pins on firewire

Hello
I have a firewire cable with that came with my 2T external hard drive.
I know nothing about firewire.
What shoud I look for in the new pc I am about to order from Dell?
It came with a usb cable too but I assume using firewire is the better choice?

 

USB 2.0 maxes out at 480 Mbit/sec. USB 3.0 gives you a minimum of 3.2GBit/sec. Firewire 400 does up to 400Mbit/sec and Firewire 800 does up to 3.2Gbit/sec. Numbers out of the way, firewire generally performs better than USB just because the technology is newer and has a lot less interfaces to work with. Bottom line, firewire most is likley going to be faster.

 

Hello
Thank you for the information about relative speeds.
I have a cable that came with my external hard drive and appears to have three pins inside the slot. Does that mean the new pc I buy should have 3 holes to accomodate these pins?
I am not sure what the literature should say on the new pc to accomodate this new external drive.
The drive came with a usb cable and this 3 pin cable I assume is firewire.
When my 8 year old pc tries to image to the drive with the usb cable, I get the message that Windows cannot write to it. My old pc has no firewire port.
So my question is, what port do I look for so I can image with this 3 pin cable to this 2T drive?
Thank you

 

I think I'm confused about what you're asking. You're looking for a system that has firewire ports, no? In that case, you just look for firewire.

 

I have an external hard drive I plan to use with a new pc.
One cable that came with it is a usb and that is clear.
The other has three pins in the slot in each end. The drive also has usb port and a port that accomodates the three pin cable.
Does the new pc need a port that acomodates this three pin cable?
I ask because I have not seen the ports for firewire which I assume this is and don't know what kinds of cables you are supposed to use.
The question is, what am I looking for in a new pc, so my external hard drive will work with it?

 

If your computer does not have an IEEE1394 port
http://www.jontrosky.com/images/Firewire_6_pin_port.jpg
you will not be able to use a firewire connection.

 

>>Ploder, that's the one I was trying to articulate. I now know what to look for as my port looks like that on the ext drive that the cable fits into with three pins.
Thank you

 

I tried to edit but couldn't, sorry -I wanted to say what through me off was the term 6 pin. Mine looks like that. It has two ports, each with three pins.
Thankx a lot for qualifying that for me so I can order appropriately.

 

USB2 is faster than Firewire so if I were you, I would not spend money on a firewire cable so you can get a slower throughput.

 

The drive also has an esata port.
Should I look for a pc with that feature and cable too?