Your external USB drive only needs a cable.It's only going to be as fast as the bandwidth of a USB or USB 2.0 connection can be?
External serial ATA (eSATA) hard drives is up to six times faster than USB or FireWire.
External serial ATA known as eSATA is up to six times faster than USB or Firewire.
External SATA (eSATA) is up to six times faster than USB or Fire Wire
50-85 Mbps for eSATA vs 25 - 45 Mbps firewire 400 not sure what 800 goes to but eSATA will still be faster it's just like an internal drive. eSATA is up to 6 times faster than external firewire according to the fabulous Guide to managing and maintaining your PC by Jean Andrews
One can purchase an external USB firewire hard drive in electrical appliances stores such as Radioshack. In addition, Amazon or eBay will have external USB firewire hard drives.
i am assuming that you know what a firewire is. not all computers come with a firewire input. if your computer doesn't have a firewire IN. then you have to buy a card, which gives you the acessability to plug a firewire cable into your computer.
The fastest way to transfer files from your computer to an external hard drive would be with a firewire cable. They are much faster than USB cables.
esata is faster, running upto 3GB/s where as FireWire400 (G1) can only run speeds of theoretical 400Mb/s and FireWire800 (G2) theoretical speeds of 800Mb/s
There are several advantages of using and external FireWire hard drive. Some of these advantages are portability, high speed, extra space and user friendliness.
One can purchase a FireWire 800 external hard drive from sites such as Macworld, Amazon, Overstock, eBay, Best Buy, Ram City, Fantom Drives and Apple.
Firewire one.
external serial ATA is six times faster