Western Digital's MyBook Studio Ed II 6TB gives an ideal opportunity to test the merits most of the available external I/O ports available today with the obvious exception of USB 3.0. It comes as no great surprise to see that the eSATA interface with its up to 1.5Gb/s interface providing the best performance in the tests.

Burst Speed

HD Tach Megabytes per second - Bigger is better

eSATA - 125
FireWire 800 - 84
FireWire 400 - 42
USB 2.0 - 38

Average ReadHD Tach Megabytes per second - Bigger is bettereSATA - 119
Firewire 800 - 77
Firewire 400 - 40
USB 2.0 - 37

Random Access

HD Tach Millisecond - Smaller is better

eSATA - 12.7
Firewire 800 - 12.9
USB 2.0 - 13.0
Firewire 400 - 13.1

Sequential Write

ATTO Megabytes per second - Bigger is better

e-SATA - 58
USB 2.0 - 29
Firewire 800 - 25
Firewire 400 - 16

Sequential Read

ATTO Megabytes per second - Bigger is better

eSATA - 120
USB 2.0 - 34
Firewire 800 - 20
Firewire 400 - 19

4.5GB File Transfer

Seconds. Faster is better

eSATA - 104
USB 2.0 - 272
Firewire 800 - 405
Firewire 400 - 604