The plan was to capture from a Canon Optura Xi via firewire to a Western Digital HDD in a Pyro firewire enclosure using an Adaptec 1430 PCMCIA firewire adapter (NEC chipset) all connected to a Dell Inspiron 8600 [P4-1.4 Centrino, half G ram] (built-in firewire port is disabled).

So far the best results have come from connecting the enclosure to the Adaptec and the camcorder to the enclosure. I got 4:42 minutes of drop free AVI. I let it run past 35 minutes before realizing it was dropping frames (110) and not recording. After shutting the capture down, neither the hard drive nor the camcorder showed up in Explorer.

I shut the Pyro and Canon down. Then turned on the camcorder, which was recognized by XP. Then turned on the PYRO. The HDD was recognized by XP. Then, around 5 minutes later, the hard drive disappeared from Explorer, leaving the Canon.

I tried connecting both devices to the Adaptec in parallel, but get nothing but dropped frames and very unstable video.

Any thoughts? Why does the hard drive disappear and not the camcorder, or vice versa?

Is anyone capturing to a firewire drive in any confiration, if so what?

This is nuts. Help.

Scott