1394b/firewire 800 or USB RAID-external

[Stephen Mann]

If you found one, it would probably not be at a price you would want to pay.

Also the speed of USB2 and Firewire are very similar. The published speeds are the burst speeds, or more specifically, the speed in or out of the buffer, not the disc platters. When you are moving large files, such as video, the only speed spec that matters is the sustained data rate – which is much less than the burst rate and far, far slower than the USB or Firewire data rates.

Why not just put the drives on one PC and share it over a gigabit ethernet or firewire network?

Stephen Mann
MannMade Digital Video
San Jose, CA

[Larryreavis]

Thanks – The networked drives always take a number of seconds to open up while the networking negotiations take place, while I’m twiddling my thumbs. I’ve also found that firewire networks seem to be somewhat unreliable – sometimes they die when I plug in a camera or something.

The RAID definitely speeds up searching for files and some other tasks (I have thousands of files and folders, along with current video projects); that’s why I want RAID. SATA 2-foot long cables work great, but it’s a nuisance to have to swap four plugs. Firewire external RAID should work great, but I can only find very expensive boxes – there may be no better solution than to use long SATA cables from both computers connecting a pair of external RAID drives.

Now that I think of it, I maybe could use a network and put a shortcut link into the startup folder of both computers so that hopefully the network negotiations will take place during the boot process while I’m in the shower. I think I’ll get 2 gigabyte cards and try that. Thanks again.

[Chris Young]

Check out the ‘Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition’ external unit. It has firewire 400/800 and USB2. Available as a 600GB or 1TB unit. Configures as Raid 0 or Raid 1. Going to have a look at it myself because even in Aussie $ you can get it for around a $ a Gig. Long URL for what it’s worth but you can download a .pdf of it here:

https://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/External%20Storage/OneTouch%20III%20Family/Maxtor%20OneTouch%20III%20Turbo%20Edition

Phew! that’s some URL.

Chris Young
Sydney

[Donatello]

i’m not so sure that RAID over 1394B offers you anymore then if you ran them as individual drives over 1394b because XP SP2 pretty much put 1394b ( firewire 800) back to 100 speed ( 1394a= 400).. yes microsoft came up with a fix to put it give it 400 speeds and there are a few 3rd party drivers BUT they have never reached XP SP1 speeds.

A new 250-500 gig drive can reach approx 55-65 Mgs read/writes .. now a 1394a/b raid on paper should be faster ( and they are on a MAC) BUT it’s the 1394 that will slow it down on a PC( again because XP SP2) .. 1394B RAID on XP SP1 will reach 800 speeds. BUT not all software will run on SP1

as far as speed goes on my 4 bay & 2 bay 1394B cases when i set them up as RAID they are NO faster then if i run them as individual drives over XP SP2 .. look at 1394b RAID for total storage in ONE case ..IMO if you’re looking for SPEED ( & total storage) then IMO look at SATA RAID..

[Chris Young]

Tend to agree that if there is no speed increase on 1394b then there is no advantage of going with an 800 Raid. Thankfully the higher speeds offered by 1394b can be achieved under SP2. Below is a quote from an [unnamed] MS spokeperson re the issues surrounding the MS ‘retro’ firewire 800 support. As he puts it:

“We have never supported 1394b. It ran under certain conditions on Windows XP and Windows XP SP1. The problem we are confronted with is that OHCI 1.0 and OHCI 1.1 do not support the speed code (0x3). This is a reserved value in the OHCI specification we support that cannot be used. What are we doing? Things become problematic when you start mixing 1394a and 1394b devices. If we ignore OHCI conformity and bump up the speed to 800 MBit/s the old devices down tools. If we set the speed to S100, all devices start enumerating and working. It was a tough decision but we have little room for maneuver if we don’t want to dispense with 1394b support.”

I think the easiest answer to overcome the 1394b bottleneck in SP2 is to use Unibrain’s UbCore 1394b drivers which fully support 1394b firewire 800. The current driver release is v4 and they are available at:

https://www.unibrain.com/Products/DriverAPI/ubcore.html

I believe some people have had success installing the old SP1 1394a drivers under SP2 to recover the original 400 speed because there were reports that SP2 with 1394b pulled transfers speeds down to as low as 10MB/s

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney