>> -- PCI bus (32 bit wide @ 33 MHz)is 132 MByte/second >> -- Firewire is 400 Mbit per second nominally but will not deliver anything >> close to this to a firewire hard-drive -- typically tops out at 30 MByte >> per second. >Why do firewire hard drives top out at 30 MByte/sec? >What gives with firewire being so slow? 400Mbit/sec = 50MByte/sec. But you cannot usually get sustained transfers at full capacity. PCI is capably of 132MByte/sec but it is really hard to get anything like that for similar reasons, especially since there are other services sharing the bus. Also, firewire is just the transfer mechanism. There will be a real hard disk and a real hard disk controller trying to keep up by moving heads, cyclinders and magnetic fields around and this will also impose its own upper limit. Firewire may not bring more speed than PCI but it can certainly bring more convenience and reduce interconnection costs. Ray