Firewire External Hard Drives are generally much faster than USB 2.0 External Backup Drives but you first need to ensure that you have the correct FireWire port on your pc before buying.

You can choose from FireWire 400 and 800 as well as the more familiar USB 2.0 port.

The FireWire 400 is a 6 pin port whereas the FireWire 800 is a 9 pin port. The difference can be seen in the diagrams below.

Based upon their respective specifications, you would reasonably expect the FireWire 400 to be slowest at 400Mbps, followed by the USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps and then fastest of all the FireWire 800 at 800Mbps. However, not so!!

The sustained throughput of the FireWire 400 is much higher than the USB 2.0. This is because a device on a USB chain can only use a maximum of two thirds of the available bandwidth. This means that in practice, the throughput of the USB 2.0 maxes out at circa 320Mbps which is actually slower than the FireWire 400. However, it should be noted that FireWire 400 outperform the USB 2.0 far more on Apple Mac computers as opposed to Windows pc’s where the performance was more or less equal.

FireWire 400 Port 6 Pin

FireWire 800 Port 9 Pin

FireWire 400 6 Pin Port on the left.

FireWire 800 9 Pin Port on the right.

Mbps = Megabits per second