Confused about firewire

[AnnieMS]

I like firewire and I'd like to start upgrading to S800 where possible. But I can't find the right articles to read to get a better idea how it works. I understand that it's not integrated on the motherboard and from the articles I read it seems sort of like scsi in that it has its own controllers - well ide's do too. I don't know what to call them, but the scsi's "controllers" do more of their own processor-type work. And firewire seems sort of similar but only sort of.

Do I need to check that the processor and/or mb supports S800? Is there a guide somewhere to check what processor speeds and other system component specs are necessary to get benefit from an S800 upgrade?

[engmod]

What are you going to do with it?

[bonestonne]

what on earth are you talking about?

A FW400 card will run at 400, a FW800 card will run at 800. If you were use a FW400 device with FW800 via an adapter, it would be limited to 400 speeds.

If you get a FW800 card, and put it in your computer and install the drivers, you will have FW800. There's nothing more to it.

[submix8c]

...kind of like the difference between USB1.1 and USB2.0; USB2.0 device in a USB1.1 will "run" slower and USB1.1 device may/will not "run" any faster. The "support" should be built into the Add-On Card itself and is useful only for those devices that support it.

[Tripredacus]

I think the OP is thinking of old SCSI where if you put a SCSI 2 drive on a FAST SCSI 2 controller, you could smoke the drive because the (cheap) cards back then weren't smart enough to know the device couldn't support the write speed of the controller. I think most tech nowadays is a little smarter than back then.

[AnnieMS]

Thanks everyone for reading & replying

I want to run firewire at 800. I know I need to get new pci cards to do so. My new ext hd has S800 and I'm going to have to get a new external optical drive and they had some firewires when I started price checking [or I could get an enclosure w/ firewire + usb] and I'm wondering if I would get the benefits of 800 on my old computers daisy chaining the ext hdd to the ext optical drive.

I found the articles I've read on firewire confusing as to how it interacts/is influenced by/depends on the computer's other hardware - like pci, cpu. The PCI card could only communicate at the highest level of the PCI bus, but I don't know how much communication would be between the devices themselves via cable if I was burning to the optical drive files from the ext hdd. Right now I'm just trying to determine how and to what extent the internal computer hardware affects how firewire PCI & PC cards & devices communicate with each other. Supposedly two computers can share a firewire device, but I don't have desk room at the moment to try that out or brain room either.

My comparison of firewire to scsi is that both daisy chain and I understood that is because to a certain extent their controllers talk to each other whereas USB's talk to the host controller(s) on the mobo and I seem to remember that scsi's were faster because they were less cpu dependent than ide's because of their extra controller or whatever the card was called vs the on disk controller or whatever it's called. [i've never used scsi -$$ - just read about it which isn't the same thing as experience]. I don't know if firewire using a pci card rather than being chipset controlled equates to any significant differences between firewire & usb or if their differences all result from their different architecture.

Back when I configured my first "modern" computer [post win 3.1/98] USB 2 was just coming out. "They" slipped some usb 1.1's into the compuzone computer despite my all usb 2 specs, so I was glad to have my 1394. My next computer was a Sony VAIO that still had usb 1.1 so I was glad to have my 1394 on it. Back in 2002 I had trouble w/ some USB ports so...

Thus far I haven't had any reason to daisy chain my ext hd's, but duh me, I ought to do it and move some files around and see what happens. And if OP is Old Person, you got that right sonny boy/or/young lady. But I never put a SCSI 2 drive on a FAST SCSI 2 controller.

eSata might be what I ought to be looking at but I've just started reading on that. I've only got one computer w/ SATA drives and I'd have to put in an eSATA port. eSATA seems to be having some of the same problems firewire did. USB is just easier for the computer manufacturers/sellers.

[bonestonne]

I'm in the firm belief that this is beyond overthought. I think that's actually an understatement.

Unless the PCI card has IRQ conflicts, it's just a bus used to transfer data back and forth between drives or whatever.

[CoffeeFiend]

eSATA is lots faster than FW 800, it comes on most new motherboards, whereas FW is quickly losing popularity (not that it ever got really "big" in the first place; and daisy-chaining here means a shared bus). eSATA is also cheaper (the controllers, the enclosures and the cables). It seems like the most logical way to use a storage device i.e. its built-in native interface, instead of going through a converter.

Also, keep in mind USB3 is coming. The adapters are already inexpensive (about $35 for a PCI-e card with 2 ports last I checked) and the speeds should be amazing (more than 4x that of FW 800, faster than eSATA too), and being USB you can pretty much assume you'll soon find those on pretty much everything. You can take any old USB device pretty much anywhere and it'll work on basically anything (it's truly ubiquitous), whereas FW...

[AnnieMS]

Thanks Coffefiend,

I started reading about eSata. Things may have changed, but per my reading computers weren't coming out w/ eSata ports either - just USB. And if I could just go out and buy new computers, my youngest wouldn't be from 2005. I may, however, have to come up w/ the $ for a new computer soon, in which case I will insist on an eSata port. Though I don't know if I can afford any eSata drives.

I read that you could easily make an external SATA port by pulling an unused SATA cable forward, but I don't think that makes a true eSata port. Maybe the extra shielding, whatever else are only necessary for the external drive & cable, but I think they might be necessary inside depending on how far you had to run the cable, how tight things were inside and what you went past - more reading. I do have one computer w/ Sata drives & cables. Everything else is Pata. So eSata won't help me much. USB 3 or s800 might with external enclosures depending on if I have PCI-e ports where necessary and what, if anything besides an s800 card, s800 wants.

Being integrated on the mobo may make eSata become popular while firewire was doomed at birth because Apple insisted on a high royalty fee for use just when usb 2 became available. So 1394 didn't' get integrated on pc mobo's. On the other hand, for those of us w/ older computers, not requiring mobo support might have been used as an advantage when s800 became available. Vista made people hold onto their winxp computers. Win 7 may have those that can buying new computers w/ eSata support & USB 3.

I've read some articles about firewire technical problems, but they were over my head so I don't know how they compare w/ USB, eSata and whether firewire's future will be limited by technical or simply economic factors. Others have had bad experiences w/ 1394 [program & computer freezes]. Mine have all been positive. I've seen different numbers than you apparently have for usb 3 max vs eSata vs firewire. I didn't look at it closely since future max isn't my interest at the moment. I'll look more carefully next time I come across comparisons.

Thanks bonestonne,

I understand backward compatibility. I understand that an s800 device requires an s800 pci card to run at s800 and that an s800 device will run at s400 when using a s400 pci card. What I don't understand is buses and if there are requirements beyond the 800 pci card. I thought an s400 or s800 device would have to travel over the pci "bus" to get to the pci card. Will it run the same on the pci protocol of a 2002 computer [a parallel bus] as on pci-e, a serial bus? If I understood buses, I wouldn't have to ask the question. Anyway, I've found a post at MyCE that addresses some of my questions and will help me know what questions to google.

Thanks to all for your input.

[CoffeeFiend]

And if I could just go out and buy new computers, my youngest wouldn't be from 2005. I may, however, have to come up w/ the $ for a new computer soon, in which case I will insist on an eSata port

There's no need to buy a whole new computer for that. You can get a card with SATA + eSATA ports for fairly cheap, such as this one which gives you 4 internal SATA + eSATA (external of course) for $30.

Though I don't know if I can afford any eSata drives

All new drives are SATA (natively). Anything else just adds cost. You can connect the drive directly to the card, no need for an enclosure at all, although you do need to power the drive somehow. So for $30 or so, you can get an enclosure with a power brick, or a eSATA docking station into which you just "drop" your drive.

As for your old stuff... Buying FW800 cards, cables, new enclosures for the old drives, new expensive firewire DVD drive (if you can even find one) and all that, isn't going to be much cheaper even short term. As for the speed boost, it very much depends on the particular enclosure and drive, it might not be all that amazing. And when you look at the long term, where mostly everything will be either USB3 or eSATA, I don't see it becoming any cheaper (old computers will still need new cards for new devices, and new computers will likely need a card as well for the FW drives, etc)

I've recently gotten rid of several FW cards and I don't particularly miss them. Pretty much everybody is ditching it (it's quickly becoming even more of a niche), including Apple themselves.

[Tripredacus]

And if OP is Old Person, you got that right sonny boy/or/young lady. But I never put a SCSI 2 drive on a FAST SCSI 2 controller.

Tee hee, OP = Original Poster.

[jaclaz]

Well, eSATA is nothing but a connector to a SATA bus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#eSATA

The difference is mainly in expected lifetime of insertions (yes the morons engineers that designed SATA original connector had in mind a ridicously LOW number of insertions ) and in additional shielding, NOT only because of possible data corruption on an unshielded cable, BUT also to prevent the cable from EMITTING disturbing signals.

jaclaz

[nmX.Memnoch]

Yes it sometimes "just feeds to an internal SATA port" through a cable. However, for fully compliant eSATA operation you need to make sure the ports/controllers are designed for eSATA compliancy. What I mean by that is they're designed for hot swapping SATA drives. More specifically, SATA drives in fully compliant eSATA enclosures. The next eSATA standard is also going to call for power-over-eSATA so that you don't have to carry around a power brick with your drive. I imagine this will only work for 2.5" drives, but full details on the new spec haven't been release (or I haven't seen them yet anyway).

http://www.sata-io.o...ology/esata.asp

Unfortunately, the SATA specification is a moving target and not all features are required to be supported by the controller. This is why when SATA300 was first introduced you had to figure out if your controller AND drive supported NCQ or not.

As for FW800, I wouldn't bother. Support is spotty at best and not very many devices will support it. Most external hard drive enclosures only support FW400, if they include FW connectivity at all. You also don't want to do FW800 over a PCI bus. I'm not even sure that you can find a FW800 card that's PCI only. They're usually 64-bit PCI, PCI-X or PCI Express. Transferring data to or from two FW800 devices at the same time over the PCI bus will saturate the bus completely. The PCI bus is 133MB/s shared with all PCI devices. A single FW800 connection is 100MB/s max theoretical. It would require 200MB/s (again, theoretical maximum, probably more like 150-170MB/s) to do two simulitaneous FW800 transfers.

Edited April 7, 2010 by nmX.Memnoch