I can't tell you how grateful I am for PortableApps.com. I recently took a job in a networked environment where I don't have admin privileges, my network profile allotment is a measly 30 mb, and I'm not allowed to bring my laptop to work. Loading PortableApps onto a 512 mb Lexar flash drive has given me total control of my computing environment. I'm free!
I'm quickly filling up the 512 drive, though. I'm going to kick it up a notch to a 10 gb pocket hard drive connecting through firewire -- faster, I hope, and lots of room to grow.
Thanks, John!
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Firewire is both less common and slower than USB2.0. I would not recommend it.
Vintage!
most certainly is not slower than USB.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Theoretically it is. Checking the Wikipedia pages, I see that Firewire beats USB2.0 in most speed tests. I also see that the 1394b standard gets an even higher speed, blowing USB2.0 away, but where is the hardware support for 1394b outside of Apple?
Vintage!
Isn't the transfer speed limited by the speed of the hard drive anyway? So it does not matter if it's USB or firewire.
My understanding is that Firewire is faster with larger files.
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Ryan McCue
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
(Tom Lehrer)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
firewire can also be daisy chained unlike usb2.0 allowing for even faster connection.
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eagle scout
Technology can solve all our problems, like using a laptop for a space heater in a cold tent in the middle of winter.
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Yes, if you look up the speed of Firewire, it is slower, but that is the speed EACH WAY. USB 2.0 has a faster speed but this is a SHARED SPEED, as in one direction can hog all of the speed but then there could be no connections the other way.
how about a small external hard drive connected via USB? For example I pulled the hard drive out of a laptop and bought a drive enclosure which connects via USB. It is like having a 60 GB USB drive, and the longevity and stability of a normal harddrive.
Today I'm using a Spark II 10gb pocket drive via firewire. It also has USB 2.0 connectivity, but that requires a power cord that I've misplaced. In PortableApps, the Spark II/firewire is blazingly fast compared to the Lexar thumb drive, and I'm not getting the hiccups and delays that I usually do on the thumb drive, either (like the guy in the next post.)
I suppose I could do further comparisons with the Spark drive plugged into USB.
The thumb drive is clearly the winner in portability, but the speed issue makes it the second choice in my day-to-day office use.
There's no way to know whether the speed difference you're experiencing is related to the port or the memory. You've got an HDD on the firewire port and flash memory on the USB 2.0. It settles nothing.
Is the practical question of which is faster for my use. I have no interest in religious arguments about USB, flash, hard drive or firewire. And, inasmuch as I was cautioned not to use firewire, I thought someone else might benefit from my anecdotal experience.
I have to say Thank you as well. I just discovered the freedom of USB applications. At work they have implemented new security policies and I was really missing some of my favorite applications like PSPad, OpenOffice, and Firefox. This has solved my problem of not having them.
I would also point out I bought a 4 GB Smart Drive with u3 technology. I tried out the U3 interface and some of the applications. I then uninstalled u3 from my drive as it is no where near as nice as PortableApps.