Jian @ Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:20 am wrote:
Speed is one factor that make firewire external drive the choice of video as compare to usb. I read somewhere the main reason why you should not use usb, but I can't quite explained; something to do with the way the data is transfered. For music usb is ok. This is the reason why I still have not rip my video collection yet; i have no firewire port in my old computer.
Yep, Firewire is better because it transfer the data in isochronous fashion. What that means is that at a fixed interval, it will transfer data, which for video is a must. USB will transfer a lot of data then stop until the system is free. This can, i emphasize can, mean dropped frames on video. On audio, it makes no difference because the data you transfer is small. However, on low compressed video, Firewire will do a better job of keeping up with frames for video.