USB and FireWire have been a huge boon for external storage. However, the performance of these storage devices has always lagged behind desktop drives. With the development of Serial ATA (SATA) standards, a new external storage format, external Serial ATA, has entered the market.
USB 3.0 vs. eSATA performance test
External SATA is an industry standard for controlling the various hardware used to connect external storage devices. It competes with some Firewire and USB standards to provide faster data transfer rates between hardware devices.
Both USB and FireWire interfaces are high-speed serial interfaces between a computer system and external peripherals. USB is more general and is used for a wider range of peripherals, such as keyboards, mice, scanners, and printers. FireWire is used almost exclusively as an external storage interface.
Although these interfaces are used for external storage, the drives used in these devices use the SATA interface. The external enclosure that houses the hard drive or optical drive uses a bridge that converts signals from the USB or FireWire interface to the SATA interface that the drive requires. This translation results in some degradation in the overall performance of the drive.
