Upgrade Help Please - Firewire or USB

Hello, I am new to this board and not much of a hardware person. I have a Compaq Presario 2190US with XP Home SP2. It has 2 usb 1.0 ports and 1 pcmcia slot. I am using the Verizon Wireless VZ access internet service which take up the pcmcia slot. I'm running out of hard disk space and want to - if its practical - use an external hard drive.

I have done some reading on adding either a firewire or usb 2.0 pcmcia card but am not sure if this works well and I have read that there can be compatibility problems, driver problems, etc. It may be less expensive to buy a newer laptop with the hardware already installed.

If there is anyone who has experience with this and could give me some advice I would really appreciate it.

Which works better and has faster thru put firewire or usb?

Which is easier and less hassle to install - firewire or usb?

Thanks in advance

Bunkie

 

Welcome!

Have you considered upgrading to a larger internal HD? That may be the simplest.

Adding a USB 2.0 or firewire card is pretty straight forward. So is using an external drive. There can be issues with drivers if you are useing an older OS. But they are not usuualy that serious.

About speed, USB 2.0 and firewire are about the equal.

About cost, it'll be a lot cheaper to add an HD than to buy a new machine.

 

I agree. As for the USB or Firewire...I think USB is would be more mobile...like if you wanted to take it to another PC. But yes, they are about the same speed.

Hope this helps.

 

Well...the speed thing is a bit more complex. Technically, USB 2.0 has a mildly higher top speed than Firewire...but you'll never see it.

Here's the thing, USB devices will use more CPU cycles to control the transfer of data from the external device to the computer. Firewire's controller is more independent. So even though USB2.0 is rated at 480Mb/s and Firewire's rated at 400Mb/s, Firewire will typically have a much higher sustained data rate than USB2.0.

When using my external Seagate 300GB drive over USB2.0, if I'm streaming 320kbps MP3's off the drive and trying to just web browse at the same time(PM 1.73Ghz, 2GB Ram), it can actually struggle occasionally with the web browsing. However, with Firewire, I can stream the MP3's, download bit torrents to that same external drive, and browse to my heart's content, only being slowed by my limited internet bandwidth.

So Firewire will offer you much better transfer rates and less speed hit on other functions on the laptop. Now...USB2.0 can provide power over the bus as well(Firewire too...but not many drives are configured to be powered off Firewire, and it'll need to be a 6pin port...while most laptop interfaces are only 4pin...so it's generally not an option in most circumstances). Also, more machines use USB2.0. However...if you don't need the drive to be fully portable(like me...I use mine for archival and it generally stays at home)...the larger powered drives are more likely to have both USB2.0 and Firewire interfaces(so I can use it on a computer that only has a USB2.0 or 1.0 interface if necessary). Also, the power isn't an issue then, as it can just be plugged in at home.

If you're just using it for overnight backups and such...it will be perfectly fine. However, if you're gonna be moving files back and forth on it a lot...even the newer machines can be hampered a bit with USB2.0...so a machine that didn't come with even USB2.0 ports, I'd assume it's already a little slower...so Firewire would lighten some of the load from the computer's resources and be less likely to stress the computer as much on use. Therefore...I'd actually recommend Firewire as the better choice in your situation, for an external drive.

Although I agree a larger internal drive may be a better idea...but if you're thinking about replacing the laptop in a year or so...perhaps just dropping the same amount of money on a larger external drive(the money for an internal laptop drive will be about teh same as an external probably 2-3x the size) and be able to use that for archival on the next machine as well. You might not be able to move the internal drive over to the next laptop(and it'd probably not be that big enough to want to anyways).