USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and it was designed to swap parallel
and serial ports on personal computers to get rid of the need of
developing separate device drivers. The USB is a hardwired connection
that links two or more hardware components within a computer system. The
main function of USB is to provide fast and useful mean to attach
external components to the PC.
FireWire vs. USB
If you compare architecture wise, FireWire uses the “Peer-to-Peer”
that allows devices to be intelligent and negotiate bus conflicts in
order to decide on who should control the data transfer. On the other
hand, USB uses the “Master-Slave” architecture in which the computer
controls the data flow between the attached peripherals that adds an
important system overhead. The “Peer-to-Peer” architecture of FireWire
needs devices to mediate, which results in slow performance when there
is more number of devices on the bus, whereas, the host-centric nature
of USB allows the host to assign more bandwidth to high priority devices
than forcing them to fight for bandwidth.
The raw speed of FireWire is supreme than USB and the USB 2.0 standard
is not capable to beat the real world performance of earlier FireWire
400. Although technically, USB 2.0 is a 480 Mbit/s interface and
FireWire 400 is a 400 Mbit/s interface, but many read and write tests
have shown that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0.
It is safer and advisable to use USB unless and until you are doing some
video editing on your PC.
Ethernet vs. USB
Gigabit Ethernet transfers data at up to 125 MB/s which makes it two
times faster than USB 2.0's theoretical maximum. Ethernet offered higher
speed until USB 3.0 is released. Again, an Ethernet cable can go up to a
length of about 100 yards without degrading the signal quality. But a
USB cable usually cannot go more than 10 feet. This is one of the
reasons why Ethernet is the model for connecting stationary computing in
places of business and home. Besides, Ethernet cables are much cheaper
per foot than USB. A computer can have one or two Ethernet connections
but it may have 6 to 10 USB ports.
eSATA Vs USB
eSATA stands for External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. The
eSATA transfer rates are higher and the upper limit of the transfer rate
can be as high as 3 Gb/sec, which is better when compared with the
transfer rates of the USB based hard drive which is some 480 Mb/sec
mark.
The PCMark05 which is a standard for measuring computer performance
gives a score of 3578 to USB 2.0 external hard drive, the eSATA device
again is the better rated with a score of 5342.2.
eSATA losses out to USB in terms of usability. The USB port is more
frequent in most computers when compared to the eSATA port. Computers
that do not come with an existing eSATA port, needs a peripheral
component interconnect (PCI) in order to use eSATA based devices
whereas, most of the computers nowadays come with multiple USB ports.
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