So, what makes USB not equipped for time critical stuff? - g

On my current Maxtor 300 gig touch II I use the USB function which transfers at a rate of 28.2 megs per second. I transferred 142 gigs in 82 minutes. All my firewire jacks are tied up but I had 7 empty USB's.

JJK

I've got a small 2.5" enclosure with a 60gig 5400rpm Seagate drive in it. It's USB2 and is bus powered.

Works very well, been editing using that drive for more than a year, capturing on it also, no problems at all. The nice thing is that it fits in my pockets.

I also have a NAS (NSLU2) It's a box you connect to your router and it can accept 2 USB2 drives. Works like a charm, been running for 2 years 24/24 without any crashes at all. Great for backups and media (music etc.)

Firewire with 3 Maxtors daisy-chained -- ah, no. Two Maxtors daisy-chained.

USB has been the most reliable for me. I have 3 USB/Firewire enclosures into which I installed removable drive trays.

I've had numerous issues with Firewire attached drives where they spontaneously "disappear". Never had that problem with my USB drives.

i used to be firewire all the way, but as vegas systematically checks accessability <youll notice "media pffline" if switching applications> , sometimes windows doesnt like that so ive lost a fair few drives file systems this way...
since using USB2, i havent had an issue..

Grazie,

I've had problems with firewire connectivity on several systems.

Since switching to USB2 for my external drive enclosures, the only problem I have is that occasionaly, when I connect a drive, it gets assigned to a USB1 port. Unplugging and replugging or power cycling the enclosure fixes it.

I'm much happier with USB2.

Gary

I am looking into SATA drives which are considerably faster than either Firewire or USB2.

They are hot swappable and very fast. (3x faster than Firewire)
Somewhat more expensive.

Have not done a real trial, as yet, but you might want to look at http://www.wiebetech.com/products/miniDocks.php and check out the soon to be released SATA /USB2 portable dock.

It looks very interesting to me - particularly with the greater requirements of HDV on my horizon.

v

To answer Grazies question, as I understand it USB uses a lot of CPU power, that's fine in most situations except when rendering etc when you need bot CPU power and disk I/O bandwidth.

One of the cheaper solutions for large, shareable storage is NAS via 1Gbit etherent, prices for boxes are getting cheaper all the time, the Thecus N4100 is looking attractive at around AUD 800. hold upto 2TB. Bear in mind that 1Gbit Enet is fast enough for HD.

Bob.

Grazie,

1. USB 2.0, if using an external box is unavoidable.

- Firewire & USB 2.0 write at similar rates.
- Firewire reads about twice as fast.
- Firewire external data has been unstable for me. I have had numerous problems that included the loss of 75 Gigs of precious footage (It was safely backed up elsewhere, but I gave up on FW).

2. I have gone to hard drives in removable carriers on an IDE channel in the PC. My need was for more data storage - not principally for data that could travel. Internal IDE reads about 40% faster, and writes still faster, than firewire. (IDE chosen only because I had no room for additional SATAs, but an IDE channel was available)

3. I keep a USB 2.0 equipped external box empty & handy in case data needs to travel.

4. Speeds quoted are from: http://www.frozentechnology.com/articles/2003/11/01/firewire-vs-usb2

Cheers,

Tinle

I leave the cover off and swap out the drives internally. I have a bunch of Western Digital 120GB ATA drives. Works very well with zero problems.

John

I have 2 x SATA 7200 disks in RAID 0 set up (cureently disconnected awaiting a Spring Clean and reformat job..which never seems to come around...

I agree about firewire disappearing. Even if I lose a USB 2 connection on my LaCie Porsche external HDD I can easily recapture it.

I will be studying more on RAID setups and am looking at a quick-swap method of switchnig over these data-only drives in case the current one fails me.although just opening the side case and swapping cables over is nothing hard.

It would be great if all drives were hot swappable by means of changing over the cables externally, similar to plugs on a powerboard.
Great for rush jobs or when working into the wee hours..
I often wish all the cabling was in a box with a simple flip-top, rather than having to unscrew the side or back panel off the system box.....


LG

The problem with the Raid 0 setups is that if one half goes the other goes with it. Secondly, the speed gain is usually not apparent because of slowdowns in the system created by memory, CPU, software, etc. The problems IMO outweight any perceived gains.
Moreover, the computer runs cooler with the case cover off and the drives are easy to swap out when the cover is off. Use the same ones all the time and keep a smaller system/software drive as the C drive and it will work perfectly.

John

I think that I'm going to get a PCMCIA SATA I card and use these now :)

However - I use both - one is a Firewire (200GB) and I use that for capping to and current projects etc..., then I have a USB2 for backups (that's a 320GB). I've had better performance with my FW than my USB2 drives.

But I rather like the notion of these external SATA drive setups.

Dave

I had the same problem that Liam reported farther up this thread.

My firewire-attched drive would too often "disappear" from the system. Windows XP would allege that it wasn't there. Usually reappeared if I disconnected & reconnected the firewire cable. But that would often result in its drive LETTER changing... which messed up several things, since several applications that I use depend on the filepath of the files that are on that drive.

I got tired of that hassle... and since the drive accepts both firewire and USB2, I disconnected the firewire cable and attached a USB2 cable, and I've not had the disappearance problem since.

I too have had problems with external Firewire drives 'disappearing'.

I now use hard drives in a removable cradle.

I also have a Maxtor USB2 external drive but found that it didn't like being connected via a hub but needed to be connected to an 'onboard' USB port.

USB2 for us.

Seems like we had some problems with firewire drives disappearing like some of the other folks mentioned here so we stayed with USB2 and never looked back.

Sab