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Why you should lose those firewire media drives
I’ve long been a proponent of SATA drives and SATA raids, which have served me without a single failure since I switched to them over two years ago. The following is a terrific quote from AMUG’s in-depth review of the 8-core MacPro, which offers the most convincing argument I’ve heard yet for MAC users to abandon the use of firewire media drives once and for all.
“SATA is faster than FireWire 800 and more reliable. Some Mac users (including one of the authors of this article), have lost data as a result of FireWire firmware changes and that risk continues to exist each time FireWire is altered. Existing enclosures cannot always adapt to the changes and data can be lost when introducing existing FireWire enclosures to a new generation of Macintosh. That risk does not exist with SATA enclosures as no bridge board is required.”
“No job is worth doing more than once…”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
8 Replies
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I never had an issue with firewire drives…never had one fail, never had one not like the new machine I connect it to. But, that doesn’t mean others haven’t.
eSATA is the wave of the future…just like firewire was over USB…like USB was over SCSI…
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
…like USB was over SCSI
Not really, certainly as far as external/internal hard drives are concerned.
USB has a lower bandwidth compared to SCSI(160 & 320). SCSI is a multi-tasking parallel interface with intelligence built into the controllers to allow simultaneous transfers from multiple drives – a RAID array being a good example. SCSI makes use of the command queueing technology to re-order drive tasks based on feedback from the drives.
While eSATA and SATA still allow RAID arrays, they are a one drive per channel device. Command queueing is available in some forms but this is usually in the drives only.
SATA is an advantage over PATA interface technology but the greatest benefit is the reduced cable clutter and the capacity for future higher speed but is still just as limiting as the speed at which data can be read/written to the physical disks. It is also cheaper to manufacture!
Better than Firewire 400 & 800? That can be machine implementation specific but I see eSATA having better future prospects and has been developed by an larger industry body – this means the capacity for greater adoption, better cross platform support and a lowering in prices.
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I might add that there has NEVER been any indication that Apple approves or reccomends using a firewire drive for capture or edit. Nowhere in any documentation for Final Cut Pro has there ever been any indication that Apple blessed the firewire storage concept.
Interestingly, you might remember that with each new operating system update we always got the warning to “unplug all firewire devices” before proceeding. Must be something about firewire that can be dangerous?
I switched from firewire to SATA way back in 2004 on my Quicksilver 2002 G4 edit station. I had been using a PCI IDE-ATA controller card to host several internal drives but SATA has never failed me since installing it. I still have 3 intenal SATA and two external SATA drives on that G4 today. That switch was caused by loosing access to a firewire drive after updating my OS!
Serial ATA has been a real benefit for we FCPers. While using a RAID 0 setup is fast, it is also dangerous to data longevity. However, I have not had a hard drive fail in over 5 years.
Please visit http://www.thefinalcutstore.com for all your Final Cut needs.
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DRW,
Where can I read that entire article?
-mattycRaising money for Blood:Water Mission to help build wells in Africa. I’m
putting my hair on the line to raise some money.
Check it out https://rattail.callac.com -
DRW
I have tried desperately to believe the hype around firewire, and in the end i find thats all it is. I may use a fire wire drive to sneaker net some media around, but i have found issues w firewire that make it unreliable for day to day work.
Besides, if you have a firewire device to capture video on your internal bus, you have to get a card for media drives, as the 2 cannot coexist
we have a promax sonnet sata array on our g5, and it runs like a tank.
we got a 2 drive fw 800 array, and we would lose the stripe set everytime we moved it.
gimme scsi sata or even usb2 anyday over firewire.
my 2.5 cents
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
I used to capture and edit fw from a caonon xl1 looped through a fw drive on FCP 1 on a G3 pismo laptop. No extra cards, no bottlenecks. All this in 2000.
It is what it is.
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[Bob Flood] “Besides, if you have a firewire device to capture video on your internal bus, you have to get a card for media drives, as the 2 cannot coexist”
FWIW, I’ve never had a problem capturing to a FW HDD from a FW source when both are running off the Mac’s internal bus.
-A
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oops my bad
i meant to say if you use a firewire converter, specifically the IO
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.
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