usb 2.0 vs. firewire

Phate321

New Member
ok, so when i am transfering files and such over to an external drive i am only getting about 18-20 mb/s through firewire. thats the same speeds as i am getting with usb 2.0. i know firewire is faster, but why wouldnt it be going faster? ive tried many external hard drives, all go the same speed at about 18mb/s. my comp has an asus a8n sli-premium board and a cooler master c5 case. so the firewire ports im using have to be good cause all go the same speed. is there any settings that let you adjust or something?
 
firewire 400 = 400 Mb/s = 50MB/s
firewire 800 = 800 Mb/s = 100MB/s
USB = 480 Mb/s = 60MB/s

These speeds are just the maximum or standard for the interface. They mean nothing if your HDD is slow, or you are writing to a fragmented drive, there can be tons of reasons why you're files are slow, but dont blame USB or Firewire.
(i.e. there arent any consumer grade HDDs that can keep up with SATA interface speeds of 3.0Gb/s (375MB/s))

Its most likely that your external HDD is a 5400 rpm drive or just slower spinning drive in general.
 
There is a new interface, I think its called eSATA, it allow you to plug your SATA drive in. I think is pretty cool, the speed are amazing.
 
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