Militant said:

The problem with USB for some (myself included) is no so much the speed but the inability to chain more than 2 devices together. You can stack 80 hard drives on top of each other and access all of them through firewire.
If they nip that little flaw in USB 3 then it'll be a good move.
For now, mp3s aren't going anywhere but as hard drive tech increases, I can see them declining in popularity in favor of flac, aif, and wav for quality purposes.

Graycap23 said:

Even Apple, who was one of the first companies to really utilize Firewire, has now went to putting more USB ports on their computers, and dwindling down the Firewire. Even the newer iPods won't charge, or transfer data, via Firewire if you try to do that. Mac was one of the first companies to put Firewire on board (on the Blue and White G3), instead of having to get a Firewire card to install later. USB 2.0 really went up in speed from 1.0, and is much more comparable with Firewire. But no one has ever seemed to improve on Firewire, so USB is taking over again.

Brendan said:

A few thoughts here...

01. Most musicians of any intelligence realise that music stream subscriptions should be the future; an extra utility bill along with gas, electricity, water, cable tv and internet.

02. Hard copies of music on discs or memory devices (of any type) will only sell in limited numbers to dedicated fans whom want to collect. There will always be a market for a physical product, but it will be artist-specific for the buyer.

03. Streaming subscriptions will only become popular only if everything ever recorded is digitized and available to hear. The record companies' (and some artists') reticence for this to be the case is what actually fuels file sharing.

04. Hundreds of thousands of tracks and full albums are out-of-print physically or unavailable to stream online. File sharing actually saves these recordings from disappearing forever.

05. MP3, even at 128kbs, is preferable to not being able to hear a song at all.

06. If everything ever recorded was available to be heard at the click of the mouse or the turn of a dial, people wouldn't try to rip streams. There'd be no need to back-up any music because it would always be present in the ether.

ernestsewell said:

That last part isn't true (as evidenced by Firewire 800). Apple eliminated Firewire from iPods as a way to cut costs.

AlexdeParis said:

My point was that USB 2.0 is still faster than Firewire in a lot of cases.

AlexdeParis said:

They also eliminated Firewire ports from the most recent Macbook's.

Militant said:

The Macbook pro has 1.

I don't think that USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire (USB 3.0 is) but the key factor is it's omnipresence.

Pretty much everything has a USB port, only a small (and rapidly decreasing) minority of devices use Firewire.

ernestsewell said:

Lol.....not a single time that I've compared the 2 is it even close. Firewire in my studio is MUCH faster.

Graycap23 said:

For now. They know they are decreasing the viability of it as a usable platform by only limiting it to those who can afford Pro models.

Militant said:

I dig. I just needs something that works on a universal level. Lately, my usb drives are not recognized on my PC after I get some data from a Mac platform. It is starting 2 tick me off.

Militant said:

iMacs have them as well.

The thing is that they more or less are just selling new systems, none of these things is going to save a dead industry. Just like artists will have to depend on loyals to buy limited editions, people like steve jobs will have to pray that every other year folks will throw 300 bucks down a hole for something that will be obsolete in another year that they will have to add to. The thing is that as long as NEW music isnt moving, you can come up with all the technology you want, its useless at the end of the day. Thats why everytime some new ipod is introduced is has a million features other than music, and why, MUSIC is not relevant.

Graycap23 said:

That's not to do with it being USB. That is because Mac's typically use a different file format than PC's and they are not cross compatible.

However! There is a program that will allow a PC to recognise a hard drive that has been formatted for Mac use. I will have to ask my cousin what it is called, but in his studio he uses both PC's and Mac's and I can get the name of the program from him. This would sort out your problem.

Militant said:

Not true. Example: an MP3 or a wave file plays on a mac or pc. I can transfer from my pc either of those files 2 my mac no problem. Until 2 weeks ago, I could transfer from my mac 2 my pc no problem. 2day, I can't transfer from my mac 2 my pc anymore. The pc will not reconize the USB drive anymore. It makes no sense because I have been doing this 4 years and now it doesn't work? I even tried reinstalling the USB drivers but the pc still won't reconize the drive. Strange. I can hook the USB 2 my PC laptop and it works just fine. Explain that.

Regardless of form, all digital sounds like crap. CD's killed off albums, but were a downgrade, they also were a downgrade in the "creation" of it, because everyone thought you had 80 minutes so fill it up with whatever shit you got, so it all of a sudden became a "bragging right" to fill up your cd, i mean who hasnt heard some dude on BET being interviewed saying this "yo i got 23 cuts on my new joint", well nice thing to have, too bad maybe 2-3 were good. Its been nothing but a decline since then in every way shape and form

Graycap23 said:

What I said is true, however depending on the formatting of the hard drive it may work with both.

The problem you're having sounds like a registry issue to me. I had a similar problem before and solved it by reinstalling Windows.

Have you tried it in all the spare ports on the PC? Could be a bad port also, in which case if you don't have any other spare ports you could buy a USB hub.

Why don't you set up a network in order to transfer the files?