[Mike Mihalik]

Charlie,

What smoked? The chassis or the external power supply?

Failure analysis I have done on some failed drives usually show a burned component on the FireWire bridge board within the chassis. This is usually caused by bad cable, or inserting cable incorrectly when moving drive between computers. I’ve actually seen drives where user forced cable into FireWire upside down, leading to a puff of smoke, and visible damage to one of the FireWire integrated circuits.

I’ve never seen any of the actual drive mechanisms “smoke”.

Mike

[Mike Mihalik]

Absolutely.

Let me expand on that, especially for the video people here.

Even IF the drive is preformatted from the factory for the Mac, or for the PC, it is in YOUR best interests to reformat on the computer you will be using the drive.

This means that for the Mac, you format as Mac OS Extended, no journaling, using the Disk Utility that came with the OS X you are using. If you have the time, select the option to zero out the drive as well. This will force the formatting utility to touch each sector of the drive, and make sure there are no surprises across the disk.

Same goes for Windows XP – use Disk Manager to perform a full format, not a quick format.

Relying on a the quick format done at the factory could lead to issues on your Mac. Chances are the factory is NOT using the same computer you are; heck, I can guarantee it!

Mike

[Mike Mihalik]

Walter,

Just a few comments on customer reports of heat:
– we perform extensive tests on the various d2 configurations. One aspect of the tests have to do with internal and external heat; and what is acceptable. touching a drive with one’s hand is NOT a good indicator or “too hot” or “cool”.

When we perform our tests, case temperature is but one aspect of the heat produced by a drive. We also place sensors on critical internal components to determine temperature variations during operation. We also perform tests at elevated temperatures.

The case of the d2 family of drives has been designed to be an active heat sink. Over time of extended use, the entire case will get warm. This is because the internally produced heat is extracted from the drive, and the entire case is then used for releasing heat to the ambient surroundings. We recommend keeping the area surrounding the drive clear of any obstructions.

There are some designs out there that use other passive and active techniques for cooling:
– one particular design uses a heat sink with radiator-like fins to dissipate the internal heat. Unfortunately, this design has the heat sink on the bottom of the drive. During normal operation, for convection to occur heat naturally rises. By having the heat sink on the bottom of the drive, there is no natural convetion, so there is less cooling capability. It would be more efficient to have heat dissipation fins on top or sides of the drive to be more effective
– other designs that use fans have to wrestle with the tradeoff of fan noise, fan lifetime, and fan efficiency. If design is solely dependent on fan for cooling, there needs to be provisions for sensing fan failure, as the drive will surely cook if fan fails. Fans typically have less lifetime than the drive mechanism. So fan noise is psotive feedback to user that it is running. If fan is implemented at slower speeds, then a failure may not be noticed until it is too late to do something about it. Some designs do have provisions for alerts when fan fails.

As we all push the edge in the quest for speed, performance, and capacity, we are also faced with some aspects of product limitations. We all need to better understand that these capabilities come at some cost.

We strive to produce the most cost effectgive and reliable solutions, given the available technology.

Finally, let me close with some thoughts on failures. They can happen. When you least can afford it to happen. We seldom hear from all the happy users. The nature of forums such as this, is to report problems and to learn of hints on preventing them. The large majority of happy users do NOT frequent forums.

What can one do to minimize problems?
– redundancy; make backups; have spare drives
– always unmount/eject volumes beforew disconnecting drives
– always wait for drive to spin down completely before moving a drive to another computer
– keep backups disconnected from computers; especially during updates
– never update a system in the middle of a project
– keep area around drives clear of clutter to help drive cooling; if mounting drives in a confined space, be sure to provide auxiliary cooling; the internal fans or passive cooling will NOT help if drive is in a confined space

Mike

[Mike Mihalik]

Bob,

I think Paul may have been asking about our new F800 system. It is FW800, 4 removable drives, hardware controller, and configurable as RAID-0, 1, 0+1, or 5.

So user has a choice as to how much speed or redundancy is wanted.

And to meet the people who feel LaCie drives run rather warm, there is a temperature controlled fan.

Bob, are you the same Bob from DiNo from years back? I am the Mike from way back in Joel’s and LaCie’s early days.

Mike