Arno Wagner wrote:

Previously Mike wrote:
While looking for an external HDD to hold me over 'til I build a PC in
six
months or so I've been exploring external HDD interfaces. Currently, I
have a 4 year old Dell Dimension w/ XP Pro. I'm going to buy a USB2
Firewire 1394b internal card for it .I'd like to find out if 1394b is
worth the additional expense. I believe 1394b is capable of 800Mbs while
1394a is capable of 400Mbs. A SATA II HDD (300MBs) in an external case w/
a 1394b interface will a PC be able to make use of this high speed data
transfer or will the high data speed be wasted because the PC and XP Pro
don't know how to handle these speeds? What is the most cost effective
combination for an external HDD?

External SATA will give you just the same speed as an internal
disk. USB2 and firewire have a tendency to be significanlty slower
due to the tranlation that is neded. If speed is your main concern
then SATA is you only option.

But note that the SATA interface speed is significantly higher
than the disk speed (as it should be, otherwise the interface
would be a bottleneck).

SATA is not his _only_ option. SCSI works fine for external storage. LVD
allows something like 5 meters of cable as well, which can be a great
convenience. But you pay for it.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)