ATAPI versus 1394 drive connection?

[plange]

I am waiting to buy the new Sony DRU-500A dual DVD drive. There will be an internal drive with an ATAPI connection and an external drive through a Firewire connection. Which is preferable which I am assuming means faster?

Specs for external drive read state: Burst data transfer rate: 480 mbit/sec max versus 33.3 MB/s max for internal drive. An industry presentation states 400Mbits/s=50Mbytes/s. Is that right? If so then Firewire should be faster I guess.

Thanks.

[Greg12]

Answer me these questions 3.

1.) Do you have a IDE jumper free inside your computer?
2.) Would you like to be able to use the drive with any firewire equiped computer?
3.) Is the ability to move the drive worth an extra $100US.

If you answer Yes to number 1 and No to 2 and 3, go for ATAPI IDE.

If you answer Yes to 2 and 3, go for firewire.

Firewire can match ATAPI IDE for burning needs, you wont be limited in speeds. Firewire can handel 48x burning.

[The village idiot]

I have found no dis-advantages so far (other than the extra cost).

[sterno]

Just a note for those who might not know: Pretty much every Firewire drive on the market today is just an internal IDE drive in an external box with a Firewire-IDE bridge controller. Furthermore, all of them use one of a small handful of available bridges (there used to only be two, but I think there are a few more now). You can pretty much assume that they'll all work similarly.