FireWire transfer speeds

[edgaryto]

Hello, everybody. I am new around here! I would like to know if a data transfer of 400MB/s is possible in an external Firewire drive. I have come to you all because most of them have 40 (or 50) MB/s as the maximum speed but some of them have 400MB/s and I need to know if that is a typo or if it is accurate. Every comment will be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance for your responses.

 

[edgaryto]

All right, I have done a little research and it seems that the transfer speed of 400MB/s is correct, so now the question has changed to: Is it possible to have a transfer speed of ONLY 40 (or 50) MB/s with a FireWire (1394) drive? And also, can anyone share any experiences with the 'Fantom' brand? I'm looking into buying a reliable external FireWire drive and since I have never heard about that brand I'd like to know if it's any good, comparing it to, say, Seagate (which, as far as I know, has a good reputation). Thanks again!!

Gosh!! This seems to be a dead forum. And no offense, I visit the THG site very often and find it extremely useful, and that's why I'm surprised at the lack of responses here... please prove me wrong!!

Edgar

 

[grafixmonkey]

The FireWire bus can transfer that rate. The drive you'll be plugging into it won't. You need a several hundred dollar multi-drive RAID subsystem to be able to get that transfer rate off of hard disks.

The firewire drive probably has a normal IDE drive inside, probably one that has an average transfer of 40 or 50 MB/s (most do except raptors and SCSI). If the system costs less than $800 I would assume it's a single, 40 or 50 MB/sec drive.

 

[edgaryto]

Great, thank you very much for your response; now, do you have any experiences, by any chance, with the Fantom brand of hard drives (I assume most -if not all- of them are external)? Thanks again!

Edgar

 

[Crashman]

You're completely wrong. The transfer rate is 50MB/s. You're failing to CONVERT, you're using inches as feet! The 400mbs transfer rate is MEGABITS per second, which is 50 MEGABYTES per second. Firewire is MUCH slower than IDE right now. ATA133 is 133MB/s, while 400mbs firewire is 50.

Divide 400 by 8 and get 50. There are 8 bits in a byte.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

You're completely wrong too, NEARLY ANY modern hard drive can completely fill the bandwidth of 400 megabit Firewire.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[edgaryto]

Oh, I see!! That's why I wanted to ask you experts about it. Now, do you have any experiences with the Fantom brand of hard drives? And also, I read that USB2.0 has a transfer speed of 280 (If I remember correctly); are those also Mbps or MBps?

Thank you for clarifying my mistake!

Edgar

 

[jammydodger]

Its 480Mbps I think.

P4 2.6@3.25
512Mb PC4000
2x120Gb 7200.7 in RAID0
Waterchill KT12-L30
Abit AI7
Ge-Force4 Ti4200

 

[edgaryto]

Oh yeah, you're right. Thanks a lot!

Edgar

 

[Crashman]

Same deal, 480 megabit, divide by 8, get 60MB/s.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>