for an external HD, what is faster, eSata or firewire?

[burtharrris]

Strictly a simple question here, I would like to know what is faster for an external hard drive, eSATA wire, or FireWire (IEEE 1394)? No mac/pc debate, no compatibility discussions, simply, does anyone know which is faster? Thanks everybody

 

[usayit]

Firewire 400 is pretty darn slow compared to eSATA.
Firewire 800 can compete shows similar performance to eSATA but will degrade in performance over long writes/reads.... especially writes

eSATA is basically the same as internal SATA drives except running through an expansion card with outward facing SATA ports. Due to the fact that an expansion card is required for eSATA, it is generally not as "portable" as USB or Firewire.

 

[burtharrris]

Oh thats great for me, I'm pretty much leaving it on my desktop for backup purposes only.

 

[Iron Flatline]

I need to add that I am quite impressed by USB 2.0. I had problems with Firewire 800, and refused to believe that USB could even remotely keep up. After a lot of reading I learned that it is as fast, and a lot more reliable.

To clarify: I was concerned with trasferring large amounts of data on a regular basis for regularly-scheduled redundant back-ups. I wanted to copy my complete image libraries once a week. Apparently FireWire is better for accessing busts of data - such as pulling up an image or two to work on from an external drive.

 

[The_Traveler]

I have an external with Firewire 800 or USB2 and a second SATA (not eSATA) internal and have tried backing up large sizes and large numbers of files to all 3 of these. There were differences over 13 GB backups but not so much as to matter.

I use a Firewire/USB2 500 GB extrenal because I can use it on any machine I have.