Firewire (IEEE 1394) help

[Alejandro]

Hi people,

I'm gonna buy a big hard disk and an external case to connect it, that has support for both USB and Firewire connection.
Since i'd prefer to use Firewire, I have two questions:

1) Are there any PCI expansion cards for firewire? Brand/model to recommend?

2) Which is the minimum OS requirement to fully support it? I was planning to put Windows 2000 on this machine.

Thank you very much!

[Budfred]

There are definitely PCI expansion cards for firewire, but I haven't heard anything about one brand over another. There are expansion cards that will include firewire and USB 2, you might want to consider one of them so you have both options.

[Alejandro]

I haven't heard much yet about USB2, i think it has the transfer speed of firewire, while being backwards compatible with older USB devices, am i right?
However i guess that being newer than firewire there's less support for it yet...
Probably it needs XP? I'm trying to use Windows 2000 if possible.

Thanks budfred

[Budfred]

USB 2 is about the same speed as Firewire and there is probably a lot more of it out there than Firewire devices. It is backwards compatible and more likely to end up being the standard than Firewire.

I believe it is compatible with Windoze from Win95 on, but will probably require installing drivers to run it.

[rond36]

I too would go with USB 2.0 it's faster than IEEE 1394 (USB 2.0 480 Mbit/sec IEEE 1394 400 Mbit/sec). (Firewire is a proprietary technology with the patents held by Apple Computer) I have 2 IEEE 1394 adaptors installed one on my sound card (SB Audigy MP3)with 1 port and the other is on my video card (ATI A-I-W 8500DV) with 2 ports. I Also have a USB 2.0 card with 4 ports in a 5 1/4 drive bay installed that came with my motherboard.

If I were to add an external drive I would use USB 2.0 because it will likely be the technology that will be a standard feature on all new chipsets (it is already standard on almost all new motherboards) USB 2.0 is very similar to the S-ATA interface and I feel will be developed to be as fast as S-ATA in the near future. All Windows OS's newer than Win 98 support both IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 with the proper drivers installed.