[X4U] Why does anybody ever get a USB external hard drive?

[Mark Deniken]

on 7/8/08 4:43 PM, John F. Richardson at richards at spawar.navy.mil wrote:

> My answer. Price is the main reason.

Well that and USB 2.0 is basically ubiquitous in the PC world, FW is only
ubiquitous on the Mac... So it's a matter of market penetration.

USB is not really well-suited for hard disk access patterns, but if you
don't care about performance and it's more convenient to use USB2 and that's
all you have available, that's an argument for USB2.

But on a Mac I'd stick with firewire over USB 2.0. While its true that USB
2.0 competes with FW400 in max burst rates, it can't hold a candle to it in
sustained transfer rates (which is much more important for things like
backups). If you can afford to get FW800 over FW400, even better. If not,
FW400 will be sufficient for the average user.

ESATA, on the other hand, reaches transfer rates triple those of USB 2.0 and
FireWire 400. It's only drawback (if you can call it that) is that it
requires its own power connector, unlike the aforementioned interfaces.

However, it is an excellent choice for external disk storage. Unlike USB and
FireWire interfaces, eSATA does not have to translate data between the
interface and the computer. This enhances data transfer speeds, while saving
computer processor resources and eliminating the need for an extra bridge
chip.  

Why Apple doesn't offer a eSATA port on the MacPro I don't understand... So
you have to depend on the drive manufacturer to provide the OSX driver (many
don't), or find it online.  I bought my eSATA card from OWC, which makes
sure that they have Mac OSX drivers for all the products that they sell.

-- M