FireWire800 external storage is fastest in independent test

Tom's Hardware Guide, the Internet's premier resource for PC hardware reviews, has concluded that a new FireWire800 external hard disk solution using an Oxford Semiconductor bridge chip easily outperforms alternatives tested in the past.

The WiebeTECH Fire800™ external disk drive casing, tested in conjunction with one of the fastest drives on the market, a Western Digital WD2500J, achieved the fastest recorded maximum data read and write transfer performances.

The Fire800 product supports 3.5in drives with an UltraATA interface and uses the OXUF922 programmable bridge chip to provide high-speed data streaming connections via integral FireWire800 (IEEE1394b), FireWire (IEEE1394a) and USB2.0 ports.

For applications not requiring the USB2.0 option, Oxford's OXFW912, a dedicated FireWire800 to IDE bridge chip introduced in October 2003 further increases the transfer performance of FireWire800. The OXFW912 achieves a transfer rate greater than 88Mbytes/sec when striping data across two drives.

Surpassing the data transfer performance of the OXUF922, the OXFW912 is also able to maintain its high transfer efficiency even for small data block sizes in single drive applications.

In a separate test designed to compare the data transfer rate of IEEE1394b with that of 100 BaseT Ethernet, Tom's Hardware also concluded that when operated as a network adaptor, IEEE1394b could provide a data transfer rate as high as 400Mbits/sec. For data transfer of files of several hundred megabytes each, a typical data rate of 30Mbytes/sec was achieved, which far exceeds that of 100Mbit Ethernet.