eSATA vs 1394b: your thoughts?

[Azriel]

I'm getting ready to buy a new external drive, I'm looking at the Fantom Drives externals at Newegg.

For $119 I can get a 500gig WD with eSATA and USB 2.0.

For another $20, I can have eSATA, 1394a, 1394b w/ pass through, and USB 2.0.

USB 2.0 is ****e, too slow to really be all that useful, but great for compatability with lesser machines.

1394a I use now with my little 250 gig WD Mybook (I will never buy another mybook. If I want my drive to power down, I'll set it. WD forces it on you.) 1394a is pretty good. I have no real complaints other than the western digital BS power management I can't shut off.

1394b I've used it on a mac, and it feels like an internal drive.

eSATA I've never used eSATA. I have the ports that just plug into the motherboard's sata connectors. Is eSATA the same speed as just running a SATA 150 drive inside?

[Azriel]

FYI, yes, I know 500 meg is not a hell of a lot these days. I can buy 2 500's for within $20-30 of a single 1TB drive, though. Eggs... baskets..? I like getting 2 personally.

[Samuknow]

I thought that 1394B was slower than usb 2.0

[Azriel]

I may need to look into it to be absolutely sure, but my understanding is that 1394a is faster than usb 2.0. 1394b is twice the speed of 1394a.

[Daniel ~]

WHOA! Be careful! I'm pretty sure WD is the one who uses DRM on it's external HD's to prevent your from freely transferring files. I'm not that tech of a guy, but we had something on this here in the forums...I'm sure you can Google it and make sure I'm wrong! ":O} Can someone remember this more clearly?

[Azriel]

1394a: 393.216 Mbit/s half-duplex

USB 2.0: 480 Mbit/s (unfortunatly complete BS unless you are using a standalone USB 2.0 add-on card.)

From Wiki:
Typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware.

1394b: 786.432 Mbit/s full-duplex

1394a may be slower theoretically, but in practice, I think it walks all over USB 2.0. 1394b smokes them both. I'm just afriad of going eSATA, because I don't know much about it. I'm really just trying to decide if I should pay the premium to have the firewire present so I don't have to fall all the way back to USB 2.0 if the eSATA is buggy.

[Azriel]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

WHOA! Be careful! I'm pretty sure WD is the one who uses DRM on it's external HD's to prevent your from freely transferring files. I'm not that tech of a guy, but we had something on this here in the forums...I'm sure you can Google it and make sure I'm wrong! ":O} Can someone remember this more clearly?

WD makes the HDD inside. It's not a shiddy mybook.

[Azriel]

Basically I know that eSATA is faster than USB 2.0 and 1394b. eSATA, from what I've read is basically the same speed as an internal drive. I've seen complaints in review about it being buggy. I don't know if this is due to cable lengths or problems that actually are the fault of a add on card. My intention is to use a 1 to 2 foot cable, and a simple internal to external adapter.

Fear of the unknown.