Firewire VS. eSATA/eSATA II - which would you rather have?

[Cyrax9]

Not sure whether to put this in the computers section or the DV and HDV section, so I'm putting it here since it could fit under either one of them. Which would you rather see on your Camcorders and/or Hard Drives in the future? While USB 2.0 is pretty much standard on all HDDs, Firewire 400 is pretty much the standard on all cameras. Firewire 400 is faster than any USB format so up until now it's made no sense not to use firewire for DV. But wait! Here comes HD video and a whole new can of worms.

Firewire 800 has been around for awhile (I've had a drive with Firewire 800 since 2005) and is supposedly great for transferring HDV and DVCProHD footage as well as "other HD video" according to some manufacturers of drives and cameras. And then there's external Serial ATA, or eSATA and eSATA II as they're more commonly known with transfer rates of 1.5G/Bps and 3.0G/Bps respectively.

To put things in perspective USB 1.1 has a transfer rate of 12MBps, USB 2.0 has a transfer rate of 400MBps, Firewire 400 has a transfer rate of 480MBps, Firewire 800 has a transfer rate of 800MBps, eSATA (A.K.A. eSATA I) has a transfer rate of 1.5GBps, and eSATA II has a transfer rate of 3GBps.

So my question is this: With more and more cameras shooting HD footage, and subsequently taking up more space on a computer's HDD, and the need for faster transfer's and back-ups, which of the upcoming "cable standards" would you like to see replace our aging Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 connections on our hard drives and cameras -- Firewire 800, or eSATA/eSATA II?

EDIT: Forgot to post my choice. I'd personally like to see eSATA II. I just purchased two VANTEC NexStar 3 HDD Enclosures from Directron.com with USB 2.0 and an eSATA/eSATA II connection, complete with an eSATA to SATA PCI connection bracket for a standard PC tower, and eSATA cable to go with a 500GB Maxtor eSATA II hard drive to back up the work from my TV Classes as well as my RAW footage. Having moved 100GB worth of video-related data and footage on Firewire 400 to a Western Digital "MyBook" (the labs lack USB 2.0,) and subsequently copying my footage from said MyBook to the Maxtor drive in the Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure via USB 2.0 I can honestly say that the very idea of eSATA II connectivity is something I cannot wait for and would love to have on a camera. With more and more footage being shot to hard drives and P2 flash cards, the idea of being able to take an eSATA II connection and move several GB worth of HD video over eSATA II at a blazing 3Gbps is simply something I'm sold on. The footage I moved was SD footage and I'd have loved to have done that transfer in about 10 minutes using eSATA II rather than roughly three hours or more using Firewire 400 and then another three hours or so transferring it via USB 2.0 -- to me Firewire 800 has already been surpassed in speed with the ability to transfer at 1.5GBps using eSATA, let alone 3Gbps using eSATA II, thus my vote goes to eSATA. I only hope camcorder manufacturers start standardizing eSATA on both DVCProHD and HDV cameras, it'd seriously make me much more willing to switch to HD right now, even if it means paying a little more than I would in a year or two.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Well, if you are shooting HDV, the data rate is the same as DV, so there's no need to "upgrade".

Even USB 2.0 should support the sustained 100Mbps required for DVCProHD.

All my external drives have USB 2.0 and FireWire 400. I prefer to use the USB 2.0 and leave my PC's FireWire interfaces free for my DV equipment.

I have never had problems capturing to USB 2.0 (including 3 DV streams at the same time from 3 separate camcorders).

[TBoneit]

You do have your USB2 and firewire 400 speeds reversed, partial quote from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus

"The signaling rate of USB 2.0 Hi-Speed mode is 480 Mbp/s, while the signaling rate of FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a, the slower, yet more common variant of firewire as of 2007) is 393.216 Mbp/s"

and "In practice, FireWire 400 is generally faster than USB 2.0 Hi-Speed mode" And most interesting "With the 4th generation and newer, iPods use USB for data transfer and both USB and Firewire for charging. The Firewire controller chip set has been removed in favour with reduced costs. The iPod Nano and shuffle only support USB"

Cheers