Comparison on
External Device Connection Standards: USB, FW and eSATA
Prepared by Ian Matthews
July 14, 2010
If you are like me you
probably have to go looking for the exact specifications for
external connectors like USB and Firewire every few months.
For some reason, I have been unable to find a simple table that
contains the core information for each product and version... so I
did the research and made one:
|
|
USB
1.1 |
USB
2
HiSpeed USB |
USB
3 |
Firewire 1
FW1
Firewire 1394
Firewire 400 |
Firewire 2
FW2
Firewire 1394B
Firewire 800 |
Firewire 4
FW4
Firewire 1394D
Firewire 3200 |
eSATA I
eSATA |
eSATAw/Pwr
eSATAp |
eSATA II
eSATA 6GB |
|
Speed |
.012GB/sec |
.48GB/sec |
5GB/Sec |
.4GB/Sec |
.8GB/Sec |
3.2GB/Sec |
3GB/Sec |
3GB/Sec |
6GB/Sec |
|
Full Duplex |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Supply Power |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Possible |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
? |
|
Power Mgt |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
? |
? |
No |
No |
? |
|
Cable Length |
3M |
5M |
3M
For Full SuperSpeed |
4.5M |
4.5M
300' if Cat5 |
? |
2M |
2M |
? |
|
Hot Plugging |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
OS &
Hardware Specific |
OS &
Hardware Specific |
? |
|
Product Availabilitiy in 2010 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
? -
Apple Has Dropped support |
Yes |
Yes |
2011 |
Note that Apple recently
dropped support for Firewire so I suspect we will be left with USB 3 and
eSATA 6GB as the only common options for 2011 and 2012.
