What Is a Firewire Cable?

Firewire is the Apple brand name for a IEEE 1394 high-speed cable. The cable was originally created to make transferring video from digital camcorders and external hard drives faster and easier for users. Firewire replaced traditional USB when it was first created as a preferred method for data transfer, offering significantly higher data transfer rates than USB. Shortly after its creation Firewire became a standard in many computers and all digital camcorders.

History

Firewire was originally conceived in the 1980s and officially hit the market in 1995. While the technology was primarily created by Apple, others, like Sony, Texas Instruments, and IBM, played pivotal roles in Firewire's creation as well.

Names

Firewire cables are also referred to as IEEE 1394 cables and as i-Link cables. All of these names refer to the exact same cable under different branding. IEEE 1394 is the actual name of the cable, whereas Firewire is a term used by Apple, and i_link is a term used by Sony.

Types

There are two different types of Firewire cables: Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. In general Firewire 800 cables have replaced 400 in the marketplace. The 400 cable is able to transfer data at 400Mbps, whereas the 800 cable is able to transfer data at a much faster 800Mbps.

Function

Firewire cables are used to transfer large amounts of data at high-speeds. The cables are traditionally used with digital camcorders to transfer video to computers, and are also used to transfer data to and from external hard drives.

Considerations

Firewire is slowly being phased out of the gadget marketplace and being replaced by faster USB 2.0 cables. Apple does not include Firewire ports as a standard on its laptop computers anymore, and many digital camcorders and hard drives have also started to only offer USB 2.0 as a data transfer option.