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which is better for hard drive transfers: ide or usb cable

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steeladept:
Yeah, that is why I made sure to point it out.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I haven't had a reason to use it on USB2.  It was capable, just the PC's I had to use it on at the time were not.  That is how corporate life is though, I guess.  I still think they are significantly slower than IDE though, aren't they?  (too lazy to look up specs right now - reaching for coffee - maybe later :P).

CWuestefeld:
If you're working with an IDE hard drive, then there's nothing that will transfer the data faster than a direct IDE connection. If you use USB or Firewire to connect to an external drive enclosure, that container still must use IDE internally to talk to the drive itself. You don't need to know the actual numbers; in both cases there is an IDE interface involved, so regardless of how fast others might be, it can go no faster than IDE.

If you've resigned yourself to an external enclosure, then the optimal interface depends on the usage. Obviously firewire-800 is fastest (and isn't there a super-high-speed USB coming out?).

But Hi-speed USB2 and Firewire are similar, each edging the other in particular cases. A friend who was doing professional video editing found that for sustained transfers (i.e., huge files like video), Firewire was a better performer. For shorter bursts, USB2 was able to do a bit better than firewire.

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