What is Firewire
What is firewire? It's an older
standard to sending data that is very similar to USB. The
advantage of firewire when it came out was it's speed. With
transfer speeds from 50 - 400MB/s a long time ago, if you needed
something quick, this was what you needed to go with. It is also
commonly referred to as IEEE 1394.For today, if you need something
quick, it's still a standard you could go with, however if you want
something that will go into the future I think USB 3.0 will take it
there. Firewire is just less common, not as plug and play
friendly as USB so I think this standard will get phased out as USB
continues to get faster and adopted more.
In the picture below, the
motherboard supports firewire with a header numbered 3. You usually
have to enable it in the BIOS as well to use the port.
For devices that need to constantly move a lot of data, firewire is
still a great speed connection. It's still a great interface for
an exterior hard drive.
To add firewire ports, simply plug in the connector that came with
the motherboard, then make sure it's enabled in the BIOS. Always
get the most current driver for the firewire device you plan on using
to get the most speed out of this connection.
