[Yossarian]

I've had two gripes with USB 2.0, as compared to FireWire:

1. It requires a lot of supervision from the CPU - FireWire is much more independent, and thus frees up the CPU for processing the data as it comes in (or right before it goes out); and
2. it never EVER could sustain the 480 Mbps speed for anything more than a few seconds, making it almost twice as slow as 400Mbps Firewire. (Newer Macs have better implementations of USB, making it now only (roughly) 1.5 times as slow, but still, when you have a lot of data to transfer, that kills.

I hope that USB 3.0 overcomes these deficiencies, so that we can simplify our computers. But now that I have a boatload of FireWire and SATA/eSATA peripherals, that simplification won't happen for me for a good while.

[Dead Corpse]

We were running two ext HD's for re-imaging Intel MacBooks. One was Firewire, the other USB 2.0. Same size drive image on the same version of NetRestore. Identical hardware save for the ext drives.

USB drive finished a full 15 minutes before the Firewire.

Gripe all you want, in a realworld drag race... Firewire FAILED on an Epic scale.