I think you can safely assume that not all firewire drives or controllers are built the same. I've had some wierd issues with things firewire, mostly since I've installed the drivers for the M-Audio 410. It's a great unit but I've had windows getting mixed up as to which port the 410 is on and which port the ADVC-300 is on, not a pretty result.

I wonder SPOT if you had another firewire device in use at the same time? With Vegas forcing the OS and hardware to output video to one firewire device and the firewire HD could it be that things get scrambled?

I also see a lot of posts in FCP land about firewire problems so this isn't limited to PCs.

I've successfully had a 410, ADSbox, and camera with external preview all going at once. In fact, that's going right now on my laptop. I've not tried the Canopus in that chain though.
I know it's a cross platform problem, my Powerbook CONSTANTLY loses it's drives. But I've gotten spoiled with the ADS boxes, I guess.

They all work fine together for sure. Where it comes unglued is if you swap a device without a reboot, not really a big issue to be sure, just a momentary heart stopper. I think HDs are OK because windows knows to mount / dismount drives but other firewire gadgets are a bit tricker. From what I can see the 410 doesn't just use drivers, its internal software is loaded from the PC.

I'm very happy with my 3 50$ USB2/Firewire enclosures.
Never crashes, works very well with vegas. I use it in USB2 and it's great. Small, lightweight, silent and cheap.

My condolences.

The only real solution is to get a different enclosure. It's just not very satisfying. I wish I knew what the problem was.

I have to tell you I've had this problem with a Granite Digital bridge board using an Oxford911 chip. While this chip seemed to be the best it wasn't foolproof.

I had read some technotes on the MSKB about timing issues with firewire devices. Their solution was a patch that slowed down the bus.

I've been assuming that there was a problem reading the media and the sfk file at the same time. Seems I had read that 1394 can use two different data transfer modes, one of which was perfect for long media streams while the other was better suited for multiple data files.

I know I'm being cloudy and vague but it's been a while since I've had to deal with this. The solution was to follow your advice and buy ADS enclosures.

Rob Mack

Spot,

In at least one case I documented, I found this to be a design defect. I posted this about two months ago. Quick summary of that post:

I have a Maxtor One-Touch Firewire (250 Gbyte). No problems with PTT, timeline preview, or any other function. Perfectly compatible with Vegas.

I then had a client give me a Western Digital WD800 in partial payment for a job. With this unit attached, PTT didn't work, and external preview would hang after 3-5 seconds of video. I contacted Western Digital, and without any discussion or question whatsoever, they issued an RMA. I figured, what the heck, and sent the drive back. Within a few days, I had a refurbished drive. Same model number, etc. I didn't expect that this would help at all. However, I plugged it in and, lo and behold, it works perfectly!

Conclusion: There is a design bug in some drives. This bug is well-known (hence the RMA without my even having to ask for it), and it has been fixed by an ECO (at least by WD).

Hmmm...

Some but not all of my hanging drives were WD. They work okay in the ADS tanks now.

A while back we attempted to set up a mirrored array with WD drives on a Promise card. The WD drives were a specific and known problem for Promise. The drives would constantly come unmirrrored.

We abandoned the whole plan. However, I latter set up a similar mirrored array using Seagate drives. Works perfectly. Although people love them, I now avoid the WD drives.

Rob Mack

FWIW we've got several WD and IBM drives in ADS cases, no issues. The 80 gig in the problem enclosure is a fujitsu. Works fine in the ADS case though

Yes, That's what I was saying. The WD drives I own work just fine in ADS cases. So does the IBM drive I own, although the ADS case didn't provide enough airflow for it until I raised it up on drive rails.

Overall, I'd always recommend the ADS cases to people (I'd just recommend they prop up the drive onto rails for better airflow)

Rob Mack