Slow Data Transfer Rate with Firewire

[msw111]

I am new to Firewire. I just copied a 4.5 GB folder from my Mac G5 (1.6 GHz, OS 10.3.7) to an Acomdata external hard drive using Firewire 400. The data transfer rate was about 6 MB/sec, far below the theoretical maximum of
50 MB/sec. Is this typical? If not, is there something I can do to increase the rate?

 

[Matzki]

I heard somewhere that OS 10.3 had a bug concerning firewire devices. Might want to research that.

 

[drlex]

OS 10.3.7 has some updates to FireWire drivers and devices; some problems were reported so that Apple advise that the update to 10.3.7 is performed with all FireWire devices removed.
The write speed, while sounding slow, seems to be what one can expect from external devices and the chipsets therein.
See

http://www.g4techtv.com/freshgear/features/39129/USB_20_Versus_FireWire_pg3.html

for a comparison of USB2.0 and Firewire speeds for read and write to HDD. Ok, the tests aren't recent, but disks and chipsets won't have changed much.
If you're concerned because you're working with video and getting dropped frames, you might have to change your set-up

soi la, soi carré