External Hard drive and Firewire Problem

[bbwannabe]

Ive recently bought an external case to hold a hard drive (an internal maxtor 80GB IDE 133 hard drive). After a long time trying to get it to appear in window's My Computer, it connected fine. But ive had problems when transferring files to it. On the front of my computer I have 2 USB 1 sockets, and one Firewire socket. At the back I have 2 USB sockets and 2 Firewire sockets.

When i connect it to the front FW, it beeps to say that its detected something attached and the safety remove icon appears in system tray. When i move large files (>100MB) to it, an error appears to say that it the device is not ready (with an exclamation mark in the system tray and the safety remove icon dissappears). Now i unplugged it and tried in the ones at the back. Right hand side Back FW socket, no beeps and wasnt detected. Tried with the back's lefthand one and it beeped. I tried to transfer some files.... it got to 4GB transferred when i got the same error message again.

I know that both USB at back work fine and that one of the two in the front is dead. If i rememeber right it didnt work with the front USB, but i am not to sure if it was because i picked the dead one.
Anyhow if it works fine on USB id be happy but its a USB1.1 connection so it'll be extremely slow compared to the FW card. So id like to find out what the problem is.

My guess faulty FW card, but id like to see what you think it could be before i spent £20 on it. Thx

[bbwannabe]

Oh and i should mention that i tried to connect it to the laptop which has 4 USB speed 2 sockets and it worked absolutely fine. So it rules out that the external housing is faulty.

Heres what i bought:
http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/acata...l_Section.html

{AC 5058} << This is what im talking about in the above post.
{AC 5041} << No problems with this yet, its for an internal DVD burner which i havent bought yet.

[abailey152]

How do you know the external housing's FW interface isn't the problem? Have you used anything else on your PC's FW ports, such as a camcorder? You really need to try it on another FW equiped PC first, then if it works it does point to your FW card.

If you do need to change your FW card, and you don't use your FW ports for anything else, it might be worth going for a USB2 card as this may give you more options for future upgrades.

[bbwannabe]

Well i dont lol. But my desktop computer is known to be problematic at times. I could have tried it on my laptop which has a firewire socket, but its not the right size for the cable i have. It has one of those mini-connectors to normal connectors.

Which is faster? USB2 or FW? I'll go and have a look see how much usb2 cards will cost.

[abailey152]

I *think* USB2 is faster, but it depends on how it's being used. USB2 does have the benefit that more devices will work with it, so is better for any future hardware additions, but if you've got a camcorder which needs firewire, then this will dictate what you need. Not sure if a combo card exists. Might be worth a search.

[bbwannabe]

Yeah your right about more things using usb2. Though i dont see anything else i might need to connect to it. Apart from more drives but i think 120GB is enough from two H-drives.

Originally Posted by abailey152

I *think* USB2 is faster, but it depends on how it's being used. USB2 does have the benefit that more devices will work with it, so is better for any future hardware additions, but if you've got a camcorder which needs firewire, then this will dictate what you need. Not sure if a combo card exists. Might be worth a search.

USB-2 is somewhat faster than the original Firewire-400 standard, but is rather left standing by the more recent Firewire-800 specification. The real difference between them so far as application is concerned, however, is the way in which they transfer data. USB sends data in pulses, which is fine for most applications but not at all ideal for high-bitrate, continuous streams of data such as you get from a DV camcorder. For this application, you really do need Firewire, which handles data in a continuous stream. Now, I know you need FW if you're importing video, but I'm not sure what the rule is if you are importing to an external HDD ... does that drive itself need FW or will USB-2 suffice for that purpose? Somebody else may be able to advise, if it's relevant. I can say for sure that USB-1 would not be fast enough.

[bbwannabe]

USB1 definitely isnt fast enough. Transferring 14GB of stuff to it I started at 1.30am and it finally finished around 9.30am... I could have burned at 1xspeed on dvd burner and got it done quicker lol. I have tried to move large amounts using usb2 and had no problem with it, but i like firewire more for some unknown reason. The external case has both connections to FW or USB1/2.

Originally Posted by bbwannabe

USB1 definitely isnt fast enough. Transferring 14GB of stuff to it I started at 1.30am and it finally finished around 9.30am... I could have burned at 1xspeed on dvd burner and got it done quicker lol. I have tried to move large amounts using usb2 and had no problem with it, but i like firewire more for some unknown reason. The external case has both connections to FW or USB1/2.

Firewire is a great standard, and like for like is much faster than USB (FW-400 kicks USB-1 a$$, similarly FW-800 kicks USB-2 a$$). I would connect everything using it if I had the choice, but other than DV cams, hardware that has a FW port seems to be considered 'high end' or 'prosumer' and is priced accordingly.

[bbwannabe]

There wouldnt be any point in using FW-800 as i dont think my case supports it.. I have more stuff with USB connections but AFAIK they drain the computers resources, wonder if firewire does the same.

Originally Posted by bbwannabe

There wouldnt be any point in using FW-800 as i dont think my case supports it.. I have more stuff with USB connections but AFAIK they drain the computers resources, wonder if firewire does the same.

Now that I don't know ...

I don't have FW-800 capability either, BTW. Macs have been shipping with FW-400 for at least 5 years, but even today only the more expensive models have a FW-800 port.

[abailey152]

Originally Posted by towny

Firewire is a great standard, and like for like is much faster than USB (FW-400 kicks USB-1 a$$, similarly FW-800 kicks USB-2 a$$). I would connect everything using it if I had the choice, but other than DV cams, hardware that has a FW port seems to be considered 'high end' or 'prosumer' and is priced accordingly.

Yes, I was thinking of what would be more useful long-term. Video work definitely means FW, but if video is not needed then maybe more peripherals have USB rather than FW connections. It's very user and task-specific. I've got both, but then again I'm greedy!