
The issue of accessing remote USB devices over network still stays relevant as well as sharing USB-C over network and USB 2.0 over network. USB-C is in its rising stages right now, and more and more devices implement it. So basically our comparison comes from FireWire to USB comparison to actually Thunderbolt with USB-C and USB 2.0 comparison. Thunderbolt 3 interface uses USB-C ports. By 2014 Thunderbolt became widespread among Apple computers replacing FireWire quite successfully. The last computers with FireWire were released in late 2012. But USB 2.0 external hard drive will show more compatibility and convenience thanks to being widespread among many types of computers.ĭespite all the advantages of FireWire, in February 2011 Apple introduced the new standard: Thunderbolt. Most often you won't have to decide which protocol you are going to use, the product you are getting is often aimed at a specific protocol and can only work with either FireWire or USB.įor all out sustained output and input of data FireWire external hard drive usually shows the best performance. Computer is handling arbitration functions and dictates data flow among the peripherals.

This should be cheap, have high performance and put a low burden on cpu.Wondering what’s the difference between FireWire and USB standards and which is the most suitable for everyday goals? Let's look into the details about both standards. USB 3 seems to do the job.Ī very interesting test would be esata over thunderbolt. – one thunderbolt drive for projects I am currently working on My new favorite storage strategy is rather simple: The question is, not even whether USB 3 outperforms Firewire in every respect, but whether it is a usable alternative. The circle is bigger, the path is longer, so you can put more data on it.įirewire is a dying technology, there is no development, ports are vanishing and the price is not competitive. On the outside of the platters the disk reaches a higher transfer speed. Different partitions on a disk might result in different speeds, because the transfer rate the hard disk is able to reach depends also from the physical position of the heads on the platters. I see one remaining issue in the method you used however. It is interesting to see real world figures instead of just ‘800 mb/s’, ‘5 gb/s’ etc. Overall you did a good job testing the transfer this way. Since I was looking to have a smaller enclosure, I decided to give the Oyen Digital a shot. I found two: LaCie’s Rugged 1TB (which I’ve used in the past with no issues) and the Oyen Digital Mini Pro.
HOW TO FIREWIRE 800 TO USB PORTABLE
That configuration isn’t as easy to find as you would think on a portable drive. Ideally I would want to test the same drive that has both Firewire 800 and USB 3 built-in. That meant that I didn’t want to use two different drives. Since I couldn’t find the data I wanted, I decided to do my own tests. Most of what I found was comparisons to USB 2 or tests done before Macs had USB 3 built-in.

I did searches online and really didn’t come up with much in the way of current data or test.

HOW TO FIREWIRE 800 TO USB PRO
Now that both the MacBook Pro Retina Display and MacBook Air ship with USB 3 I was curious to find out which was actually faster? Going with my existing Firewire 800 drives and the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter or USB 3 drives.
