Q3. How is SATA compared to USB and Firewire in speed? What per- formance gain can one expect by using SATA connection?

A3: Following chart shows the specification data rate(MBps) and Overhead among USB, Firewire and SATA.

Next table compares real world benchmark between USB, Firewire and SATA drives:

 

USB

1394

Serial

Raw Interface

480Mbps

400Mbps

1500Mbps

speed

 

 

 

Benchmark

31.6MB/sec

34.8MB/sec

42.4MB/sec

comparison

64K read

 

 

 

Benchmark

26.5MB/sec

26.7MB/sec

56.2MB/sec

comparison

64K write

 

 

 

Burst

33.5MB/sec

36.2MB/sec

111.3MB/sec

Transfer

Rate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table: Comparison of interface speeds and data transfer rates external disk drive interfaces

Above data are quoted from www.sata-io.org. The performance of PHR- 100SU in your application might be higher or lower depending upon the hard drive used, SATA and USB host and computer hardware. In our test, we have seen over 60MB/s sequential read and write speed in SATA connec- tion. SATA is the better choice for storage device.

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Macally PHR-100SU user manual Usb