If you are like me you probably have to go looking for the exact specifications for external connectors like USB and Firewire every few months. For some reason, I have been unable to find a simple table that contains the core information for each product and version… so I did the research and made one:
| USB 1.1 | USB 2 HiSpeed USB | USB 3 | Firewire1 FW400 1394 | Firewire2 FW800 1394B | Firewire4 FW3200 1394D | eSATA I eSATA | eSATAw/Pwr . eSATAp | eSATA II eSATA 6GB | |
| Speed | .012GB/sec | .48GB/sec | 5GB/Sec | .4GB/Sec | .8GB/Sec | 3.2GB/Sec | 3GB/Sec | 3GB/Sec | 6GB/Sec |
| Full Duplex | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Supply Power | Yes | Yes | Yes | Possible | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | ? |
| Power Mgt | No | No | Yes | No | ? | ? | No | No | ? |
| Cable Length | 3M | 5M | 3M For Super Speed | 4.5M | 4.5M 300′ if Cat5 | ? | 2M | 2M | ? |
| Hot Plugging | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | OS & Hardwr Specific | OS & Hardware Specific | ? |
| Product Availabilitiy in 2010 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? – Apple Has Dropped support | Yes | Yes | 2011 |
This chart is a little smushed so if you want to see a clean version, click on this one:
Note that Apple recently dropped support for Firewire so I suspect we will be left with USB 3 and eSATA 6GB as the only common options for 2011 and 2012.
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