Quote:

Main reason I want firewire is due to the CPU utilization being near 0 for them, compared to noticeable amounts for USB2. That, and the USB ports on the laptop are handy to have free for other things.


No knowledge of them here. But if I find any, I'll post again.

I don't know much about the CPU utilization (nothing really seems to measure it correctly enough anyway), but the overhead is definitely lower for firewire. High-end 3.5" enclosures usually score close to 40MB/sec with FW400, versus around 30-35MB/sec for USB2. And much faster than that with FW800 if you have it.

Of course, I'm just a lowly Linux user -- we've yet to get a decent firewire stack. It works, some of the time, on some of the hardware. But USB2 is rock solid.

Cheers