Firewire Hard Drives Vs. USB Hard Drives
When you want to add additional storage to your computer, you can choose from internal or external hard drives and various storage sizes and technologies. USB and Firewire are two possible connection types.
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Function
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A user can store backups of personal or business information on external drives and use small drives to transport information such as documents or webpages between multiple computers. He may also wish to use an internal drive as his main computer storage solution. Both Firewire and USB hard drives serve all of those functions.
Benefits
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Firewire hard drives are faster than USB drives when it comes to data transfer and reading the contents of the drives. Both USB and Firewire hard drives are available in a variety of storage capacities, from several hundred megabytes to hundreds of gigabytes. However, miniature external drives that are physically small and easy to transport frequently rely on USB technology. Mini USB drives, or flash drives, are available in 512 MB to 5 GB capacities as of August 2010.
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Considerations
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While USB support is standard on computers, not all computers support Firewire connections. If the user wishes to transport data between two systems and is not sure which connections are available on the second computer, he may opt for the USB drive to be cautious.
Warning
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A user can achieve only the maximum transfer speed that her computer and hardware, including the drive, support. For example, a drive with USB 1.0 specification can achieve only speeds of up to 1.5 Mbit/s, while a drive with USB 3.0, the fastest USB specification, can be as fast as 5.0 Gbit/s. The multiple versions of Firewire have names indicative of their connection speeds. For example, Firewire 800 operates at 800 Mbit/s, and Firewire 3200 can transfer data at 3.2 Gbit/s (3,200 Mbit/s).
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References
- Photo Credit hard drive interior image by Curtis Sorrentino from Fotolia.com
