The G-RAID mini is FireWire bus powered - even when using USB 3.0 for data transfer.
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And it's hard to argue that the faster FireWire connection is worth the premium.
The original iPod connected via Firewire, but this later changed to USB, for both syncing and charging.
With speeds twice as fast as Firewire 800 these products help professionals get their work done faster.
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While newer Macs all have built-in FireWire ports, similarly equipped PCs are the exception, not the rule.
The drive features high-speed USB 3.0 and FireWire, and has a built-in heat sink to silently dissipate heat.
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Like the portable drive, it will work with USB 2.0 and Firewire ports.
But at 800 megabits per second the new Firewire is about twice as fast as its already speedy predecessor.
It will connect to PCs using the USB 2.0 interface, but initially it won't support the competing Firewire interface.
You can also daisy chain several Firewire drives together (or use a Firewire hub), and add more as your needs require.
The WD-73732 and WD-73831 both include dual HDMI inputs, along with a FireWire port, CableCARD slot, and multi-format card readers.
But Apple product marketing manager Greg Joswiak said that particular machine won't include new features like Firewire 800 and integrated Bluetooth.
The camcorder comes with software that lets you move video to and from a 2-gigahertz (or faster) Windows computer via FireWire cable.
We feature computer cords, printer cords, dead-format USB cables, mini-USB cables, Ethernet, DVI, VGA, Firewire this, Firewire that.
FireWire transfers data at roughly 30 times Universal Serial Bus (USB), the current standard for interdevice connections for PCs and older Macs.
While it is powerful enough to flick between videoclips in iMovie with alacrity, it lacks the Firewire ports that hardcore video-editing junkies need.
Both also have the new Firewire 800 connection port, which looks a little different from the Firewire ports we already know and love.
And its onboard FireWire port will load them all within minutes, while most music players that use the USB port take considerably longer.
Backward compatible with USB 2.0, G-Technology's USB 3.0 drives deliver speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800.
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It sports both Firewire, USB 2.0 ports and a Nvidia (nasdaq: NVDA - news - people ) GeForce 4 graphics card.
This can be a more robust and compact solution to housing multiple drives, and it can also be less expensive than buying multiple Firewire externals.
FireWire's inclusion came, however, at the expense of the more-established USB.
An alternative to using external Firewire drives is to set up a Firewire enclosure, which converts one or more IDE drives into a Firewire-accessible storage solution.
But as more portable devices--like digital cameras and camcorders--come with FireWire capacity, the Windows machine cartel may consider small concessions too keep the high-end digerati happy.
Indeed, at ten gigabytes per second in both downloading and uploading, Thunderbolt is approximately twenty times faster then USB 2.0, and twelve times faster than FireWire 800.
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That shouldn't be hard, since Mac OS X itself is based on Unix, assuming there are appropriate drivers available for the Firewire connection on those operating systems.
If you find yourself needing other ports, such as USB 3.0, Firewire and the like, you can always snag a port replicator such as the Thunderbolt Express.
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Enter the IEEE 1394 architecture and its close kin FireWire, which takes the high-speed digital bus interface up to the wicked fast transfer rate of 400MB per second.
Also of note is the port assortment: USB 2.0, FireWire 800 and -- wait for it -- FireWire 400 (eSATA is included as well on the G-RAID mini).
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You may have not noticed, but your cable box at home has a Firewire port on it, designed to serve up content to other devices in your home.
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