Because these are larger drives I have in continuous use, I bought the Firewire adapters, and they nearly doubled the transfer speed to these drives. Oyen Digital 50TB Mobius 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Hard Drive Array. Much like thunderbolt there is zero point in developing a product that is only say. Supports USB data transfer rates of high-speed (480Mbps), full-speed (12Mbps) and low-speed (1. Supports simultaneous operation of multiple USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices. Supports FireWire data transfer rate up to 100/200/400/800 Mbps. But Seagate sells an adapter that swaps out the drives' USB 3.0 interface for a Firewire 800 interface. USB 3.0 is considerably faster than Firewire 800 but is still very new. Compliant with PCI Express Base Specification 1.0a. I have a couple of Seagate Backups+ drives that came USB 3.0 enabled. BONUS TEST: SSD1 to a Firewire drive daisy chained, target being the drive on the far side of the chain SSD1 to FW800: 25s FW 800 to SSD1: 33s For some reason, when the drive is daisy-chained, Firewire technology also has trouble reading the file, but is still faster then USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Firewire is a light winner according to the tests. FireWire / i.LINK Ports - Plug-in Card - PCI Express 1.1 x1 - RoHS - WEEE - REACH - 1 FireWire / i.LINK 400 Ports - 2 FireWire / i.LINK 800 Ports. 3 Port 2b 1a 1394 PCI Express Firewire Card Adapter. However, if there was an adapter that could allow me to connect all of my USB 3.0-capable drives to my iMac's Firewire 800 port and harness its higher speed (compared to my iMac's USB 2.0 ports), it would be worth spending money on such a device because it would work with every USB 3.0 drive I've bought or will buy.Īs to your last few sentences, I'm not sure what you're saying. USB/Firewire Adapters USB Hub - 4 Total Number of USB. I'm using these drives for long-term storage of data, so spending considerably more money to get Firewire drives would not make any sense at all. USB 3.0 (released November 2008) gives a theoretical speed of 4.

That wasn't my question.Īnd, yes, I do buy the USB versions because they are cheaper. FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB, both in theory and in practice. MichelPM-Of course I know that there are external drives with Firewire 800, and I knew that when I bought my external drives (and all without having to do a bit of research).

Radiation Mac-Thank you for the information.

Compare firewire 800 to usb 3.0