External Hard Drive choice: IEEE 1394 (Firewire) worthwhile? (etc.)

Factual Questions
1

My computer’s hard disk is getting pretty full, and I think the only viable solution is going to be to get an external hard drive to offload some of my files (a lot of audio) and also to back-up some of the other, more important ones. I know there have been a number of threads about this sort of thing recently, but I have some questions that I have not seen answered there.

First of all, I see that some drives come with Firewire, or, rather, because I am on Windows XP, an IEEE 1394 interface as well as (or instead of) USB 2. My computer does have an IEEE 1394 port (which I have never used), and I am wondering if any extra transfer speed that I would get from using this instead of USB would be worth the extra cost of such a drive (and if there are any disadvantages of IEEE 1394 that I should know about). Money is very tight, so cost is definitely a consideration, but I might be willing to pay what seems to be a relatively small extra price for IEEE 1394 if that gives me a significant performance increase.

I did try researching IEEE 1394 on Wikipedia, but came away even more confused, as it appears that there are several versions of the standard, and the later ones are capable of much faster transfer speeds. My computer was bought new in early 2005, and it appears that the IEEE 1394b standard appeared in 2002, so does that mean that that is what I will have? Indeed, is there some way of directly telling which version I have? This matters, because different external drives appear to be sold as compatible with different versions of the interface, and also because (if I am reading the Wiki article right) the later versions should be able to provide a much greater performance advantage over USB2 than the basic, legacy version of IEEE 1394 can. I have looked in Device Manager, but all it says is “OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.” (I had a similar problem, now solved, in telling whether I have USB 1 or 2, which is not at all apparent from my documentation, and not at all obvious from Device Manager, but which can make a big difference with respect to performance and compatibility.)

It is not clear to me, indeed, whether the different versions depend on different hardware, or if it is simply a matter of software drivers. I have Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3 and most of the patches (except a couple to do with .NET, that wouldn’t install) so might I be able to use IEEE 1394c, which appears to have come out in 2007, or does that depend on different hardware (which I do not want to pay for or deal with)?

Also, I would like to ask people’s opinions as to whether there are any significant advantages or disadvantages, in terms of price, reliability, etc., between drives that are described as “portable,” and those that are not? I do not have any real need for portability at the moment, since I am using a desktop machine and do not have a decent laptop. However, it is possible I might acquire a laptop in future, if my financial situation changes, so portability might become more of an issue.

One more point, if I may: I have seen that some people recommend that it is better to get a hard drive enclosure, and a drive to put inside it, rather than a fully assembled external drive. What are the advantages and disadvantages (in price, reliability, and anything else) of this?

Finally, if anyone has any particular brands, models, or vendors that they want to recommend or warn me off from, I would be glad to hear.

2

USB 2.0 is slow. USB 1.x is disgustingly slow. I imagine 3.0 is not an option for you, is eSATA? Otherwise Firewire is your main option aside from USB. FW 800 (“b”) is about 1.6x faster than USB 2.0 and FW 400 (“a”) is about 80% slower. These are optimal speeds I believe. The other main advantage is that FW allows a longer cable.

You cannot figure out which version you have based on dates necessarily, but maybe post your motherboard or computer model and one of us can figure it out.

Sometimes a software update will add support, although it is unlikely. Check the manufacturer or motherboard website for updates. I think my computer didn’t come with USB 3.0 support out of the box but an update added it.

Enclosures are definitely cheaper if you have a spare drive lying around. Some allow hotswapping on the fly if you have multiple drives. It doesn’t sound like these really apply to you so you would go with whatever is cheaper.

3

USB is more than fast enough for music and watching video from the external hard drive. Firewire on external drives tends to cost about $30 to $40 extra. A 500 Gig USB 2.0 drive costs around $60 to $70. One with 1394 tends to cost $90 to $110.

4

One advantage is that you can get an enclosure that has USB, Firewire and eSATA options all in one unit. Then you can see for yourself which connection type you like. If you can’t do eSATA now but you will be able to in the future, you’ll be able to use the same enclosure.

I also find an enclosure indispensable for fixing computers or simply upgrading. I’ll take someone’s hard drive, put it in my enclosure, copy their data to my internal drive, then can freely wipe their original drive and re-install their OS. It’s also helpful in situations like ghosting, accessing data from a drive containing a corrupt OS, or simply upgrading or re-configuring an existing drive.

And, if you fill up your external drive, you simply buy a new one and put it in the enclosure, keeping your old one as an archive.

5

I would get one with a USB interface, just in case I want to read my files on another computer (on the assumption that USB is much more likely to be present elsewhere).

6

Very few drives are FireWire only, most have at least USB as well. The only single-port drives Newegg lists are USB 2.0, 3.0, and eSATA. At worst you would have to dig up a spare cord, as the drives often come with only one type (usually USB).

7

Thanks for the helpful comments. Perhaps I should say that I have not really been considering eSATA or USB 3, because I do not believe I have the hardware for them (certainly there is no eSATA port). I do have free PCI slots, but I do not want to have to spend the money on new PCI cards too. I was considering IEEE 1394 mainly because the port is already there, and unused.

I did manage to find an old forum on the Dell site (from 2005, which is about the vintage of my machine) which seems to imply that what I have is most likely IEEE 1394a, not the original version of the standard, but not the much faster version that has appeared since either. The information there is still not very clear though, so if anyone can tell anything from the model and motherboard details, as thelurkinghorror suggested, here they are.

It is a Dell Dimension 8400, and BELARC Advisor returned the following concerning the motherboard:
Main Circuit Board
Board: Dell Inc. 0U7077
Serial Number: …CN481114BG032G.
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A03 10/11/2004

I hope that means something to someone. BELARC was unable to further enlighten me about the IEEE 1394 version, any more than Device Manager was. (It seems absurd to me that they make this sort of information so hard to discover. It is not like it doesn’t matter. Clearly many drives are able to use one version of Firewire but not another.)

Otherwise, I am still feeling torn. It does appear that drives with IEEE 1394 cost $30 or so more than ones with just USB 2, and I can’t really say that I absolutely need the extra speed, but as a makeshift measure, to eke out my storage space a little, I have been making a lot of use of USB flash drives over the past month or so, and transferring large files to and from them can get frustratingly slow. (I understand that Firewire also does not tie up the CPU nearly as much as USB does.)

8

For $30 you can probably pick up an eSata card, which is clearly the best way to go of the three.

9

Actually, is there any reason you’re not considering adding an internal drive? You can get 1TB starting around $75, or 500GB starting around $55.

10

You don’t need an eSata card, you can pick up a sata to eSata port cable for $5.00. That cable had TWO eSATA ports for me to use

I did this, I plug the sata connector into the motherboard and the other side of the connector is an eSata port.

This rocks!!!

Of course if you don’t have an extra sata plug on your motherboard an eSATA card can be had.

11

You’re right, of course.

So far as I can tell, a Dimension 8400 has 4 SATA ports on the motherboard. One for the existing drive, possibly one for the optical drive (though that one might well be IDE, too). Should be one or two free.

12

eSATA’s the way to go. I used to work in computer forensics, and we used a LOT of external drives in the course of doing our business.

On the whole, USB was better than Firewire- USB 2 beat anything shy of 1394B, but even then, it wasn’t that far behind in practical use, and since we used Windows, USB wasn’t nearly the pain in the ass that 1394 was, due to better support.

eSATA came out not long before I stopped working in that business- it was FAST by comparison, and not such a PITA either.

13

My Antec hard drive enclosure came with a USB cable and with an eSATA cable and a bracket that fits into an empty PCI slot cover (not into the slot, just replaces the cover on the back of the computer) … that bracket is the eSATA port, no other hardware required. By going the eSATA route you get the same speed as your internal hard drive.