using only USB harddisks ?

[Peter L. Peres]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Taavi Burns wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 11:02:55PM -0400, Peter L. Peres wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone using USB harddisk?  I'm interested whether one could skip IDE
>>> and go USB for all harddisks.  I don't see any way to boot from USB on
>>> my BIOS... perhaps, newer motherboard has that option.
>
> Do you mean booting off of a USB memory key or more like an external 
> USB2.0 IDE enclosure?  If the latter, you might also look at firewire 
> (though I don't know how the BIOS support for that might be...) because 
> it's faster in the end.

It does not matter. USB 2.0 device 'wake up' as USB 1.0 or 1.1 and are 
switched to higher speed by the drivers. Iow, if it's USB storage class 
and formatted bootable then it will boot.

> (480Mbps for USB2.0 is actually slower than 400Mbps for the old 
> firewire, because fw chipsets do a heck of a lot more work, offloading 
> cycles from the CPU and reducing latency)

USB is not the fastest of protocols in general. Fyi I moved a cable modem 
from USB to ether connection (same modem, same provider) and gained 30% in 
speed (measured over several days etc).

Apropos speed, I have been trying to find a hdparm -tT comparison 
database. But there is none ?! Does anyone know of one ?

tia,
Peter
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