FireWire vs USB 2.0
http://live.pirillo.com/ - There are many USB devices - keyboards, mice, webcams, microphones - but not nearly as many FireWire devices - mostly digital cameras. DougTech wants to know what the difference between USB 2.0 and FireWire is.
FireWire and USB 2.0 use two completely different architectures and handles data in different ways.
FireWire uses a "peer to peer" architecture, where the peripherals are intelligent enough to handle bus conflicts on their own. FireWire also has less overhead, which increases its sustained throughput. This is the main reason why you’ll see digital cameras and video capture cards use FireWire over USB 2.0
USB uses a "master-slave" configuration where the computer handles all conflicts and data flow. Since USB has more overhead the sustained throughput is significantly decreased, making this a less attractive option for applications that need a higher sustained throughput.
Since USB has lower hardware requirements, common peripherals tend to use USB, which lowers the overall cost of the product.
USB-Ware has a hard drive performance comparison showing the speed difference between USB and FireWire:
Read and write tests to the same IDE hard drive connected using FireWire and then Hi-Speed USB 2.0 show:
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
USB 2.0 vs FireWire, who wins?
6 Comments
My Station
May 25th, 2007
at 1:05am
The difference between USB and Firewire. read more | digg story Chris Pirillo
My Station
May 25th, 2007
at 1:05am
The difference between USB and Firewire. read more | digg story Chris Pirillo
Dan H.
May 25th, 2007
at 12:53pm
This information was from a couple of years ago, circa 2003 when many of the gadgets had not yet really adapted the USB 2.0 capabilities. Can you find (or can you do the test) that either validates or invalidates the criteria that was purported almost four years ago?
Thanks,
Dan
PS: The interesting bit about your information is that someone else wrote it on USB-Ware.com.
Dan H.
May 25th, 2007
at 12:53pm
This information was from a couple of years ago, circa 2003 when many of the gadgets had not yet really adapted the USB 2.0 capabilities. Can you find (or can you do the test) that either validates or invalidates the criteria that was purported almost four years ago?
Thanks,
Dan
PS: The interesting bit about your information is that someone else wrote it on USB-Ware.com.
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at 10:05am
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Diego
July 9th, 2007
at 9:52pm
For something like an external hard drive, Firewire is the better option because it gives you greater data transfer speeds than USB 2.0. Like you said, even though technically USB 2.0 is meant to be faster, for sustained transfers Firewire beats USB2 quite easily. Try transferring a large file, or many files and see the difference. Especially useful if you run VMs on an external HD.