USB 2.0 or Firewire for External DVD-RW Drive?

[Trader05]

Hey guys, i have a pioneer 16x dvdrw drive and i want to connect it to my new laptop. Which interface would be best for it? I have both firewire and usb2.

 

[Anonemous]

firewire, gives you stable throughput. I would go with firewire. USB2 should also work.

 

[Wooster]

I will go for firewire. USB2 use a little bit more resources. But with powerful CPU in these days, it doesn't make much difference any more.

 

[RichieZ]

either work fine, i've used both

 

[LED]

Firewire for yourself...USB for compatibility with others

 

[corkyg]

For performance, I would go Firewire. All my CD/RW drives are external Firewire (3 of them on 3 computers.) However!!! Due to my recent experiences with XP SP2, I would recommend USB 2. Why? Because SP2 has had a big problem with Firewire after RC1. I have to screw around hot plugging them to get Windows to "see" them. On a cold boot they simply are not found. This is just with SP2. When I run my SP1 HDDs on the same machines, Firewire is no problem at all. Microsoft has a current Firewire problem in addition to the fact that the technology is not theirs.

 

[Bassyhead]

either should work fine, though i think firewire might be more expensive (not much).

 

[chilled]

Firewire gives more sustained throughput than USB2.0

 

[gnumantsc]

Firewire has isosynchronus throughput meaning that its 400Mbps whether there is 2 devices or 1 device being used whereas USB2 is shared throughput.

But someone brought up a great point is that if you're going to use it let's say at work and at home most likely those computers will not have a FireWire port.

 

[LED]

Just get an external Case with both protocols and then your covered...that's what I do

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: LED
Just get an external Case with both protocols and then your covered...that's what I do

what case did you get? my bytecc external usb 2.0 case stinks

Edit: nevermind, got your reply on my other post

 

[flyvholm]

Go firewire. I have the Pioneer DVR-108 too and unfortunately went for USB 2.0 thinking that it must be established, compatible, reliable... Not so. The USB ports on my laptop (Presario R3000Z) are unstable, and burns fail at all burning speeds (except, I can burn CDs at 16x or below). I hooked the burner/USB enclosure up to a better laptop where burns would succeed at 8x (DVD), but fail at 12x. I then borrowed an old firewire enclosure from a friend (at least 2 years old he said) and hooked that up to my laptop. With this, burns succeed at 12x (which is the highest my media support). Looking around at different forums, lots of people have issues with internal burners in external enclosures, and most issues apply to USB. It appears that USB simply has stability issues when a high throughput is required. I suspect and hope to confirm that the NVidia NForce3 150 chipset in my laptop is the source of the instability in this case. This chipset doesn't support firewire because (quote from NVidias website) "Based on recent market data, it is clear that USB 2.0 is the preferred choice of digital media device manufacturers and consumers." Well, they help make it the preferred choice this way, except it appears they are producing chips that fail where Firewire delivers!

At low burning speeds, USB may (or may not) work, but at high burning speeds - which is what your Pioneer burner is about - you will be likely to get in trouble with USB.

 

[Kaido]

Let me know what you get and how well it works out. I just got my Pioneer today and I'd like to put it in a firewire enclosure since my USB 2.0 one is a piece of junk.

 

[corkyg]

BTW - Microsoft solved the external Firewire problem for me. They now work perfectly after SP2. What they showed my how to do was to remove HIDDEN drivers that clog up the system and sometimes keep the good drivers from loading. Here is the message I got from Tech Support - I followed it and it worked:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My name is Benny. In order to resolve the issue more efficiently, this case has been escalated to our Windows Platform team. I have taken ownership of your Service Request. From now on, I will work closely with you to resolve this issue. I appreciate the time and effort you have taken on this service request. For your reference, the Case ID of this service request is: SRZ040917002673.

After reviewing the entire service case log, I suggest we try the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:

Step I: Uninstall Hidden Drivers
=====================

Set Device Manager up to show Non-Present devices and delete the hidden device.

1. Please click "Start" menu => click "Run" => type "cmd"<without quotation marks> and click "OK"

2. Please type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" <without quotation marks> in the command prompt.

3. Please type "start devmgmt.msc" to launch "Device Manager".

4. Please click "View" menu in "Device Manager" and choose "Show hidden device".

5. Please expand all items in the panel, if any hidden device listed below, please delete them. (The hidden device is shown in a transparent color.)

6. Please right-click the hidden devices and click "Uninstall". (Note: Please remove all hidden HDD drivers, 1394 relate drivers and Storage Device drivers.)

Step II: Reinstall 1394 Controller
=======================
First, please disconnect all 1394 devices. Then, go through the following steps:

1. Click Start, go to Run, type in "devmgmt.msc" without the quotation marks and press Enter.

2. In Device Manager, double click to expand "1394 Controller", right click on the Host Controller, click Uninstall and click OK.

3. Repeat the step 2 to uninstall all items under 1394 Bus controllers. Then, restart your computer and Windows XP will reinstall all 1394 controllers automatically.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It worked!