SOT: External FireWire800 speed and Windows 7

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 8/24/2009, 12:59 PM

Hi,

Just wonder if anyone of you (brave and) early adopters of WIN7 x64 have experienced problems with the 1394b interface?

My computer is equipped with an FireWire800 PCIe card from Sunix. (well - few mobo's have the speedier FireWire installed as standard). This card connects to an external MaxtorIII 1,5Tbyte backup drive via the 1394b interface.

In Vista x64 everything was smooth, the average file transfer speed was some great 74MByte/s!!!

Now - in WIN 7 - the speed is a mere crawl at 13..14 MBytes/s. What the h*ll is wrong? Why is it so hard for MS to take care of elementary things in an OS - like transferring data from point A to point B - and efficiently???

What can be done? WIN7 claims it has all1394b drivers up to date.

Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome from some of you PC-gurus :) I tried to Google but did not actually find anything about this...

Christian

Comments

jrazz wrote on 8/24/2009, 1:13 PM

Did you check Sinix's site? More than likely it is up-to-date with the most current driver available but more than likely Sinix has yet to release a driver for Win7. I would email Sinix and see if they have anything in the works.

When I went to 64 bit I tried to install my Bravo II drivers from Primera and they would not work. I contacted Primera and they told me they did not have any available at this time as there was not enough demand for them. That was when Vista came out. I just left it installed on my 32 bit xp system. You may or may not get a similar response.

j razz

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 8/24/2009, 11:39 PM

Hi,

Yes, I did as you suggested and visited Sunix. Was able to find a driver of their own (albeit for Vista x64). Downloaded and installed it but it results in a BSOD at the very moment I try to run the Windows speed thest or SiSoft Sandra speed test.

It seems that lots has changed in the 1394 interface, between Vista and WIN7...

Now I just cross my fingers and hope that this 1,5 year old hardware (the FireWire800 PCIe board) is not going to turn to a piece of electronics junk. Sincerely hope that they update their drivers. Till then I am just CRAWLING using my FireWire800 external drivers. HUH!!!

The manufacturers are oblidged to have support and spare parts for equipment such as washing machines or similar household equipent. When it comes to PC hardware, it seems that any guarantee for service - is gone - at the moment you see their "the tail lights"...

I have been bitten too many times. Bought an expensive Canon All-in-one laser years ago. After 1,5 years of use it became 2000USD worhty of junk, since Canon decided not to support newer versions of Windows (XP). A shuttle mini-pc became junk recently because the manufacturer does not support the 3 year old mobo with bios updates, that would make it possible to use bigger SATA HD's than 200G. I scrapped 3 fairly new Canon scanners because of compatibility reasons when moving from XP to Vista. The list goes on and on...

Christian

ushere wrote on 8/25/2009, 12:15 AM

unfortunately you're experiencing the bleeding edge of the cutting edge ;-)

i gave up buying anything new until it was considered old. by that i mean no-one bother reviewing it any more, (though the reviews were still easy to find on the net).

how much was your card? if it's under $50, well, what's a few missed expresso's? and, you've learnt a lesson reasonably cheaply.

just think about those poor idiots pouring money into serious pro hi8 equipment years ago. (shut-up, i was one of them!)

leslie

btw, share your canon scanner experiences!!! but love win 7

farss wrote on 8/25/2009, 12:46 AM

HP stopped supporting my scanner around Win2K time and just laughed when I asked for drivers etc for XP last year. I just bought VueScan and the problem was solved.

Getting back to the 1394b card, the problem is not by any chance Windoz thinking it's a network interface.

Bob.

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 8/25/2009, 3:20 AM

Unfortunately you're experiencing the bleeding edge of the cutting edge ;-)

Very, very well said Leslie :) I probably paid something sub 50USB for the card, so this does not bankrupt me. However, it pi**es me off a little. I still give them a change until the official release date of Windoz 7... I can live with this for a while.... You learn as long as you live, sometimes its more costly (ProHi8). In this particular case I did not learn anything, I knew from before that these things happen. I took the risk and bleed for a while. So far has WIN7 been a pleasant experience. I have high hopes that this will show up as the best Windows ever. Othervice I wouldn't care, but I appreciate stability and snappiness in an OS...

Thx Bob for your comment. I double-checked - but no. However, the driver from Sunix (for Vista x64) that I tried: it considered the card as a network interface. That might explain the BSOD's that I got. I have now reverted to the driver that came together with WIN7 and have sent a request to the manufacturer for an update. Running, but at 15Mbyte/s... Backups are now scheduled only for the dark hours :(

So beware all WIN7 users, or those of you that that have 1394b installed and are planning an upgrade. The WIN7 compatibility checker that I run in Vista did not complaint about this. It was probably happy that the device works, and ignored that it works at rates SLOWER than USB2.0. And that is --- very slow :(

Christian