Firewire Harddrive

The firewire harddrive is used mostly on the Macintosh but some PC's also have firewire ports. Firewire is an external interface used to hook up many other peripherals such as CD's and video cameras.

Firewire has been edging out SCSI as an external interface because the hardware is simpler and cheaper. Like SCSI, firewire devices can be daisy-chained. Up to 63 devices can be put on a firewire chain.

If you want the fastest firewire harddrive, you will need the firewire 800 connection. Speed wise, it is near the top-end of the external connections: eSata is faster and USB 3.0 devices won't be available until about the middle of 2009. I don't list SCSI because it is generally only used in the Enterprise market.

Speed Comparison Chart

A firewire hard drive does not really have a firewire interface. A typical harddrive interface is SATA or Parallel ATA (IDE). The firewire connection is achieved by putting the SATA harddrive into an enclosure with the firewire interface.

The disk enclosure on the right is an example of multiple external interfaces. It includes 1 firewire 400 port, 2 firewire 800 ports, and 1 USB 2.0 port. The two firewire 800 ports enable you to daisy chain multiple firewire devices to a single port; a cheaper alternative to a firewire hub.

The biggest advantage of having an enclosure with multiple interfaces is that you can easily share data between PCs and Macs.

Firewire Specs

Firewire is defined under the IEEE 1394 standard. The two different types of firewire have different cables with different connectors, as shown in the diagram and the table below.

The incompatible cables between firewire 400 and firewire 800 can sometimes be a nuisance. If you find yourself wanting to make the connection between a firewire 400 drive and a firewire 800 port, you could use a special firewire 400-to-800 cable. Your firewire drive will run at the slowest speed, but at least you'll be able to transfer your data.

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