Slow Firewire Transfers

i've been the owner of an M1330 ever since Dell decided to replace my horrible M1210 with it about a year ago. just recently I decided to go out and buy an external hard drive with firewire 400 capabilities just because I always hear people *****ing about how much better firewire is than usb 2.0. so i decided to compare them for myself and do a couple of sustained transfers using both firewire and usb 2.0 With the usb i would reach a max transfer rate of about 17 mb/sec after a couple of minutes, and with the firewire it would start off at only 800 kb/sec and it would not go beyond 6 mb/sec, and even when adding more simultaneous transfers, that number would drop a little to compensate for the others. the usb rate seems about right, but i just can't figure out what the deal with the firewire is. my ricoh chipset driver is up to date, but i know that people have had problems with ricoh on dell, particularly with audio production. however, the only problems i have come across involve audio distortion and freezing, not sloth-like transfer rates. i would appreciate any help or feedback. thanks

 

Are you up to date with Service Pack 1 for Vista, the os you most likely are running? Here is an article that pertains to XP, but may also hold some water with Vista. Link

 

hmm i thought i did, but i guess i never updated it when i had to reinstall windows a few months ago. installing it now, we'll see what happens..

 

so after installing sp1, my transfer rate will peak at 13 mb/sec only to hang up and stop transfering for a few seconds and drop back down to about 6 mb/sec, and then back up....back down etc.