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10/14/2008 09:50:02 PM · #26 |
I'm in the same boat on my laptop ... 4 pins only. I'd love to find a Windows XP laptop that supports the powered FW port, and better yet an 1394b version. I've looked around for a couple of months with no success thus far.
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10/14/2008 09:54:15 PM · #27 |
Originally posted by kirbic:
Before you commit to adding a card for FW800, make sure that the devices that you plan to use will take advantage of the additional speed. They need to be 1394b devices (9-pin connector). If they are 6-pin (1394a) then you will need a physical adapter, and they will still only run at 400Mb/s speed.
1394a is plenty fast enough for the vast majority of operations. In fact, since (unlike USB) it often operates near its rated speed, you can see transfer rates approaching 50MB/s, which is as fast as many hard drives, and faster than almost any existing CF card.
As an example, I have a Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme backup drive attached using 1394a, and I'm seeing real-life 34MB/s on drive-to-drive copy operations for large sets of files of widely varying sizes. Just for grins, I'm going to try attaching that drive using eSATA and see if the transfer rate improves. I'm betting it will not. |
I bet it will :)
I've done it (last year, when I was still PC based.) eSata is much faster than firewire. My new PC should be here tomorrow, so I'll once again be PC based! |
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10/14/2008 10:09:33 PM · #28 |
Originally posted by nshapiro:
I've done it (last year, when I was still PC based.) eSata is much faster than firewire. My new PC should be here tomorrow, so I'll once again be PC based! |
Awww, now I've gotta go and get an eSATA cable! I'll run SiSoft Sandra's disk read tests on it using both interfaces and see what the differences are.
ETA:
Neil may be right, I looked at the performance of this drive with the FW400 connection:
The fact that the transfer rate is independent of position on the media tells me that it is limited by the interface. For grins I checked the internal 1TB drive (also a Seagate) and it peaks at 108MB/s (!). Now I'm interested to see how much improvement an eSATA connection will make for the external.
Message edited by author 2008-10-14 22:32:06. |
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10/14/2008 10:24:17 PM · #29 |
Well, that's good to know anyway... maybe I'll use it for a hard drive in the future.
Originally posted by kirbic:
Originally posted by alanfreed:
I only see 4 pins. |
Cheap bastards, LOL! unpowered port, won't work for a card reader. Will work for things like external hard drives that have separate power sources, though. |
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10/16/2008 10:47:51 PM · #30 |
Well, here's the comparison of the Seagate FreeAgent on 1394a (FIREwire 400) at left vs. the same drive under eSATA on right. Look at the red curves. A 125% gain in transfer speed at one end of the media, and a slight gain at the other. There's a 100% or greater gain over about 40% of the media surface. Neil was right... the eSATA protocol is much faster for this drive.
For a large (1 terabyte), inexpensive ($175 USD) backup drive, this is really great performance.
Edit for typo
Message edited by author 2008-10-16 22:48:14. |
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10/31/2008 04:47:28 PM · #31 |
Just a quick response that may help some people here:
USB has initially faster transfer rate at 480 with firewire being 400. The issue with USB is that its transfer rate is not stable it drops after an initial spike and continues to fluctuate. USB is great for mice, keyboards, and simple devices as such. Firewire is is the more expensive cable and has sustained transfer speeds consistently so does firewire 800, so you will likely after a short period of time find firewire is a much better option if you are downloading alot! :), which I do three times a week.
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