which is REALLY faster: firewire or usb 2.0?

[Beyond]

so i'm about to put about 15 gigs of music on an ipod, and i obviously want the method that will be the fastest.

i always thought firewire was faster, but then someone told me that usb 2.0 was much faster... that firewire was made to compete with usb 1.1.

now i'm reading different things everywhere, such as although firewire's speeds are slower than usb, that their architecture pushes them way beyond usb.

i've read that it all depends on what kind of transferring you're doing..

what should i believe????

 

[Motoxrdude]

i would use firewire. Thats what i use and it is way faster then usb.

 

[Dr Studly]

i have used both and firewire is faster but i personally haven't noticed it as being WAY faster...
but i also have a slow PC so...

 

[The_Other_One]

Firewire... Just look around, there are benchmarks that show this.

I think I read somewhere that it's 15%-25% faster...

 

[spacedude89]

I heard that USB 2.0 was faster for burst data transfer, and Firewire was better for sustained data transfer.

 

[Bun]

sorry, whats firewire? is it a portable device like USB? Anyone got a link of a pic of firewire?

 

[Lamilia]

this is USB http://www.elecom.co.jp/news/200306/usb-extension/image/USB-EAM1_01_L.jpg
and this is firewire
http://www.yano-el.co.jp/support/info/img/firewire.jpg
I could only find good pictures from japanese website as you can see

 

[Verve]

Firewire has more bandwidth, correct? So shouldn't it be faster?

 

[Bun]

lol thanks they look a bit similar

 

[Lamilia]

lol thanks they look a bit similar

no problem. yeah I guess they kind of do. The only problem with firewire that I have is nothing uses it. I've looked all over websites looking for something I could use that has firewire and I haven't found a single thing. I know Ipods have an adaptor you can buy to make it use firewire instead.

 

[suprasteve]

firewire is supposed to be faster, as many others have already stated

 

[apj101]

USB supports three data rates.

-A Low Speed rate of 1.5 Mbit/s (183 KiB/s) that is mostly used for Human Interface Devices (HID) such as keyboards, mice and joysticks.
-A Full Speed rate of 12 Mbit/s (1.4 MiB/s). Full Speed was the fastest rate before the USB 2.0 specification and many devices fall back to Full Speed. Full Speed devices divide the USB bandwidth between them in a first-come first-served basis and it is not uncommon to run out of bandwidth with several isochronous devices. All USB Hubs support Full Speed.
-A Hi-Speed rate of 480 Mbit/s (57 MiB/s).


FireWire 400 can transfer data between devices at 100, 200, or 400 Mbit/s data rates (actually 98.304, 196.608, or 393.216 Mbit/s, but commonly referred to as S100, S200, and S400).

Although USB2 claims to be capable of higher speeds (480Mbit/s), FireWire is, in practice, faster. Cable length is limited to 4.5 metres but up to 16 cables can be daisy chained yielding a total length of 72 meters under the specification.

 

[Shinsle]

According to this site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/learnmore/jones_02august05.mspx

USB 2.0 has higher data transfer than Firewire with 480 Mbps as opposed to Firewire's 400 Mbps. There may well be a difference in "burst" transfer and "sustained" transfer. Anyway, the site looks legit and should be a good starting place for you. Hope this helps.

Shinsle

 

[Emperor_nero]

According to this site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/learnmore/jones_02august05.mspx

USB 2.0 has higher data transfer than Firewire with 480 Mbps as opposed to Firewire's 400 Mbps. There may well be a difference in "burst" transfer and "sustained" transfer. Anyway, the site looks legit and should be a good starting place for you. Hope this helps.

Shinsle

Please don't revive long dead threads, you will find it's not appreciated here.

 

[Kill Bill]

The firewire 800 like in my MBP beats 2.0 by far