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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil  Not quite. Most USB 2.0 controllers can only throughput roughly 23-28 MB/sec, if my experiences and the experiences of guys like Tom's Hardware Guide and Anandtech are any indication. Not that many people have benchmarked IEEE 1394 stuff, so my only experience with it is in a USB 2.0/IEEE 1394a 2.5" drive enclosure.
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True, the USB 2.0 controllers, while they have a higher bitrate than 1394a (480 Mbps vs. 400 Mbps), they are slower at bulk data transfer (as I mentioned in my previous post). Not sure how you determined that "not that many people have benchmarked 1394". 1394 is the industry standard for external pro A/V equipment, and external storage on Mac. Since it's the defacto standard, there are a plethora of benchmarks. You'll find them on web sites geared towards professional audio/video editing though, not on consumer oriented sites like "Tom's".
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil Some of the very largest-capacity 3.5" 7200 rpm PMR PATA drives can hit 80 MB/sec sustained in read speed, but they're more like 60-65 MB/sec in writes.
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Not according to your favorite web site, here:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storag...2=676&chart=36 Set the drop-down to "Maximum write performance" and you'll see five different models that achieve greater than 80 MB/s (actually, very close to 90 MB/s). Now change the drop-down to "Maximum read performance" and the numbers are almost identical to the "write" numbers, with several entries greater than 80 MB/s. And HDD's are only getting faster each year.
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil I'd like to see a benchmark of the 1394b drive because I've not seen anything on 1394b. The ports are pretty rare to find outside of Macintoshes and a few really high-end enthusiast motherboards.
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Google is your friend, there are plenty. You're right, they are rare outside of Macs and enthusiast desktops. (That was pretty much what I complained about two posts ago). But there are plenty of add in cards that provide it; PCI, PCIe, ExpressCard.
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil Another even better option for external HDD interfaces is external SATA.
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Faster than 1394b, yes, but even more rare. Good luck finding ANY laptop OR desktop that has integrated eSATA.
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil But eSATA only works for disks, other things that are not mass-storage devices won't work with eSATA and would be better off with USB or 1394.
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Which, IMO, is why its just easier to standardize on a single interface. 1394 gives 800Mb/s today and 1600Mb/s with the next generation (once it becomes available). Plus, most pro A/V equipment today has already standardized on 1394.
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil Gigabit Ethernet is also an option as the theoretical bandwidth is 125 MB/sec point-to-point.
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With Gig-E, you're lucky if you even see HALF of the theoretical bandwidth. Ethernet is even worse for bulk data transfer than USB is. There is Waaaaaay too much latency in ethernet, plus the host CPU has to process all those TCP/IP frames, chewing up valuable CPU cycles. The latency alone kills ethernet as a viable bulk storage transport for all but the most mundane applications. Add to that the size of the TCP/IP packet overhead, and you've lost a good chunk of your bandwidth just to the protocol! The 1500 byte MTU does you no favors either. Ethernet and TCP/IP is probably the worst interface there is for bulk data.
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Originally Posted by imnotdrphil If your notebook lacks the 1394b ports, I believe that there are ExpressCards and PCMCIA cards that have the interfaces on them.
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I believe so too. (See the title of this thread
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That's like shipping a notebook with USB 1.1 ports instead of USB 2.0.
One cable, no power supply.
