comparing: USB vs. IDE

[dnewhous]

I believe Firewire is similar to SCSI in its ability for devices to stream data between each other without having the data routed through the controller or the motherboard.

 

[EvilCloudStrife]

wow man, reading these forums i learn so so much. it is quie amazing acctually. anyways, i was amazed to hear that my gigabit lan is faster then my hard drive gets data? you mean to tell me that i can transport data faster from my computer in my other room then from hard drive to hard drive in the same computer? ( reason i ask is i dont have them networked together, but if this is the case, i this i would consider it) thank!

 

[JigPu]

Gigabit LAN = 128MB/sec (theoretical maximum)
ATA133 = 133MB/sec (thoretical maximum)

In the realm of pure theory, a drive to drive transfer would be faster.

In the realm of reality, it'd also be faster since the NIC has to get it's data from somwehere, usually the HD The HD will get data off of itself as fast as it can for the NIC (~40MB/sec), and then the NIC will happily send it off. Transfering from computer to computer (instead of drive to drive) will still be bottlnecked by each computer's HD's transfer rate, so you're not going to see any magical speed increases just by transfering over the LAN.

JigPu

 

[Bios24]

Here's an interesting read about a review of a seagate external hard drive with USB and Firewire:
http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/drives/hard_drives/seagate_usb/

Here's the guts I got from it:
USB: 29.1 MegaBytes per second, 15.1ms access and 12% cpu usage.
Firewire: 36 MegaBytes per second, 14.8ms access and 0% cpu usage.

It's easy to see why the people love firewire. For reference, my SATA Seagate 7200rpm 8mb drive gets about 100mb/sec. So while Firewire is fast, it's nowhere near the speed of internal drives.

Also: for those of you confused on Megabytes vs Megabits, use the google calculator. Go to google and type in "3 megabits to megabytes" The top of the search page should give you the results.

 

[Gnufsh]

Parallel ports will do 3 to 5 Mbits per second.

I am asking about serial because I am comparing USB external analog modems to serial analog modems. I don't want to waste a PCI slot on a modem and I want to have one analog modem that sticks with me even when I change computers and even when the PCI bus shortly becomes obsolete (that's a prediction). I have DSL right now but I move every couple of years.

Another prediction: V.92 is the end of the road for analog modem technology - what is state of the art now will be state of the art for the next 20 years at least.

Try to find a hardware (controller-based) USB modem (I believe they exist) as opposed to a soft modem. If you get a serial modem, you are assured that it's a hardware modem. USB modems are usually winmodems.

 

[don256us]

I really don't know which way modem technology will go. I suspect that they will make a PCI-express 1x card as that bus standard grows. Hardware is truely the thing to do, however, with procs being as fast as they are, and the wave of dual core procs on the way, it may be a moot point. USB has life left as it is backward compat at this time.

Serial is legacy so a serial modem makes little sense for the future.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I think hardware modems are largely over-rated these days - I bought one and it was a waste of money. There was zero gain in transfer rates, and it was no less flaky than the $3 winmodem I was using before. There was also no noticeable gain in CPU usage.

I think hardware modems were a lot more advantageous in the days when processors were far less powerful. I don't see the demands of a winmodem having any tangible effect on CPU performance anymore.

Correct me if I'm wrong here please.