[robina80]

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

[robina80]

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

[computeruler]

so basicly what your asking is the different speeds of like ata sata firewire ect ect??

[thingie2]

The rated speeds are just the maximum speed possible through that interface, but if you are transferring from a lower interface to a faster one (or visa-versa) it will only transfer at the speed of the slower interface.

I hope that answers your question, but I wasn't too sure what exactly you were asking for.

[robina80]

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

[thingie2]

Yes, the maximum speed of transfer of anything, is the slowest interface. (if you think about this scenario: You have a water tap, that's got a diameter of 1cm, and a water flow of 1liter a minute, it wouldn't matter how large the pipe if that you connect to it, you will only get a maximum flow of 1 liter a minute out of the end)
In this case the slowest is the IDE and PCI at 133, so this will be the limiting factor.

[robina80]

so why do they make firewire 800 pci cards and usb2 pci cards if the max the pci bus can go is 133

[computeruler]

cause for instance what if you have a camara or something and it only takes firewire and you have no firewires on your ocmputer then you can get one of those and use it

[robina80]

its a gimic so really when you get a firewire 800 pci card its not running at 800 atall its running at 133?????????????

[thingie2]

I dunno, there are other interfaces that are that speed though.

[robina80]

im really confused sorry

[Carbon]

Ugh.

USB > FIREWIRE > PCI > ATA for transfer rates.

[thingie2]

Isn't firewire faster than USB?

[robina80]

atm firewire is 800 and usb2 is only 480 but when usb3 comes out its going to be 4.8gigs and firewire 3.2

[robina80]

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