Converting Firewire Enclosured drives to...

wethree wrote on 8/5/2005, 2:34 PM
Anybody else still having problems keeping firewire drives online through a 12-24hour render? On my main machine, a shuttle sb51g, I have 1 drive (for media) connected to one firewire port, and 8 firewire enclosured IDE drives piggy-backed to the other port.

I've downloaded and installed the patch to help with the Win XP SP2-related firewire issues, but still can't get em all to stay online reliably. And then there's the 1394 limit to max throughput.

What's the most cost-effective way to incorporate all these drives into a IDE-based tower of slidedrawer drives? And what arrangements of stripe/raiding might I explore with these to increase throughput beyond what firewire delivers?

bestx3,

bt

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 8/5/2005, 2:58 PM
I have had periodic disconnects which I tracked down to a bad cable. Also, if you have your camera or anything else connected, you may be more prone to disconnects (at least that has been my experience).
ScottW wrote on 8/5/2005, 2:58 PM
You might want to take a look at SATA. There are interfaces that will convert PATA to SATA, then plug in a multi-port SATA card.

Highpoint (www.highpoint-tect.com) makes a wide variety of SATA and e.SATA stuff.

--Scott
farss wrote on 8/5/2005, 3:51 PM
That's a lot of interconnects, very easy for something to go wrong. Also firewire 400 is very slow, bump yourself upto firewire 800. Apart from the extra speed the connectors seem more solid.
But do you need all those drives connected at once?
We use caddies with 200GB drives and swap them in and out of the system although your box might be a bit too small to make that a very practical solution.
Other way is to use NAS and GBit ethernet which is cheap and plenty fast enough for SD.
Bob.
wethree wrote on 8/5/2005, 6:24 PM
OK-- WHAT IF

What if I took out my Creative Audigy 2 PCI card, replaced it with a Firewire 800 card, then replaced the Audigy2 with a Firewire 410 (using one of the 1394a ports in), then got a firewire 800 two-tiered caddy raid). Would that work better-- alot better?

Also regarding caddies using SATA, I've heard the conections are miserable to keep from coming free...

Thanks for your input guys.

bestx3,

bt
wethree wrote on 8/5/2005, 6:28 PM
hmm. Camera not attached, but Sony DCR-20 deck is always attached. John, could that also cause interrupts?

Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/5/2005, 8:58 PM
I f nothing else... you should get an additional firewire card... plug the drives into one card... and the deck into the other.
TomE wrote on 8/6/2005, 9:58 AM
wethree --bt

What are your system specs? Just curious since I also use my audigy for firewire stuff but also have firewire on my motherboard.

-TomE
John_Cline wrote on 8/6/2005, 12:18 PM
I've been using the Kingwin KF-91 SATA caddies and they've been working fine.

John
farss wrote on 8/6/2005, 3:28 PM
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Just be aware that just which slot you plug the card into may make a difference to performance, several f/wire 800 devices going flat out at once does need a lot of bandwidth else you're not going to get the full benefit. Don't know the brand of 1394b card in my monster but the systems inegrator put it in a PCI-X slot, the card even gets its own power feed.
Bob.