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FireWire 2 Coming Soon?

Posted by pudge on from the oops dept.

Twirlip of the Mists writes "Looks like SmartDisk pulled a Time Canada. IT World reports, 'Several hours after announcing that it is introducing desktop hard drives that connect to Apple Computer Inc. computers using the new high-speed 800M bps (bits per second) FireWire standard, SmartDisk Corp. asked that the news be 'killed due to premature release.'" Sweet.

1 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Firewire 2 vs. SATA by HalfFlat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would it really be that much more expensive to pop firewire control electronics on drives instead of ATA or serial ATA?

    Firewire 2 would offer enough bandwidth to support any currently available hard disk with room to spare, let alone the current crop of ATA drives. The fact that it's a powered interface, supports long cable lengths, has a small cable diameter, is chainable, etc. all seem to be compelling advantages. The command set, which IIRC is SCSI-like, I'm guessing is an improvement over ATA as well.

    I don't really expect to see firewire native drives, but it really does seem that firewire 2 offers a much better solution for connecting disks than SATA - even for internal drives. And having the same connection for internal and external devices would just make everything that much easier.