Universal Serial Bus 3.0 is just around the corner, but it does not mean that its brother IEEE 1394 standard (also known as FireWire and iLink) has ceased its development. In fact, this month the 1394 trade association said that it had ratified the 1394-2008 specification, which significantly improves bandwidth of the interconnect.The 1394-2008 high performance serial bus standard updates and revises all prior 1394 standards dating back to the original 1394-1995 version, and including 1394a, 1394b, 1394c, enhanced UTP, and the 1394 beta plus PHY-Link interface. It also incorporates the complete specifications for S1600 version with 1.6Gb/s bandwidth) and for S3200 version, which provides 3.2Gb/s speed.
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Why? it is used and needed enough to justify updates...
Tech sites fail once again when Firewire is described as alternative to USB , I dont think they offer the same purpose.
Why? it is used and needed enough to justify updates...
Tech sites fail once again when Firewire is described as alternative to USB , I dont think they offer the same purpose.
So what purpose does Firewire have that is different than USB. Their both communication standards for peripherals that offer roughly the same transfer speeds.
Now, when it comes to what I want to plug my external hard drive into, my personal preference is either Firewire or eSATA and my reasoning is that I already have a lot of things plugged into my mainboard's USB. My Seagate FreeAgent offers all 3 interfaces and I can't tell much performance difference between USB and Firewire TBH. Huge difference with eSATA but I've yet to find a cable that I can trust. eSATA also has a goofy connector that doesn't always mate properly.
USB never reaches its rated speed for more than a few milliseconds.
FW can.
I like USB, myself. It's far easier to implement (I do a lot of work with USB peripherals), and much cheaper. But firewire is faster. For something like a hard drive, network adapter, video transfer, etc. Firewire is better.
Last edited by MioTheGreat on 31 Jul 2008 - 22:53
From what I hear, Firewire and USB were designed for different purposes. Firewire was intended for high-bandwidth needs, whereas USB was designed for low-bandwidth needs (particularly peripherals). Since USB is everywhere now and it has been modified to be faster, it's able to eat into certain areas where Firewire would have been more appropriate.
However, to just look at the theoretical transfer rates as the sole basis of comparison isn't good enough. From what I've heard and a few of the benchmarks I've examined, Firewire is in fact faster than USB 2.0 and is less taxing on the CPU. For the average home user, this isn't a big deal. Your remark that you'd prefer either Firewire or eSATA because you're running out of USB ports shows that you're thinking along the lines of a home user's needs. (By the way, consider getting a USB hub - they can be pretty cheap and they're quite useful.)
eSATA is likely the best contender to Firewire, but again, only on the home user's front. Before I took a media-oriented job, I was never a fan of Firewire and often thought of it as a dying standard that was losing to USB. My job dealt with video capture, DVD creation, and video archiving. I managed what probably came out to at least 3 TB of data at any one time, and I worked with anywhere from six to eight drives on a single system, including four in a RAID 0. All of these drives were connected via Firewire 800. I'd routinely move hundreds of gigabytes between drives while processing.
For the drives I was working with, Firewire 800 wasn't performing any faster than Firewire 400, disappointingly. However, could I have done the same work with drives linked up through USB? Aside from potentially taxing the CPU and costing me a few extra hours per transfer due to lower sustained speeds, I would have had to buy a few USB hubs to handle the drives. An often overlooked fact about Firewire is that you can daisy-chain drives together. All of the Firewire drives that I mentioned were connected to a single Firewire port on the computer. That's pretty handy. Up to 32 devices can be chained together, I believe. USB can't daisy chain, and neither can eSATA.
In the regular consumer market, people probably won't even have a need for a feature like that. USB external drives are often cheaper, and for regular home use they work just as well. Firewire certainly has its place, though. For the record, I always opt for Firewire enclosures when I can, and I daisy chain the few Firewire devices that I have in my home.
Yeh, mating properly is really important
I never thought about it until now, but i think i will look more into this because i don't know if newer DV still need FireWire to capture at full quality and resolution.
Standards don't hurt anyone. When one needs something, its better to be there for us.
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makes sense to me
Now with the various USB standards that are coming out, it might get very confusing...
IMO Firewire is far better than USB because the connectors are much better. They don't require you to guess which way the plug goes in, you can just look at the slot and there you have it. I wish they revised the USB connector or started using the B and mini types more.
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Outside of the server/workstation boards, I've only ever seen one desktop board that had a Firewire 800 root on it. Add-in cards are great and all, but why the heck isn't firewire 800 standard equipment in ever PC?
Overall, Firewire is more expensive to implement than USB. A fair amount more expensive, actually.
Probably Firewire 400 (IEE 1394a). You can tell by looking at the connector. You can't do Firewire 800 or higher over a Firewire 400 connector, even if it's wired onto a pin out supported by a Firewire 800(+) host.
If they only made Firewire flash drives.
I've never really liked USB, it seems like the cheap way to do things.
The hardware itself is cheaper, and you don't have to pay royalties.
(might just be me though)
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