[SAGE] Cheap External Hard Disks

Fri Mar 14 21:43:51 PDT 2008

On 3/14/08, David Magda wrote:

>  One thing about USB is that the chipsets tend to be very dumb, so the CPU
>  has to do more lifting itself. If there's a choice you may want to consider
>  using FireWire instead. (In modern systems there are cycles to spare, but
>  if a choice is going to be made, it should at least be informed. :) )

IME, FireWire works really well on Macs and USB not so much.  On PCs, 
USB works really well and FireWire not so much.  Even if they're both 
using Intel processors, whatever they do in the process of designing 
their motherboards, these statements still seem to hold true.

That said, if you want cheap-ass-cheapy-cheap external storage, then 
USB is the only option.  If you want something that performs better, 
even if you don't use the FireWire youreself it might make sense to 
ensure that the device supports both High-Speed USB 2.0 and FireWire, 
since the chipsets that do both seem to be much better than the ones 
that just do USB.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>