Transfer Rates - USB, Thunderbolt, Firewire
 

anyone happen to know the transfer rates of these interconnects?

IIRC, USB 3.0 is 10x to 20x as fast as USB 2.0

where do the others fit in?

I guess we could throw SATA in for comparison too...

You moving single large file or a bunch of small files? Trying to do video capture to the device, etc?

moving files of various sizes, actually

tv - the google link was no help and I'd done that before posting

Firewire was/is an awesome technology.

Far superior to USB in so many ways but unfortunately Apple got greedy on the licensing fee which really hurt/killed adoption.

IIRC Thunderbolt is dual channel bi-directional 10Gbps daisy chain able up to 6 devices.

Don't think you'll come close to pushing it's limits.

What exactly do you want to transfer? From what to what?
You can wire two computers with X-ed Ethernet cable and transfer at roughly 100MB/sec, should your hard drive be able to achieve that transfer rate with small files (probably not).

You can temporarily remove the hard drive and install it in another computer, to be able to copy with native PATA/SATA-speed.

Roughly: any of those interconnects is fast enough not to be taxed by mechanical hard drive transferring small files.

External SATA drive? If your computers support USB 3.0 I would think they have an eSATA connection as well. Otherwise USB 3.0 is probably the lesser expensive tech of the rest for the speed you get.

Never used the Thunderbolt port on my MAC, it's twice the speed of USB 3, but twice the cost for a cable, and you're lucky to find the right device that supports it. Then you can't generally share the device with other non-mac machines, so it's kind of a "dud." (thunderbolt in PC's is dead as of this last summer)

Firewire? It's been dying for a while.

USB is pretty much the best option out of what you listed.


If I'm transferring files between two machines I use a x-over cable like what was posted above. It's fast, easy, and efficient on large files.

This is a great article on mac file transfers.

How to move data between Macs | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

I think you might be over estimating a bit (pun intended)...100 megaBYTES or 100 megabits? Whle USB has come a long way, still don't come close to good 'ol SCSI bus/drives. I realize many PCs (particularly laptops) may not support SCSI anymore, but for transferring data, they've got a lot of catching up to do, and slow I/O has always been the bottleneck on all systems large and small. I've still got a souped up desktop pc dedicated for audio file manipulation...I don't "fix it", 'cause it ain't broke.

ps: I realize SCSI is "moot" for this discussion, just wanted to blabber a bit :)

SCSI Voodoo.

Loved SCSI but man could it be temperamental at times.

Proper chaining was less about the rules and more about knowing your peripherals and what order they worked best in in relation to the others.

In my shops scanners always worked best unterminated and last in the chain.

It was anything but plug and play.

Thunderbolt to hdmi works very well for 1080p movies off of a MacBook pro.

Bytes! All computers made in last few years have Gbit Ethernet port built in. While not topping out at 1Gbit, you can easily have throughput of 900Mbit between two computers connected with crossed Cat5E Ethernet cable...no switches/routers between.

So 1Gbit Ethernet will trasfer around 80-90MBytes sec.
100Mbit Ethernet will cap this to roughly 8-9MBytes sec.

But mechanical discs are not too good at transferring small files, so throughput will suffer severely in such case.

USB 2.0 tops around 20-30 Mbyte in the real world. SCSI is something I didn't use for a while :D Still have some UWSCSI junk laying around at work but it has all been replaced by SAS a few years ago. ;) I never liked SCSI, daisy-chaining, terminal resistors and delicate 80-pair ribbon cables.

I bet Webby has a "gris gris", or knows a Hoodoo man :)

Dang, you got me :)! I'm a dinosaur communications systems programmer/networking guy, and PCs have never been my forte. Learn something new everyday day. Btw, REAL computers use 10GigE cards :D

Well if you can call plain vanilla 2U HP rack server running Win2008 "a real computer" then I work with "real computers". ;) I have couple at work but I wasn't so impressed with current generation of 10Gbe cards. Interface cards draw lot's of juice, switches are still mucho $$$ and we typically run out of disc I/O before Ethernet bandwidth.

Heck, I would gladly swap 10Gbe switcharoo for Flash-based NAS any day of the week :D The SAS stuff is quick when transferring big files but gets bogged down by hundreds of users doing random-access.

P.S. The biggest fusch-up I experienced in my career was caused by supposedly "fail-proof" RAID5 SCSI-array flagging two discs dead after somebody touched UW-SCSI cables connecting the racks. Discs were perfectly healthy but RAID-card wouldn't have any of it and insisted on re-format (cannot rebuild two dead on RAID5).

SCSI is dead, good riddance :D

Windoze...when are you gonna get a "real" operating system :D? I'm just pickin' with ya beepbeep. "Real" computers use 10GigE for network I/O only, not for accessing data! I agree with everything you've said regarding PCs/servers, but like I said earlier...I'm a "mainframe bigot"...a different environment entirely...but now retired...take care!

ps: Don't take it personal...I'll give Unix guys a bunch of crap too :)

I don't think SCSI will die anytime soon, storage arrays and ETL will continue to use it for a very long time.

When I say SCSI I mean old parallel interface. Of course. SCSI as SAS (Serial attached SCSI) will exist a long time. All storage I work with is SAS (plus some SATA arrays and specialized flash arrays).

But SAS it's nothing of old SCSI except the name ;)

It sounds like you don't like 1" thick 3 meter cables with 68 tiny little pins in them. :)

go optical

BTW - my original plan was to see if I could come out of the Firewire or Thumperbolt port on a McMini then use a converter box to get to USB 3.0 for fast device Xfers. Looks like that would be spendy tho.

How 'bout old copper "channel cables"...1" thick and 3 meters ain't nuthin'. Fiber...best thing ever for data center layouts :).

Except for hooking up audio components. You'd think that digi connectors would all be the same, but digi coax is better than optical (unless that's changed in recent years). I use both...attended too many "shows" to hear a difference though :)