firewire 800 card for macbook pro

[Jimmyv]

I’ve just bought (it arrived yesterday) the Nitro AV firewire 800 expresscard/34 from the Applestore. I’ve set it up with two lacie 300Gb drives in a RAID0 config and it seems to be working fine. Only thing to watch out for is that it’s very easy ‘unclick’ from the expresscard port when plugging in / unplugging drives, so to be on the safe side I’m shutting down to plug things in.

Quickbench is giving me 88Mb/s sustained read and 47Mb/s writes (in comparison my internal drive – 100Gb/7200rpm gives 43Mb/s for both).

Will post an update after a few days’ testing with FCP!

[Jim Finn]

https://www.technoavenue.com/navcbfw8ec.html

This is what i found. do you have a macbook pro? Does it fit into the left slot? i went on the apple store site and couldn’t find anything.

macbook pro intel dual
Sony HDV-V1U 24p

[Jimmyv]

Yes, I’m on a MacBook Pro Core Duo.

That’s the card. I’m in the UK, it’s on the Applestore UK site, but not the US one. Although the photo looks different from the reality the spec is correct and it’s working fine for me. As I pointed out, it’s only been a couple of days though…

If you’ve not yet bought the drives ( I had a couple of existing D2 drives to use), then it might be worth considering the eSata path, it’s way faster than even firewire, and not necesssarily more expensive, check out this review: https://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html

Good luck

James

[Jim Finn]

thanks, jim

macbook pro intel dual
Sony HDV-V1U 24p

[George Loch]

Do you already have FW800 drives? If not, I recommend you skip FW800 and just go Sata. Better expansion, performance and future options.

-gl

[Brett Nelson]

George,
I know eSATA has a lot of merit, but firewire is nice for maximum portability… I like the idea of at least occasionally running the drive off the bus. If I run with an fw800, any idea what quality level will run without too many headaches? HDV?

Thanks!

Brett

[George Loch]

You should be ‘ok’ with a fw800 bus-powered enclosure for HDV but that also depends on your approach to HDV workflow. I have even seen two FW800 2.5″ striped together for very decent performance. Barefeats did a small write up on this. Of course, your major limitation is the size of the available 2.5″ drives and the cost/gig.

-gl

[George Loch]

BTW

Our good friends G-Tech have a very nice little bus-powered raid you might like:

https://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID-mini.cfm

-gl

[Brett Nelson]

George,
Thank you for the input! The G-Raid looks interesting. It claims it doesn’t need an external power supply. Do you think this would cause the MBP (which already runs hot) to run even hotter? I would think doing a lot of high-res cutting using a RAID would put extra drain on the power supply. I’ve burned out several power supplies over the years powering RAID arrays.

regards,

Brett

[Brett Nelson]

George,
After reading and comparing, I’ve decided to give up my Firewire ways. Thanks for the Barefeets comparison. What I’ve concluded is that even if I only run one eSATA, I will probably get as good or better performance than a single FW800. The option to run off the bus is attractive, but I can live without it and it’s probably not a great idea anyway.

Thanks again!

Brett