firewire 800

[robina_80]

if i got a firewire 800 card and firewire ext HD thered be no bottle necking coz there both 800mbps but my HD in my old computer is only ATA 100/133 so between the HD and firewire card wont it be bottlenecked if i transfer between my HD and the ext HD

i want to know or should i say i dont understand the speeds of different devices ie usb1 2, ata, sata, firewire because say for example youve got a ata133 HD and you want to copy a file across via eg usb firewire so you plug your cable in your usb or firewire pci card and 32 bit transfer rate is 133 and 64 bit is 266 so how does it transfer it at 480 which is what usb2 is or 800 which is what firewire 800 is, can someone explane

ive got an ide HD and ive got a file i want to transfer across to usb 2 and of course you know ide speed is 133 and usb2 is 480 so does that mean it will only transfer at 133

PS, also the usb2 card is on my pci bus which is 32bit host running at 133 aswell like the ide channel host so does that mean the transfer speed to the HD and usb2 card will be only 133 instead of 480

ive just done my own homework it took me 40 min to copy my file using my old computer(with the usb pci card and ata 133 HD) but only took me 4 min using my computer (with int usb2 controller and sata 2 drives), all i got to say is that dont buy any pci controller cards, there a gimic coz all your getting is a transfer speed as much as your pci controller card which is 133

 

[KSoD]

Well you cant really expect a PCI device to transfer faster than the speeds that control it. I mean PCI Bus speeds only hit 133Mb/s so you couldnt expect it to transfer at 800Mb/s if that is well beyond it capabilties right?

Any device will only work as fast as the thing controlling it. Be it PCI, PCIe, USB or IDE. The fastest it can go will be the speed of the controller. So a hard drive hooked up to a controller card will only work as fast as the PCI slot that it is plugged into.

 

[robina_80]

so what if i get a new computer with sata2 hd and a pci usb2 card it will only run at 133mb because thats how fast the pci bus controller is yeah?

 

[KSoD]

I would have to say yes. The reason is that even though you have a high speed card it still has to send the information thru the PCI Bus slot. Which bottle necks the transfer speed cause it can not move as fast as the the card or the drives attached to the card.

If you get a eSATA drive and a mobo that supports eSATA or a external that you can use with Firewire or USB 2.0 then you shouldnt have this issue.

From what i see the issue is that the card is going thru PCI Bus which has a slower transfer rate than the devices being used. Which is what is causing the bottle neck.

 

[robina_80]

so whats the point of designing usb2 pci cards if they can only travel at 133 as fast as the pci bus

 

[KSoD]

They designed them cause some people have more hard drives or want more hard drives than they can connect. Not everyone is that knowledgeable of the speeds and most people dont care. They just care that they are able to have more hard drives and more space. Espically with IDE since you can only have 4 devices. If 2 are DVD drives that only leaves you with 2 Hard Drives. Some want more space than they currently have and dont want to bother reinstalling everything on a larger hard drive and dont know about images and that.

I could be wrong. They may work faster i dont know. I am just trying to take a stab at why the transfer speed would be slower than if you hooked up the drive.

 

[robina_80]

this is my last question about the subject, so there be no point getting firewire 800 ports on pci card as it limited to the pci bus speed of 133

 

[KSoD]

If you are really worried about the speeds i would say no.

 

[robina_80]

i talked to some people and did some research for myself and ive concluded the following:
usb=12Mb/1.5MB
usb2=480Mb/60MB
usb3=4.8Gb/600MB

firewire400(1394a)=400Mb/50MB
firewire800(1394b)=800Mb/100MB
firewire s3200=3.2Gb/400MB

so pci can run almost all of them because its got a bus of 133MB but not the new versions of usb and firewire