USB vs. Firewire for External Hard Drive

I am researching external hard drives, and plan to get a 250-300 GB drive primarily for photo backups. I am wondering if I should get a Firewire compatible drive or if USB 2.0 is sufficient. I plan to only back up once every 2-3 weeks. I suppose I could use USB and let the backup process run while I am asleep. But perhaps the Firewire option would provide added flexibility for increased speed, in case I ever want it.

Any thoughts?

Presuming that you choose not to use eSATA or if your computer does not have eSATA interface (or PCI slot for adapter), then USB is perhaps the most ubiquitious for external drive interface. That said, despite raw interface speed, my experience is that firewire 400 (1394a) is somewhat faster than USB 2, at least with the half-dozen enclosures that I have tried, many with dual intefaces. If you only plan on doing backups at night, and are concerned about cost, then USB-only drives are probably the cheapest. If you have fiirewire 400 on your computer, you might consider a USB 2 / Firewire 400 drive. Or....if you want something faster still, either eSATA interface in the computer and eSATA drive or Firewire 800 are options. Because I needed a solution before I had a SATA-compatible computer, I have a combination firewire 400/800 and USB 2 drive plus a firewire 400/800 external LaCie RAID drive. I use these for daily backups and have removable disk tray SATA drives that I use for weekly backups that are stored in a fireproof safe.

Hi...I just bought a LaCie 250 gig (the Logo brick style) for only 120 bucks. Bang for buck you can't beat it, although the USB is terribly slow compared to firewire. Still, it was cheap! and I do my backups when I leave the studio for the night.

From somewhere on Colorado's Continental Divide...

Matt Lit
LITfoto.com
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Prefer email replies directly to: [email protected].

FWIW,

Here's some rough measurement data that I tried using HDTACH average read speed tests, with external enclosures that I have at home, using the same drive (Seagate Barracuda .8, 400gb ata100):

USB2: 18MB/second
Firewire 400: 35MB/second
Firewire 800: 60MB/second

Note that this was average read speed across the whole drive....

As a point of reference on my machine, a 320GB Seagate Baraccuda .10, SATA-II drive on my Intel D975XBX mobo gets average read speed of 65MB/second. Not RAPTO speeds, but fine for my purposes and cost/value expectations. ..Removable SATA disk trays that I have offer similar performance, as expected.

It reinforces what I've read that the SATA interface speed is not going to be a performance limiter - it is the speed of the drive. It also suggests that better chipsets and drivers with the firewire implementation will beat tUSB2, even with firewire 400 being spec'd "slower" than USB 2...

In a nutshell - USB2 can get pretty painfully slow, compared to even firewire 400. Firewire 800 is better, eSATA better still.

mdmsam said:

FWIW,

Here's some rough measurement data that I tried using HDTACH
average read speed tests, with external enclosures that I have at
home, using the same drive (Seagate Barracuda .8, 400gb ata100):

USB2: 18MB/second
Firewire 400: 35MB/second
Firewire 800: 60MB/second

Note that this was average read speed across the whole drive....

As a point of reference on my machine, a 320GB Seagate Baraccuda
.10, SATA-II drive on my Intel D975XBX mobo gets average read speed
of 65MB/second. Not RAPTO speeds, but fine for my purposes and
cost/value expectations. ..Removable SATA disk trays that I have
offer similar performance, as expected.

It reinforces what I've read that the SATA interface speed is not
going to be a performance limiter - it is the speed of the drive.
It also suggests that better chipsets and drivers with the firewire
implementation will beat tUSB2, even with firewire 400 being spec'd
"slower" than USB 2...

In a nutshell - USB2 can get pretty painfully slow, compared to
even firewire 400. Firewire 800 is better, eSATA better still.

Click to expand...

All my external drive enclosures have built in support for BOTH USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. This provides me the best versatility especially for different computers that may have only one of the support features (USB or Firewire). Firewire provides much faster throughput than USB 2.0 even though USB 2.0 is rated at a higher speed than Firewire.
I don't have Firewire 800 support....
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Vernon...

USB 2.0's speed rating is for various reasons misleading. Suffice it to say that it is NOT faster than Firewire 400.

So in general, unless it is not practical (ie. all the computers you deal with lack Firewire), it's best to go with Firewire for an external drive. HOWEVER, there is a major caveat, which is that there are many cheap and inferior quality Firewire chipsets out there, usually sold in cheap external 'combo' enclosures with both USB 2 and Firewire interfaces. The manufacturer of these chipsets is called Prolific, and while the USB portion of their bridge chips seem to work fine, the Firewire interface is awful, and will lead to corrupted drives - more a matter of 'when' than 'if'.

So avoid the bargain basement Firewire enclosures. The 'good' manufacturer of Firewire bridge chips is Oxford - a drive with an Oxford bridge board should be very reliable, but may cost a little more. But ask yourself if all your data is worth $20 to you... it's an easy choice.

TI firewire chipset seems to be pretty good also, besides Oxford. And if you want to goose your speed even further, and are running Windows, consider Unibrain UbCore firewire drivers - I have found them to be faster and without some of the strange bugs in Windows XP, SP2 implementation of firewire (look at the number of Microsoft firewire-related KB articles....). What's nice is that the unibrain drivers also come with a switch utility so that you can switch between the unibrian driver and the windows driver without rebooting - the drive just remounts....

I just bought my third huge external drive this year and after looking at everything out there went with this . . .

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/

I got the 1TB RAID with FW 400/800 but there are lots of configs available.

At $539 it is twice the size and a few $$ cheaper than the problematic G-RAID 500 I bought just 10 months ago.
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Cheers,
Joe

Hmmm. . . are these just for Mac? Not sure about that, but I AM a Mac guy. OP didn't say.
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Cheers,
Joe

have you thought of RAID 1 rather than manually backup?
a very inexpensive sata device may help you a lot

http://www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp

it can do raid 1, 0 and jbod with the same price as firewire's.

backup drive like maxtor's "one touch backup" is very troublesome, perhaps not pratical. RAID 1 is the right solution.

That company specializes in Mac stuff, but those drives can be used with any computer. They are good stuff - and use Oxford chips.

Also, a RAID 1 setup is NOT a replacement for a backup. It only protects you against the mechanical failure of one disk. It doesn't help you at all if anything else happens, like files getting corrupted, or you accidentally deleting files you needed. RAID 1 is good in some situations, but a real backup (even if just to an offline external HD) is critical.

Excellent points regarding need for backup redundancy - not just to another drive (external, raid, or whatever) but perhaps also to different media stored in a different location. Having a reliable RAID drive located on the desk is subject to fire, theft, or other physical damage just like the main computer, whether the disk drive is redundant or not.....

I use external drives for convenience for daily backups, but also have tray-mounted drives for weekly disk-image backups (stored in a safe) and archive storage of my critical data and all photo files to dvd (2 copies), one copy in a the safe at home (updated monthly), another in my bank safe-deposit box (updated quarterly). Not completely bullet-proof, but at least I won't lose everything in the event of a fire at home or some other disaster....Once DVD technology starts to become obsolete, I'll need to transfer to "whatever is next" in terms of archival storage media, but at least I'll have something to transfer...I hope!