Currently in the market there are two main interfaces to connect an external device to a PC: USB and Firewire. Recently, the e-SATA interface has been introduced with excellent results but the "old" ones are not remaining still to watch and two new standards are emerging: FireWire S3200 and USB 3.

According to news published at Ars Technica, the IEEE 1394 Trade Association has announced a new FireWire specification (officially known as S3200) that the group claims is capable of delivering up to 3.2Gb per second of throughput. The new interface will use the same physical connectors, arbitration, and protocols as its predecessor. On the other side, Intel has stated that it expects USB 3.0 to be 10 times as fast as USB 2.0, which would give it a 4.8Gbps transfer rate.

Detailed information about USB3 are not yet available, but I still think that e-SATA is the real future.