FireWire Port Hub

[Dave Petteruto]

I have been using a firewire port hub for capturing from a digital camcorder and a Canopus box for about a year now and have had no problems.

[Alan Lacey]

There could be bandwidth problems if you expect too much from a single FW bus. Better choice would be adding another either 400 or 800 via a (cheap) PCI card.

Alan

[Mike Minske]

Thanks for the replies. I quess I was wondering about bandwidth problems if having a cam. and Hd hooked up too. I’ve never daisy chained any external HD’s together but was wondering if there could be any similar issues. Regardless, enjoy the vegas forum and for all the good knowledge passed along.

[Gary Kleiner]

Mike,

Why not stick with USB 2 for your drives? They have more bandwidth than firewire 400.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Tevya Washburn]

Gary Kleiner: with Firewire you get a much more consistent data rate than USB 2.0. Though USB can go higher at its peak, it’s averages are ussually significantly lower because it bounces from peak to 0 (or very low) very quickly. With firewire, you get a more consistent sustained rate, making it overall faster, and much more reliable, especially for video. So I think his descision to switch is a good one.

Mike Minske: I have two external HDD’s daisy-chained, then will often hook my camera into the end of that chain. So far it has work wonderfully, without problems, including ton’s of capturing from the camera to one of the HDD’s (while all three units are on and part of the chain).

–the Fiddler

[Mike Minske]

I thought I read something (on this forum?) that firewire was better than USB for video but to be honest, I have used USB. I just buy the enclosure and swap out the HD’s as opposed to buying the units that have the dives in them. I always wonder what happens if you had a drive failure in one of those units if you can replace the drive and still use the case. Anyway, one little adavantage firewire has is not have to do the “safe to remove hardware” thing but that’s certainly not a deal stopper. Have you daisy chained drives together effectively? Thanks again.

Mike Minske

[Mike Minske]

Thanks Fiddler! I was posting a reply to Gary Kleiner before I saw your reply so I guess I’ll experiment by buying a couple of firewire enclosures. Do you use the units with hd’s already enclosed? If not, any brands of firewire enclosures cases you’d recommend?

Mike Minske

[Gary Kleiner]

I often use several HDs in USB enclosures. I used to have all firewire, but USB gives me more reliable performance.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[John Frey]

I agree with Gary. Have finally switched over to USB 2.0 from Firewire 400 – overall better performance with multiple drives. You can’t daisy chain, but you don’t need to if you have several USB ports.

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[Tevya Washburn]

Mike: I really like the MacAlly brand enclosures for USB or Firewire (and assume their SATA ones are great too). They’re well built, alluminum (to draw heat away), and have worked flawlessly for myself and others I know of. As for daisy chaining, yes, that’s how I’ve got my machine setup. There are two MacAlly enclosures chained together, and I often hook a camera into the end of that chain and have never had any problems with transfer rates or anything.

John and Gary: I don’t know what’s up here. I’d really like to find out the truth here, so here’s why I said what I said (and I intended no offence): when I was setting things up as I have them now, I did extensive research to decide which was better before I purchased one way or the other. All the stats I looked at, as well as many hardware “gurus” (who know way more about all the down and dirty technical aspects than I), said to go with Firewire because it will can maintain a higher average transfer rate, in spite of its lower 400mbps cap. They cited issues with the way Microsoft and others setup the USB 2 standard, and other things. Because of this, I went with Firewire and have never had so much as a small sneeze in opperation this way. It’s been fast and painless all the way. I can’t say as much for USB which occasionally causes system hangs when multiple USB HDD’s are plugged in at the same time.

I now have an external drive that does both USB 2 & Firewire. And testing with various HDD read/write benchmarks revealed all I’d read to be true (at least in my case). On USB 2, it hits some really high transfer rates (around the full 480mbps), but can’t sustain them, quickly dropping very low, then spiking back up again. The result is an average that’s lower than when it’s attached via Firewire. In that case (Firewire) it holds a fairly consistent transfer rate below the full 400mbps, but noticeably higher than the average that USB 2 gets.

Have either of you benchmarked your Firewire drives against the USB ones? And if so, is there a possibility that the Firewire was older hardware that either needed a firmware update, or had slower drives inside? If none of this is the case, I wonder why we’re experiencing such different results? Also, anyone else had experience with both sides that might be able to weigh in here with some new info that could shed some light on the discrepancy?

–the Fiddler