External Hard Drive Firewire 800 worth $?

B

Breeze

New Member
I am in the market for an external hard drive for a new PC. Is getting one with a Firewire 800 connection worth anything if the PC does not currently have such a connector? Would getting a Firewire PCI card for the PC be worth it? Would it be compatible with Windows 7?

I dont know if the USB 2 connector will be fast enough for backing up data or if the Firewire connection would make that much difference. Is there anyone knowledgeable in this area that can respond?

The Breeze
 
If you're just backing up data and not streaming (say video capturing) any interface would be fine. Certain ones are faster, but there's no real speed requirement to copy a file from point A to B.

I just looked up some reviews. Most current external drives hit a cap around 33MB/s (speed usually averaging around 20-30MB/s). Firewire 800 looks like it averages around 40MB/s-50MB/s. If performance is really going to be a problem, I'd look into eSATA, or just stick with USB.
 
I play 1080p amazing quality movies off of a usb hard drive. Firewire definitely isnt anything i'd buy an adapter for.
 
The_Other_One said:
If you're just backing up data and not streaming (say video capturing) any interface would be fine. Certain ones are faster, but there's no real speed requirement to copy a file from point A to B.

I just looked up some reviews. Most current external drives hit a cap around 33MB/s (speed usually averaging around 20-30MB/s). Firewire 800 looks like it averages around 40MB/s-50MB/s. If performance is really going to be a problem, I'd look into eSATA, or just stick with USB.
Click to expand...

My Firewire 800 drive maxxes out my internal laptop 2.5" 7200rpm drive--ie, ~75-80MB/s. USB/FW 400 is very depressing...though it isn't much of an issue if you're just copying files.
 
Really? Hmm...well I just skimmed around a bit and didn't find too many benchmarks so it's hard to say without too much personal experience... :P
 
If I was to buy an adapter, it would be for eSata then get an eternal eSata enclosure. It won't even cost that much for it since it is just a bracket and sata cable that you plug into a sata port on the motherboard (Providing your mobo has sata ports available). The enclosure I bought for my HDD came with an eSata bracket. They are dirt cheap at around $5-$8.

I run my external HDD with eSata and I don't notice any speed difference from my internal sata HDDs. They are apparently the exact same speed. Only complaint I have is having to turn off my computer before I turn the external HDD off. There are mother boards that support eSata hot swapping though (being able to unplug and plug in when the computer is running).

If your motherboard is older and doesn't have any sata ports you can also get a PCI sata card (with esata and sata ports) which would be a better idea then a PCI Firewire card IMO.
 
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^I'm with him--especially given you can get eSATA externals for decently cheap, as they don't really require much in the way of converting the signals from SATA to FW800, etc.
 
I decided to get an external drive by LeCie that has all four types of connectors. Right now I can only use the USB 2.0 port. I will see how quick it is and if it seems too slow, I will look into getting a PCI card that runs the eSATA, since the consensus appears that it is the fastest of all.

The Breeze
 
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