Firewire IEEE1394a supports a maximum speed of 400mbs.
IEEE1394b can support speeds of up to 3200mbs over special connections. Typically thought of as Firewire800 because of it's backwards compatibility at 800mbs.
firewire
eSATA is faster than FireWire and firewire is faster than USB.
Like Firewire?
You can use the FireWire port for high-speed multimedia devices.
FireWire
1394a, also known as FireWire 400, has a maximum speed of 400 Mbps (megabits per second).
IEEE 1394 and i.Link throughput data speed: 3.2 Gbps A+ Guide to Hardware: pg. 327
The maximum speed of USB2 at 480M/Sec is a little quicker than Firewire 400 (IEEE.1394a) which runs at 400 M/Sec (hence the "400" bit of the name). In tests, however, FireWire 400 delivers a higher sustained transfer speed. Benchmarks suggest that hard drives connected with FireWire will copy information considerably faster than they would using USB 2.0. To achieve higher performance, FireWire requires additional circuitry in supported devices. This often makes FireWire more expensive than USB 2.0. Firewire 800 (IEEE.1394b) as the names suggests, has a peak speed of almost 800 M/Sec. Used primarily by PC musicians for recording and transferring multichannel audio at high sample rates and for digital video cameras and decks
There are several advantages of using and external FireWire hard drive. Some of these advantages are portability, high speed, extra space and user friendliness.
FireWire (technically known as an IEEE 1394 interface), introduced by Apple in 1995, allows a fast connection for peripherals such as video cameras. It is similar to a USB connector. The original version is now known as FireWire 400. FireWire 800 was introduced to give faster transfer speeds and supporting longer cable lengths without loss of signal. The connectors for the 400 and 800 versions are not interchangeable but converters are available which will allow FireWire 400 equipment to be connected to the FireWire 800 port at the slower connection speed.
a 1934 port is actually a firewire port, that can be used for high speed data transfers
USB 3.0 > Firewire > USB 2.0