I agree that Firewire is usually faster. For short burst transfers, USB may be a slightly faster, but for big transfers of gigabytes of data, Firewire 800 is definitely faster.
> On May 13, 2015, at 9:15 AM, Lee Larson <[email protected]> wrote: > > On May 13, 2015, at 9:04 AM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer <[email protected]> asked: > >> The drive has a Firewire 400 port and a USB 2 port. The computer has a >> thunderbolt port and I connect the drive to my computer with a 400 to 800 >> firewire adapter connected to a firewire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter. >> >> Do those adapters slow transfer speeds? Would I be better off using the >> drives USB 2.0 port to connect it to my computer? > > “Theoretically” you’re better off with USB2 because its top speed is 480 mb/s > compared to the top speed of 400 mb/s on Firewire 400. But, I’ve always found > Firewire to be faster in practice because USB shuttles all the traffic > through the machine’s processor while Firewire has direct memory access. When > there’s heavy USB traffic, the machine does little else. With Firewire, other > processes can keep on running while the data is being shoveled around. > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
