used to work for HP, and there were some usb chipsets that would not work with their scanners, or the scanner would eventually kill the usb port or usb port kill the scanner..

various via chipsets & the intel ba/bam chipsets.. anytime anyone would call up and i found up what chipset they had i knew they were in for some bad bad news..

i cant tell you how many times i told people to go buy a usb pci card..

anyhow, back to the subject at hand.. firewire.. usb is a wank.

[vitualis]

For things that would benefit from isochronous transfer (e.g., external HDDs which is pretty all that would matter in terms of USB2 vs Firewire speed comparisons), Firewire is FASTER.

Regards.

[Greg12]

my firewire DRU500A has never failed for lack of data. I love my firewire, I use it at school to transfer files between my laptop and my tv production computer because I don't have a twisted pair and there is only 1 lan port, plus it's faster. I use it for capturing all the time.

[ipgpe13]

I installed a cheap USB2.0 card into my windows XP Computer over a year ago. I run a USB2.0 hub, external hard drive, pda cradle, sony dsc t1 cradle and sony drx 500 ulx with no problems what so ever.

Everything I have plugged into USB2.0 has been plug and play all at high speed.

[rallynavvie]

Well that makes two of you