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Comparison and information on
Firewire over USB 2.0 |
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USB 2.0 Vs. Firewire is Like
Despotism Vs. The American Way
By Cameron Postelwait
USB 2.0-ism Is Like Despotism
USB (Universal Serial Bus) was designed after the ruling style of David Bowie,
the famous 6th century Saxon Despot. His empire was vast, and he subdued his
captors with hits like Ziggy Stardust and Blue Jean. His famous
demise characterized him as the man who sold the world during a moonage
daydream, and was forced to face the strange changes of the wensleydale cheese
famine of 581 A.D.
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Just like the great 6th century despot, David Bowie, USB uses a similar
"Master-Slave" architecture. If you suddenly have that catchy Depeche Mode song
Master and Servant stuck in your head, feel free to pause here and sing
it out of your system.
The computer (aka master, aka the unrelenting owner of mankind's souls, aka
David Bowie) determines and dictates all data flow to and from and between all
peripherals. Although your despotic computer is pretty smart sometimes, and can
even be a benign ruler, it isn't always the best at controlling the data
throughput.
USB 2.0 is also called "hi-speed" USB because it has a theoretical data transfer
rate of 480 mbps ("b" here is of course for "bits" and not "bytes"), faster than
6-pin firewire transfer rates of 400 mbps. This of course is a theoretical
transfer rate because USB's tyrannical system of being in charge of controlling
data is just plain inefficient (sorry folks, not getting anymore technical than
that), making data transfer rates quite inconsistent. In other words, you will
never get a consistent transfer rate of 480 mbps over the course of any
practical data transfer. The giant philistine turns out to be a slow poke after
all.
Firewire Is Like The American Way
Firewire is like the American way (I'm not talking Democracy, or even Socialism)
because it uses a peer-to-peer architecture where the peripherals can make up
their own minds about who can control the data transfer best. It is a lot like
America's new peer-to-peer way of distributing data... illegally. The same way
Americans can download a peer-to-peer file sharing program and share free
versions of Ziggy Stardust, Blue Jean, and Master and Servant,
firewire allows peripherals to cooperate and decide the most efficient way to
trade data.
The Main Event
Warning: The following content is almost completely hearsay.
So some people somewhere did some tests with an IDE hard drive to see if USB 2.0
or Firewire would deliver faster transfer speeds. The thing is, if you look
online you will be able to find dozens of these comparison tests and all the
results are very similar.
In this particular test:
Read Test
5000 files (300 MB total) Firewire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650 MB total) Firewire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
Write Test
5000 files (300 MB total) Firewire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650 MB total) Firewire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
Take that, you big mean bully.
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