a blond black moment

photocat

What is faster: USB 800 or firewire? I think the latter, but did too much computing today, so my mind is fried.
I got my new iMac 24 inch today, and am so happy with it... Beautiful screen, the glossy one, and fast!

Anyone knows an answer to my above question?
Thanks ;o)))

blalor

photocat wrote:

What is faster: USB 800 or firewire? I think the latter, but did too much computing today, so my mind is fried.
I got my new iMac 24 inch today, and am so happy with it... Beautiful screen, the glossy one, and fast!

Anyone knows an answer to my above question?
Thanks ;o)))

I don't think there is such a thing as "USB 800". There's USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800. USB 2.0 is rated at 480 Mb/s (that's megabit, not byte); FireWire 400 at 400 Mb/s; FireWire 800 at 800 Mb/s. Despite USB 2.0's faster rating, in practice it is slower than even FireWire 400 because USB requires more of your computer's processing power to manage the data transfer. With FireWire, more of the processing is handled by the interface logic chips.

Congrats on the new iMac!

photocat

blalor wrote:

I don't think there is such a thing as "USB 800". There's USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800. USB 2.0 is rated at 480 Mb/s (that's megabit, not byte); FireWire 400 at 400 Mb/s; FireWire 800 at 800 Mb/s. Despite USB 2.0's faster rating, in practice it is slower than even FireWire 400 because USB requires more of your computer's processing power to manage the data transfer. With FireWire, more of the processing is handled by the interface logic chips.

Congrats on the new iMac!

Thanks Mate... I meant firewire 800. I have an s800 slot for the first time, but had no clue of cable. I found the cable in the box of my external HD that I upto now always used on firewire 400. (The normal firewire cable).
My brain cell is definitely fried. Thanks for your speedy answer, my disk is happily spinning now on the firewire800.

pathfinder

I agree, and I think most Mac users, feel that Firewire 800 is far superior to USB 2.0.

Not that USB 2.0 is terrible, just not as fast in the real world as Firewire 800.

blalor

pathfinder wrote:

I agree, and I think most Mac users, feel that Firewire 800 is far superior to USB 2.0.

Not that USB 2.0 is terrible, just not as fast in the real world as Firewire 800.

Actually, USB 2.0 is slower in practice than FireWire 400.

photocat

I am amazed at the speed that lightroom builds up the catalog now, as I save all my images on an external disk. Before I spent a LOT of time waiting...
My previous iMac did not have the firewire 800. I am quickly catching up now!
Thanks for the answers to all of you!

DJ-S1

Firewire 3200 was announced as well as USB 3.0. Any early thoughts on how they stack up?

blalor

DJ-S1 wrote:

Firewire 3200 was announced as well as USB 3.0. Any early thoughts on how they stack up?

Can't say until they're available for purchase, but I bet the promised vs. delivered bandwidth ratio will remain similar between the two. Oh, and FW3200's backwards compatible. USB 3.0 apparently is not. But I'm just speculatin'.

Newsy

blalor wrote:

Can't say until they're available for purchase, but I bet the promised vs. delivered bandwidth ratio will remain similar between the two. Oh, and FW3200's backwards compatible. USB 3.0 apparently is not. But I'm just speculatin'.

IBM PC Users curently considering an external drive for backups or photo archives should be looking for an eSATA port, faster than either Firewire 800 or USB2.0.

Heres a nice summary of the various external buses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#eSATA_in_comparison_to_other_external_buses

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