Posted on 01/17/2009 9:21:59 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Unfortunately I currently don’t have two identical setups to run. One is Firewire 800 and the other USB2. It is also possible you have a cheap Firewire controller. That can impact speeds for either protocol.
The mechanical disks’ days are numbered. “
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doubt it. Unless you are counting those days in tens of thousands.
How do you recover a crashed solid state hard drive?
Also, you got your info all wrong. platter type hard drives use LESS power and are FASTER. They last longer, they’re cheaper, and they hold more data.
The advantage is they are more durable in extreme temps, vibration, and shock...perfect for laptops and other portable devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages
go to section 3.2, disadvantages.
Blame Steve jobs then. We just bought these MacBooks mid-last year.
That looks awesome!
I’d have to see it up close to be sure. But it looks like you have to use an adapter to use a micro card. I don’t like that. It would be better if it took the micro card directly. get rid of those stupid adapters. And then eventually, I would like to see USB replaced by miniUSB.
But according to wiki, SD cards aren’t very fast...maxed out at about 45MB/s. So maybe it’s not such a hot idea.
It is fun, though very tiring, as the teams meet 2-3 times per week, plus my oldest is also in FIRST's FRC league, which also meets multiple times per week.
Lots of fun, and the kids learn a lot about programming--not the nuts and bolts, of course, but at least the generalities of how to design code.
It's possible, but not likely since Apple is one of the champions of Firewire. It's also likely you had a higher-performance or higher-capacity drive in the USB enclosure. I found a comparison (from a company that promotes USB) that used the same IDE drive in two enclosures:
Read Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
Write Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
That is aside from the various other benefits of Firewire, which may or may not apply to you.
That's the problem: the 480 is raw megabits per second of communications, but it has a lot more overhead than the 400, and that overhead eats into the 480. People are usually lucky to get half of that 480 in actual throughput.
I can't test here because my Firewire is a RAID at 800, while the USB is just one disk. It wouldn't be realistic.
I really like that little USB adapter for MicroSD cards because it’s basically as small as they can be made and still work with USB. SD cards aren’t incredibly fast, but they suit my purposes fine. The only problem I have with MicroSD is that the cards are so darned small, you can’t label them very easily!
Over the last few years, the only place I've really seen an advantage with firewire is with video streaming. Anything else, USB 2.0 wins the crown.
The 400 is a different architecture with a different network topology, very little overhead. In reading the article and digging a bit more on USB 3.0, it look like they're going to try to take a couple of features from Firewire. Getting it to go peer-to-peer as I've read is going to be a hack.
It's just the facts: USB was designed to replace the old slow serial and parallel ports, so its architecture was designed for enough speed to run devices you'd have plugged into those, up to 12 Mb/s. Firewire was designed to replace SCSI for high-speed external devices, such as scanners and hard drives, so was designed for high sustained throughput from the beginning.
And I wonder whether they'll finally put a decent amount of power through USB.
I'm just reporting what I've done and seen. This isn't something I've read, something someone else said, or a lopsided unequal test on a stacked deck.
Both external drives are based off of 2.5" drives. Different manufacturers. 320GB firewire vs 500GB USB 2.0. Same sized Intel MacBook image. Same file copied to both drives from the same server. Same version of NetBoot/NetRestore off a Mac OS 10.5 partition on each drive.
Takes about a half hour on the USB and 45 minutes on the firewire.
Could be a Mac driver thing. Could be that there's a hardware glitch with the 320 drive. Could be a lot of things.
But now look at how many desktops, servers, and laptops have USB 2.0 vs. 1394 ports... The market speaks for itself.
Firewire has been full-duplex since 800.
320GB firewire vs 500GB USB 2.0.
There's the problem. The larger hard drive has more density or more platters, which are factors in how fast they can write data. File write speeds vary by over 300% on different hard drives. It is easy to get a 2.5" hard drive that can't consume Firewire's bandwidth.
But now look at how many desktops, servers, and laptops have USB 2.0 vs. 1394 ports... The market speaks for itself.
Back to my assertion of market vs. technical superiority. One of the reasons for ubiquitous USB is simply market force. Companies put it on computers (BTW, Apple was the first to drop legacy ports for USB) for all their low-speed stuff, so people started expecting it to run everything.
Another problem was cost. Apple and the other stakeholders wanted a per-seat royalty plus the parts cost a couple dollars. It was cheaper to use USB and live with the speed hit. As most people wouldn't get to try Firewire, they really wouldn't know the difference.
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