[antiRepublicrat]

That 480 vs 400 makes a difference over 30GB.

That's the problem: the 480 is raw megabits per second of communications, but it has a lot more overhead than the 400, and that overhead eats into the 480. People are usually lucky to get half of that 480 in actual throughput.

I can't test here because my Firewire is a RAID at 800, while the USB is just one disk. It wouldn't be realistic.

[Dead Corpse]

The 400 is going to have overhead as well.

Over the last few years, the only place I've really seen an advantage with firewire is with video streaming. Anything else, USB 2.0 wins the crown.