Is FireWire 400 faster than USB 2.0?
USB 2.0 supports a speed of 480 Mbit/s and FireWire 400 supports a speed of 400 Mbit/s. This would seem to indicate that USB is faster than FireWire, right? Actually, the opposite is often true. Differences in the architecture of the two interfaces affect the actual sustained throughput (reading and writing files). FireWire uses a “Peer-to-Peer” architecture that is intelligent and negotiates bus conflicts to determine the sustained data transfer speed. USB 2.0 uses a “Master-Slave” architecture in which the computer’s resources dictate data flow and the sustained transfer speed. Therefore, USB is dependent on your available system resources to determine the transfer speed. Multiple applications that are open and using system resources can slow down the data transfer speed of USB drives. Therefore, for the most reliable and consistent transfer speed, FireWire is often the best option.
