One reason why I refuse to use firewire drives. They simply are too prone to do things like you mention. Firewire is fine for getting stuff in and out of your CAMERA. Firewire for hard drives is a no-no as far as I'm concerned unless you limit to archival storage. Maybe then OK, but I still won't. Removable drives in a drawer are much more stable, more sturdy, always cheaper and they don't get "lost" switched off or fooled with by Windows.

I'm embarrassed to say it's an old card that came bundled with a version of Pinnacle Studio (version 7, I think), and I'm not even sure of the specs or manufacturer. I can say, that it has functioned flawlessly for capture, external preview, and with the firewire HD; just not at the same time. After I got my system up and running again, I tried it once more (glutton for punishment), and started getting the same glitching that led to the mega-crash earlier.

I have none of these problems when I use the same Maxtor Firewire HD and Canon vidcam together on a Sony GRT laptop. I suspect there is something specific to my desktop system and that particular PCI firewire card that causes problems. The only other change I made recently was an update to DirectX 9.0b to resolve some driver issues with an M-Audio PCI card and Cubase SX.

Kevin.

Is there a problem printing to tape from an external firewire drive through a cardbus?

I have an external Western Digital 120gb firewire drive connected to a two-port Western Digital PCMCIA Firewire cardbus. The other port is connected to a Canon Elura camcorder. My computer is a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop.
I can not get this configuration to print to tape. Vegas can control the camera and put it into record, but very soon into the process, everything crashes. It crashes at different intervals each time but usually within the first minute or two.

~Michael

FWIW, I have been using a 250 Gig WD external firewire HD for a couple months now without any problems. I also use a camcorder for pass-through to external monitor; switching on and off during editing sessions causes no problems. I have also captured to the external HD from the camcorder with no problems or dropped frames.

Billy Boy - I also have several caddy drawers containing hard drives, but I have a hell of a job getting them into my laptop!

I must admit I use USB2 rather than firewire, but I use 6 external firewire/usb2 HDs and could not imagine working without them.

I often take the laptop plus two or three externals to Clients' offices to edit with them, and I have never been let down, in fact it blows them away to see the fashioning of their video project before their very eyes.

I'm using a 250 GB Maxtor "1-Touch" Firewire HD for all my Vegas files and captures and use External Preview all the time without any problem. I'm using a standard Pyro Firewire card running under XP Pro.

Billyboy!
What are you talking about? That is simply and utterly untrue! You might as well say that the reason you don't go outside is because the sky constantly rains gummy bears. In a reliable branded enclosure, and a reliable IDE drive inside, with a name brand, KNOWN OHCI card, is virtually never any trouble or reliability issue. There isn't a media trainer left on the planet not using either Firewire or USB, and the same problems, when there are any, apply to both. One of the biggest screwups with Firewire and USB drives is that somebody boots their machine/laptop, while it's booting realizes that they've not plugged in their drive, so they plug in the drive while OS is booting.
OOPS. Or they dismount by just jerking the cable. (thank heaven you aren't running a Mac, doing this can blow your whole OS due to their registry)
Hmmm.....60+ firewire enclosures here, 2 DV Raids that are firewire that are both 1 terrabyte. Maybe 2 failures out of all those, and one was related to power issues in Australia last year. I CONSTANTLY edit on Firewire, because it allows access to my media regardless of where in the world I am. Such as Asia next week. I'll have 3 Firewire drive enclosures with me. Anyone who has seen VASST has seen firewire drives, as all our instructors use them. The other failure I can recall was a drive that had a can of soda spilled in it on the controller chip. Quick run to Comp USA to buy a new enclosure, we were back in business in 15 minutes by switching out the IDE drive to the new enclosure.
Sorry Billy, on this one, you are waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy out to lunch.
BTW, due to System Management, firewire is no less or more reliable on the bus than is a drawer drive. We also use those, and have had far more problems with both IDE and SCSI drives in drawers. 'Course, I've been using SCSI in Kingston drawers for over 7 years, but only been using Firewire for 3.

I can only comment based on my experience. Your mileage may vary.

Way back when firewire drives first came out I grabbed one and paid a pretty price too for being one of the first. It was a Maxtor 40 GB or was it a 80 GB? I forget. .Anyway it worked fine for awhile then failed.

I callen Maxtor, they replaced it.

This first replacement drive promptly failed as well.

Called Maxtor.

They send second replacement.

It failed exactly the same way.

Next, I opened the case, knowing it would void the warranty. Still my curiousity got the best of me. Besides I doubt they would send me a third replacement.

To make a long story short, what was inside was just a regular IDE drive. Nothing special. I pulled it off the cheesy little interface card, dropped it into a drawer and the drive has worked perfectly ever since.

So what am I talking about? EXPERIENCE. All negative with firewire drives. Not actually the drive, rather the exceedingly poor, totally untrustworthly mickey mouse dime store interface card that connents them to the outside world and that manufacturers rob you blind for.

That YOU haven't had this experinece points more to you being lucky since the web is full of similar reports of many others having the same experience I did.

For YOU to have a tizzy like you did, is something I'd expect from Zippo, not you. Still love ya buddy, have a good trip. This is another thing we're going to have to disagree on . <wink>

A final comment. I understand some may have to use firewire and perhaps you buy a more expensive model. My comments as usual reflect the experience of what the average Joe may run into and the Maxtor was/is a big seller of so-called portable drives. The truth is they suck and they don't even market them as portable anymore because of the cheap interface card inside that can't stand up to heavy use. If you buy one to throw in your suitcase or whatever and fine youself in some hotel room at 11:PM and you can't access you files, don't say I didn't warn ya.

It's not a tizzy, it's just simply that you have had a bad experience that causes you to be absolutely incorrect about the bigger picture. Yep. Maxtor and Belkin BOTH have had tremendous problems in the past. that's one of the costs of living on the bleeding edge. I've had problems with Maxtor and Datapoint drive enclosures too. Enclosures are just that. Enclosures. They contain a controller card. All things being equal, it should be an Oxford 911/922 chipset. Anything else or anything older is asking for trouble. Only cheap drive kits don't use these.
IDE drives are what go into Firewire kits. There's no voodoo here, just a drive with a controller that speaks to the bus.
I'm in no way "lucky," it's that you were UNLUCKY.
In most every case of posted problems with a firewire kit, it's because of:
A-non OHCI compliant card/'patched' card
B-Non-Oxford based chipset
C-Missed settings on the inserted IDE drive in the Firewire case
D-Crappy computer components/VIA chipset
E-A blend of all of the above.

There were some initial issues for Microsoft vs TI chipsets, but that was 4 years ago.
This thread alone started because of a Pinnacle firewire card, a NON- OHCI compliant standard card. They wrote a patch, but it's a failed patch, so the drive cannot be blamed. In at least 2 cases, drives that supposedly were "bad" were sent to me by forum folks. Both drives were good. It was their system. Same thing with Sony employees, I know folks sent drives into them too, and the drives were good.
I'll put my 60+ drives up against whatever Maxtor experience you've had. I've got experience too. A daily one with so many kits it's ridiculous. Oh...I will admit that we've had probably 5-6 wall warts die on us.
It really bugs me when a single bad experience with one hard drive case company causes a respected person throws the baby out with the bathwater.
Either way, to say that Firewire drives are generally unreliable is patently false and irresponsible, particularly when it's based on something that happened "when firewire drives first came out," and on one brand/model of drive kit that was inferior to begin with.

Sorry to interject, but while we're on the topic of reliable firewire drives...

Spot, could you give some examples of commercially available, reliable (in your experience) firewire hard drives? I do some mobile project editing with a laptop, so firewire is my only option here.

Thanks,
Kevin.

My point is HOW MANY TIMES should I go to the well?

It for sure would be irresponsible for me to buy a firewire drive, have it fail, get a replacement have it fail then have the replacement of the replacement fail, then just keep buying more with the high expectation more would fail as well. THAT:S MY EXPERIENCE with firewire drives! Enough is enough.

As far as living on the edge, a big fat baloney. Products coming to market should WORK as advertised. That Maxtor was aware of the problem with their cheesy interface card and did NOTHING to fix it, preferring instead to send out one defective replacement after another does not inspire confidence, at least not from me.

First impressions SPOT. Sure s... happens. But when it happens over and over again, they kind of blows it. A kid touching a hot stove probably is going to say ouch and pull his hand away. He may do it a second time, even a third, but to do it over and over and not LEARN is another story. Rightly or wrongly I've had it firewire drives. I'm not getting burned no more. Besides they're a poor choice unless you have to use them. They're more fragile, far more expense.

It seems even your experence isn't that great. You say you have 60 drives and admit 6 failed. That's a 10% failure rate. WAY TOO HIGH for me.

And it wasn't a single bad experience I had.

Count them:.original drive: failed.1st replacement failedthen the 2nd replacement failed Three strikes and you're out.

You're also repeating what I said almost two years ago. I was the one that first suggested pull the drive from the fireware case its just a regular IDE drive inside.

In my opinion unless you travel a lot and/or use a laptop and then are willing to throw a lot of money at some grossly overpriced firewire drive paying upwards of 20-30 even 50% or more for just a regular IDE drive inside a case as opposed to get the SAME drive that nicely fits in a drawer, can cost half as much or less, and be as solid as a rock, then be my guest.

For me, where the drive never travels more than from upstairs to downstairs area it would be extremelly foolish to blow that kind of money on what has proved in my experience to be junk.

I use cheap firewire cases for my DVD burner & hard drives. Bytecc ME-320. They're $40-45 for a 5 1/4" case. Oxford 911 chipset.

Although I don't put near the hours on that you guys do, I've never had a problem.

BB, I'm nowhere near as experienced as you, but I think you are too vehement in your general denouncing of FW because of your experiences. If it were me, I'd let people know about it, but I'd qualify my experiences as limited. You had an early, buggy, P.O.S. interface; and only one model at that. Yes, it should have worked, but it didn't. But that has little bearing on whether firewire is NOW a good solution. If I buy a crap Yugo car and have issues, I don't tell people to take the bus instead; I say "don't buy a Yugo".

I think you guys are confusing us in the ignorant masses re firewire drives vs internals in a firwire enclosure. Almost seems as though DSE and BB are taking the same side of the argument.

Charlie

. . . er . . what is this thread really about?

For our music and client work, we generally are using IBM Deskstar drives, newer ones, 120 gig. They had a bad run of 80 gig, so watch out for those.
We load them all into ADS Drive Kit cases, we have 3 different models. Some are old purple, and ugly. They did not have Oxford in them, but we've still not had issues with them.
Some are half dark grey w/black rubber, external wall wart. Wall Warts have failed in Australia and Germany. These have oxfords in them.
Some are dark grey and black rubber with internal supplies. These have oxfords in them. No issues at all with these thus far.
Finally, the newest ones, the ones we give away at VASST, have USB2 and Firewire on them, black throughout.
Almost all are loaded with the IBM, some have Western Digital in them. Some have older Seagates in them. Just checked with my assistant, he tells me we've lost 4 drives in 2 enclosures in 4 years. Drives may have been bad to start with. Keep in mind, we have 62 enclosures, plus a total of 3 DV Raids that are Firewire.
We also have 4 other various enclosures, the only one still functioning is the Ferrari, which is a sexy, but fragile enclosure.
ADS's are usually available on sale for around 90.00, plus cost of drive. PC Nirvana always has a good price on these. www.pcnirvana.net

Hmmm.....10%....in the hands of TSA every 48 hours, flying from country to country. Many on stages in various conditions that 95% of the people here will never see. 10% failure rate in that condition is very acceptable, and after talking with my assistant, our failure rate is far less than that.
Times change. Firewire, once considered mythical and magical, is the norm. I had really bad experiences with Chevrolet in the mid 70's. Said I'd never own one. I've had an Avalanche for two years now, after being provided one during the Olympics, I realized how prejudiced I'd been for 25 years. Made me wonder what else I'd missed.
Working with a laptop 80% of the time relegates one to using Firewire drives, and I stand very grateful for mine. I usually have 3 with me at any point in time.

No fighting- otherwise, NO TV!