No its one enclosure with two firewire ports and a usb 2.0 port.
But the box says thats its just a usb enclosure.

I'd like to recommend firewire portadocks by www.wiebetech.com

These are what I use and the advantage of them is that you don't have to install the drive, you just plug it in to the dock. When you're done with the project you unplug and put the drive away.

I've got three of these and that's enough.

Check it out.

v

tried the website couldnt find it.
Hey'd ya ever put that processor you won at the Vasst class in Orlando to good use Vic?

Try this website....

http://wiebetech.store.yahoo.com/

Are you using the 400 or 800 Vic?

Keith

The USBX-804 has received great reviews. It seems the reason CC is blowing them out is that this model has been superseded by the USBX-835 ($59.99 but no FW).

Has anybody had any problems with using USB2 drives for just backup and clipmedia access?

I second Wiebetech. I love my Wiebetech enclosures. I'm using 3 Fire800s and they work great (now that my Windows XP DWF problems have gone away) The performance is excellent and almost indistinguishable from internal HDs. I also have the ADS enclosure in question that I use with my NEC burner via USB2. No problems there either. I prefer to keep daisy chaining or hub use to a minimum so running the HDs over Firewire 800 and the burner over USB2 works well for me.

John

Are the Wiebetechs quiet?

It depends more on the drive you put in them. I've found Western Digitals in general to be quieter than Maxtors. My Fire800 enclosures are quiet and the ToughTech is even more quiet due to the anti-shock protection. They are solid aluminum and conduct heat away from the drives very well.

John

I have both 400 and 800 but...
DCV am MOST interested in your solution to the 800 not working correctly situation.
I can only mount one at a time, totally negating one of the reasons I traded up - I did install an 800 board from Wiebetech, btw.
How did you solve it all??
v.

Vic,

After a long period of pain and suffering this is what finally fixed my Firewire problems:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=373764

I'm using a Wiebetech Firewire 800 cardbus adapter that has a TI chipset. It has been working fine since I installed this patch. It's interesting to note that Microsoft created the patch to fix problems with the NEC chipset, but it's obvious the issues went well beyond that chipset.

John

I must be blind - I can't see a portadock on the website.

I see a FireWireDriveDock, TrayDock, BayDock (in various flavors), ComboDock, SuperDriveDock+, and a few others.

Which are you guys referring to/using?

Thanks from "looking with my eyes closed"

Phil

That's probably because it's called the FireWire DriveDock... (heh, heh... sorry)

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/firewiredrivedock.php

This is for the 400 - check out the 800 as well, but you'll need to also buy an 800 card for the computer.

v.

Got it - Thanks V

A question, though:

One plugs the bare drive into this, then firewire 400/800 from the drivedock to the FW port on the PC - and that's it? You have a bare drive sitting there which you can move around, replace with another, etc.? Brilliant! Then there's a AC power cord as well?

Oops - another question - Betwee two external ADS boxes, and my camera, I'm out of FW ports on my PC - If anyone has tried daisychaining this to another HDD, how does it perform?

Thanks

Phil

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3553794?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

39.99 after rebate.

I'm officially staying away from ADS now, and have been happy with the Wiebetech Dualbay I've got (so far). Other than the somewhat complex installation, there's some minor machining issues with the case -- screws not aligned exactly with holes -- but the performance can't be beat. I've had no "write delay failures" in the four days I've had mine up and running...

Anyone want a pair of ADS FW enclosures on the cheap? If they're going for $79 new, I'll sell mine at $50 each plus shipping -- info@ideaspora.net

- jim

What problems have you had with the ADS. I checked other posts and people seem to really like them. Is it only the Firewire ones you have had problems with?

I've had three cases in all. The one I'm still using, and intend to keep, is a combo FW400/USB case. The other two are straight FW400 cases, one about a year and a half old, the other less than a year.

I had no issues with them for the longest time, and somewhere in the last six months I changed some combination of things and they've been giving me intermittent write delay failures ever since. What's strange is that the failures will go away completely for a month or so, after I do some major voodoo to get rid of them (unplug the drives/power them on and off/fiddle with the internal EIDE cable/disable then enable my FW card/reboot repeatedly/etc...), then they crop back up.

Honestly, there's too many links in the "What did I change?" chain for me to want to spend hours pulling my hair out over the issue. In the last year alone, I've: migrated from Win2000 to WinXP Pro; installed the SP1, then SP1a patches; moved my FW devices to a hub; added a third drive and CF reader to the mix; mixed 48bit (160gb) drives with older 32bit (120gb) drives; installed a permanent firewall and AV combination...

Combine the number of forks in the chain of events with a recent windfall of paying freelance work, and I just said "Forget it -- let me drop some money on the Wiebetech case to see if it solves the issue." Apparently it has -- though it's been tough typing this with my fingers crossed :D

Now I'm looking to sell or eBay the ADS cases on the cheap and wish someone else better luck with them.

- jim

Just a follow-up on my situation...

Looking at the two ADS enclosures just sitting idle yesterday, with the day off, I figured I'd give it another go at troubleshooting them. Troubleshooting is much easier when you're not under the gun and have to rely on making the tech work.

Googled my issues and came up with these two pages: 1) ADS enclosure user reviews, and 2) ADS enclosures with CDRW drives.

Both pages describe problems similar to those I experienced, and both make mention of the ADS firmware update that I happen to have on the CD that came packaged with the cases. I've got a 75gb Hitachi drive sitting here unused at the moment, so I popped that into the case(s), alternating between them in the hopes that I could fix them both.

Only once in perhaps five tries did my computer recognize and mount the drive, despite the green light at the front of the case blinking on. I swapped out different FW cables, cycled the cases on/off, unplugged their power cords, rebooted several times, etc. Everything I could think of and only once did the drive come alive. The kicker is that, with the drive mounted, the firmware updater couldn't find a connected device (it was the only FW device connected at the time).

I'd hoped to get these things back in working order before selling them, but by the looks of it, that's not happening anytime soon.

Oh well -- at least the Wiebetech case and the third ADS enclosure are working flawlessly.

- jim

I'm no expert, by any means. But I do have two ADS enclosures, and three Maxtor enclosures that, apparently weren't supposed to be opened, as they came with drives. In any event, any of these will occasionally fail to mount. When this happens, I find that nothing will fix the problem except to dismount (stop) any of them that are mounted, reboot the computer with none of them connected, then, connect them one at a time, making certain each mounts properly before I connect the next.

I move my system a lot (tear it down, travel, set it up again), and, usually the problem of drives not mounting occurs when I haven't hooked things up in exactly the same order as when I shut the machine down. I don't understand why this should be an issue, but it seems to cause problems.

I've labeled my externals carefully to avoid this problem. Occasionally, it still occurs, no matter that everything is hooked up as before.

I simply follow the above-described procedure to get each drive properly mounted.

More frustrating is when, in the middle of a session, you get that message that "delayed write failed on $x.... and data has been lost (love how MS gives you these absolutely devastating messages that are totally bogus). When you get that message, you can be sure that each external drive in turn will lose its connection. Only solution I've found is to reboot. Generally, each drive will remount without further fuss.

Hope this helps - it's definitely a Windows problem - wish they'd fix it.

Caruso

Yeah, I went through that kind of cycle -- shutting the machine down, rebooting with the ADS case on. Then with it off. Cycling the power on/off with the machine booted. Disconnecting the power cord from the case, waiting ten seconds, reconnecting it. Et cetera. It's just a matter of the planets aligning properly, and a moth fluttering its wings somewhere to get the drive to mount -- and like I said, even then the ADS firmware utilitiy couldn't "find" the drive.

Why anyone would live with this sort of thing... as I've gotten older, my patience for it has diminished greatly.

- jim

I have a MAXTOR, a LACIE external firewire hard disks and my video camera all on the same firewire card - starting the camera almost always causes one or both of the hard disks to fall off line. If I just hit the Power Off button and then On again they re-boot themselves onto the system. Thanks for letting me knw that this is "normal" .....
If Vegas worked on a MAC I'de be there now ..............
//Garo

Well, it's an external case issue most of the time, and not really a Windows thing. At any rate, one of the two links above was from the site "xlr8yourmac" -- I doubt they're wading through Windows problems there :D

- jim