whats better for an external hdd usb or frewire ? notebook use

[ZL1]

Hi

guys whats better for an external hdd - usb or firewire ? notebook use
I heard that usb eats up more cpu resources than firewire, is that so ?


please advise


Thank you
Dan

[RamonGTP]

It is so... Firewire uses less CPU resources, and although on paper USB2.0 appears to be SLIGHTLY faster than firewire, in practice firewire hard drives actually outperform USB2.0... Only down side is that firewire drives tend to be a little more expensive than USB ones.

[Dputiger]

I think his notebook still would need to support SATA for that.

And ZX1, you might've combined all this into one post. You've got three VERY similar topics in three different threads. Its confusing and it actually can make it harder for people to address all your points.

[Roy]

I'm pretty sure USB can power an external drive. I don't think PCMCIA can, and I'm not sure about firewire.

[RamonGTP]

USB is 5 volts with a MAXIMUM of 500mA... So unless the drive only requires 2.5 watts (highly unlikely) the drive WILL need an external power source. Firewire can drive more power hungry devices than USB, but still not enough for a hard drive.

[ZL1]

guys these things come with a power supply
I was wondering mostly about CPU usage (since on a laptop thats already a problem)
speed is actually secondary



Thanks
Dan

[ZL1]

Originally posted by RamonGTP
It is so... Firewire uses less CPU resources, and although on paper USB2.0 appears to be SLIGHTLY faster than firewire, in practice firewire hard drives actually outperform USB2.0... Only down side is that firewire drives tend to be a little more expensive than USB ones.

Ive been reading some reviews and they all pretty much agree with you so I'll probably go with firewire

my only problem now is that the 120gb maxtor Id like comes with usb only



Thanks
Dan