I just bought a Lacie 250 GB ext HD with USB2 interface on which i stored alll my clips. Do you think that replacing it with a FW (400Mb/s) one i'll get any noticeable improvement in performance? Throughput is far away from the theoretical 480 Mb/s, in fact it goes down to around 100 Mb/s ... i'm very sad and a bit confused ... what should i do?
Any help is appreciated.
the major difference between fw and usb2 disks are, on each usb bus, you share the speed of 480mbits to the connected devices. lets say you have 2 usb devices, you share he bus with 480/2
on firewire, each device has its own independent 400mbits channel, also this is the major reason lies behind, why u cant stripe usb 2.0 disks but firewires.
check the defragmentation status of the disk.
also make some diagnostic tests. but using firewire disks, under normal circumstances, are better. there are multi format external hdd boxes, I have one of those and it costs (external 3.5 hdd box with firewire and usb2.0 support + 160gb seagate hdd with 8mb cache bla bla) something arround $150 + VAT (%18)
when there are no any other usb devices connected to the system, transfer rates are very smiliar and effiency is almost the same but as I mentioned only when there are no any other usb devices plugged...
