Should I use firewire or USB2 for external harddrive for archiving digital photos?
by 
Jimmyz101
ANSWERS: 3
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It shouldn't really matter, as long as the ports are compatible. I personally use a USB.
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I just found this performance test result: Read Test: 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0 160 files (650MB 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 (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0 So it would seem that Firewire gets the nod. But wait! Do you plan on connecting this external drive to other computers? Very few people have an active firewire port on their PCs. So if portability is important to you, USB is the better option. If you already have Firewire installed on your PC and portability is not an issue, Firewire would be my pick.
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Architecture - FireWire vs. USB 2.0 FireWire, built from the ground up for speed, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower, less-efficient data flow control)
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