USB Hi-Speed vs FireWire 400 external drive write speed comparison

Question

Level 6

17,762 points

USB Hi-Speed vs FireWire 400 external drive write speed comparison

Since there were a host of external hard drive questions, I thought I'd just try out my own speed test while I'm watching TV in the background.

The drives I used were a bus-powered 250 GB LaCie Little Disk USB Hi-Speed + FireWire 400, and an adapter-powered 320 GB Western Digital MyBook Home USB Hi-Speed + FireWire 400 + eSATA. I judged the speed by running Activity Monitor and checking for Disk Activity's Data written/sec. There didn't appear to be much else happening, so I thought that the average rate was an accurate indicator. I plugged them directly into my MacBook's ports (no hubs or daisy-chaining).

_LaCie Little Disk (using the USB power-sharing cable made no difference - I tried both):_
USB: 23-25 MB/sec.
FW400: 32-33 MB/sec

_Western Digital MyBook Home (7200 RPM):_
USB: steady 27 MB/sec
FW400: 32-33 MB/sec

So definitely FireWire won out, although I wasn't getting the same speeds as advertised. WD doesn't specify anything other than the interface's raw speed, and of course those are never achieved for bulk transfers due to negotiations, overhead, etc. LaCie advertises up to 41 MB/sec for FW400 and up to 34 MB/sec for USB.

I found it a little bit strange that the LaCie drive was a bit slower with USB than the WD drive, but that could have to do with the particular chipset used.

I was going to post the product page of the two drives I used, but I had one thread deleted because I posted a product webpage link without using it to answer a direct question.

13" MacBook 2.2 4GB (200GB Travelstar 7K200), 14" iBook G4 1.42 1.5GB, Mac OS X (10.5.6), 12" iBook G3 600 (10.3.9)

Posted on Apr 26, 2009 3:43 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Apr 27, 2009 6:58 PM in response to y_p_w

I've never been a fan of Lacie drives so the speed comparison doesn't surprise me.

I love Firewire but what has really pushed it out of the home/prosumer market is the TON of cheap USB 2.0 drives available.

Reply

Answer 2

y_p_w Author

Level 6

17,762 points

Apr 27, 2009 8:32 PM in response to Oso Grande

Oso Grande wrote:
I love Firewire but what has really pushed it out of the home/prosumer market is the TON of cheap USB 2.0 drives available.

I just pulled out my WD Passport Essential 160 GB drive with the original FAT32 format. I'm getting about 15-19 MB/sec although that was on my second try. The first try was only 12-14 MB/sec. Strange. I thought it would have been faster. I'm wondering if FAT32 makes a difference. Reads were at about 32-35 MB/sec, although there was a huge spike at the start before settling down to about 33 MB/sec.

I forgot to mention that both drives in my first test were HFS+ formatted. The LaCie drive used Apple Partition Mapping as a backup for two PowerPC Mac backup partition and an additional swap space. The WD MyBook Home used GUID Partition Mapping. Let me give reads a try.

Reply

Answer 3

Pancenter

Level 6

14,788 points

Apr 27, 2009 11:00 PM in response to y_p_w

y pw wrote:
Since there were a host of external hard drive questions, I thought I'd just try out my own speed test while I'm watching TV in the background.

_LaCie Little Disk (using the USB power-sharing cable made no difference - I tried both):_
USB: 23-25 MB/sec.
FW400: 32-33 MB/sec

_Western Digital MyBook Home (7200 RPM):_
USB: steady 27 MB/sec
FW400: 32-33 MB/sec

Here's the thing... when transferring groups of small files, say up to 300-400 megabytes, you will find transfer speeds are almost comparable. However, when transferring several files 500MB and over, Firewire will consistently be faster and with less processor overhead. (To say nothing of reliable error free transfers).

Try both USB and Firewire transferring two or three files 1GB or over.

pancenter-

Reply

Answer 4

y_p_w Author

Level 6

17,762 points

Apr 27, 2009 11:24 PM in response to Pancenter

Pancenter wrote:
Here's the thing... when transferring groups of small files, say up to 300-400 megabytes, you will find transfer speeds are almost comparable. However, when transferring several files 500MB and over, Firewire will consistently be faster and with less processor overhead. (To say nothing of reliable error free transfers).

Try both USB and Firewire transferring two or three files 1GB or over.

The files for the first tries were two large (one 3.7 GB and the other 4.1 GB) DVD image files.

I'm certainly a fan of FireWire. I'm not an expert but I've done some engineering work and can definitely say that FireWire (not considering cost) is a superior solution.

Reply

Answer 5

Pancenter

Level 6

14,788 points

Apr 28, 2009 12:46 AM in response to y_p_w

y pw wrote:

Pancenter wrote:
Here's the thing... when transferring groups of small files, say up to 300-400 megabytes, you will find transfer speeds are almost comparable. However, when transferring several files 500MB and over, Firewire will consistently be faster and with less processor overhead. (To say nothing of reliable error free transfers).

Try both USB and Firewire transferring two or three files 1GB or over.

The files for the first tries were two large (one 3.7 GB and the other 4.1 GB) DVD image files.

Ahh... thanks for clarifying.

I wonder what activity monitor would register transferring with each format.

pancenter-

Reply