Fastest External HDD Interface?

"CJT" wrote in message
...
The most "cost effective" is the cheapest that will satisfy
_your need_. Since you haven't defined the need, nobody can
give you a good answer. The cheapest might be a used SCSI
array, or a zip disk on a parallel port, for all we know from
what you've told us.

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I'd like to get the fastest technology I can. The more I looked at the
options the more I want to get opinions from other,
which I did.
Thanks all,

Mike

"Odie Ferrous" wrote in message
...
Mike wrote:
You won't notice any real difference between 1394a and 1394b.

Firewire is marginally quicker than USB2.

On the PC, I typically get a transfer rate of anything from 15MB/sec to
25MB/sec using either firewire or USB.
I don't get an awful lot more on my internal, single SATA drives -
although the mass storage drives in RAID 0 give about a 20% boost in one
or two machines, and 30% in others.

On the Mac, I get an absolute minimim of 42MB/sec firewire, and a tiny
bit less (maybe 40MB/sec) with USB.
With a single SATA drive (I don't have RAID in my Macs) I get well over
45MB/sec.

In all cases, there is practically no difference whether I am using SATA
or PATA drives.

In my main recovery machine, which has a PCI-express SATA2 controller,
running anything from 4 to 8 drives in RAID 0, there is no appreciable
difference whether the drives I'm using are SATA150 or SATA300.

In the UK, eSATA devices are right down in price; about £45 for the
housing, cable and adaptor, plus the cost of the drive. (This is a
fairly simple setup, taking one of the SATA channels to a blanking plate
/ adaptor, then running another SATA cable from that to the housing.)


Odie
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Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts

That's useful information.

Mike