Confusion about USB and firewire cables. Which is faster?

[calmius]

I recently got a lacie external harddrive and it has usb 2.0 cable connection as well as firewire. My laptop that I use it with only has one of those small firewire connectors, I think they're called mini firewire. Then I got the cable like shown in this page

When I connected the firewire cable to my laptop with the small end to laptop it seems to be trasnferring files slower than the usb. I thought firewire is supposed to be faster. Is that not the case?

[alfie2]

what brand of laptop u have?
type of OS?

by the way, winxp sp2, makes firewire much slower, update to SP3, if you are on SP2.

I found my thinkpad's firewire transfers files faster than USB by a factor of 2.

[calmius]

Originally Posted by alfie2 what brand of laptop u have? type of OS? by the way, winxp sp2, makes firewire much slower, update to SP3, if you are on SP2. I found my thinkpad's firewire transfers files faster than USB by a factor of 2.

The laptop is Toshiba Satellite A215 with Vista which had all the updates. I am really puzzled.

[Force Flow]

Firewire400 is a bit slower than USB 2.0. Firewire800 is faster. (Note that you will not always quite get full speed due to overhead and whatnot)

Firewire400: 393.216 Mbit/s or 49.152 MB/s
USB 2.0: 480 Mbit/s or 60 MB/s
Firewire800: 786.432 Mbit/s or 98.304 MB/s

Which lacie drive did you get? I suspect it only supports Firewire400.

[alfie2]

actually, I was comparing firewire400( 1394a ) with USB2.
in my experiences, firewire 400 is about twice as faster as USB2;

the larger the files, the more noticeable the speed differences.
yes I get about 50MB/s for firewire and USB2 gives me about 20-30MB/s.

under Win VISTA, firewire400 is also slower, about 35-40MB/s___dont know why.

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by alfie2 actually, I was comparing firewire400( 1394a ) with USB2. in my experiences, firewire 400 is about twice as faster as USB2;

That's physically impossible. Either you're actually using firewire 800 or you're actually connecting with USB 1.0 instead of 2.0.

[alfie2]

what do u mean by impossible?
I should have written " about 50Mb/s", I round it up...if thats what you meant.
but
I am 100% sure that I am using firewire400( 1394a) and USB2, 'cause firewire800 uses a different type of wire and all my USB ports are USB2( the hard drive uses USB2)___its a brand new laptop.

[glc]

USB 2 is THEORETICALLY faster than Firewire 400, but in the real world, Firewire is often faster. USB requires a lot more system overhead to run while Firewire is very efficient.