Firewire and ethernet questions

[vetteguy]

I have a couple of them...

First, is there any Firewire to ethernet adapter currently available? A google search yielded only 6 results, and one was a white-paper that didn't mention anything about projected availability.

Secondly, as you know there are external USB, USB2.0 and Firewire hard drive enclosures. Are there any that have an ethernet connection? Kind of like a NAS device but reasonably priced and which would allow you to use your own drives.

I know these may seem like silly questions, but there is method to my madness. Thanks!

 

[Lord Evermore]

Firewire can be natively used for networking, but I don't know if there are devices to allow an Ethernet network to be mixed with firewire (other than using a computer with a firewire port and an Ethernet port as a gateway). Firewire devices are relatively expensive compared to USB1.1, which is most likely why there aren't any firewire to ethernet adapters (USB being much more common also means there's a very very small market for firewire to ethernet adapters). Now that USB2.0 is available and capable of actually doing 100Mbps network speeds, there's even less likelihood of a firewire adapter becoming common.

It's unlikely you'll find a cheap enclosure to connect a hard drive to a network, due to the requirement that the enclosure would have to integrate some sort of OS to allow the reading of the hard drive format, and send all the drive commands, and also interface with the network, plus the cost of a network controller integrated. You basically can't do it with anything less than an actual mini-PC, due to the networking requirements. There's no way to make a cheap IDE to Ethernet adapter, since "Ethernet" requires software interfacing, whereas firewire or USB to IDE is just a signal adaptation.

However, you could easily make your own enclosure using a mini-ITX motherboard and a very slow processor, very little memory needed, and you could make it any shape and size you wanted with your own design, or use an available mini-case.

 

[thorin]

So basically you want to get a Ethernet enclosure because you think it'll be cheaper then a Firewire encolsure and then throw it on a Firewire connection anyway? (Keep in mind Ethernet is 100Mbit while FW is 480Mbit). I don't think there are any Ethernet non-NAS/SAN solutoins out there. Quantum or someone makes a fairly cheap NAS device called Snap or SnapOn or something like that......

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
It's unlikely you'll find a cheap enclosure to connect a hard drive to a network, due to the requirement that the enclosure would have to integrate some sort of OS to allow the reading of the hard drive format, and send all the drive commands, and also interface with the network, plus the cost of a network controller integrated. You basically can't do it with anything less than an actual mini-PC, due to the networking requirements. There's no way to make a cheap IDE to Ethernet adapter, since "Ethernet" requires software interfacing, whereas firewire or USB to IDE is just a signal adaptation.

However, you could easily make your own enclosure using a mini-ITX motherboard and a very slow processor, very little memory needed, and you could make it any shape and size you wanted with your own design, or use an available mini-case.

Further to Lord Evermore's well thought out points, you could slap a small Firewire card into the miniITX system if there's any needs or use a SBAudigy for it's 1394 connection. Or if the point is networking then obviously onboard Ethernet will suffice.

It'd be alot easier for us to come up with something if we knew your final goal (instead of making us guess).

Thorin

 

[vetteguy]

Well it looks like someone is developing a firewire to ethernet adapter, whether it will be released I don't know.

I kind of figured I would have to go with something like a small PC, I was just looking into options. Basically the place I work for has no money to spend but has major storage issues...I wanted to find out if there was some way to convert one of those USB or Firewire external drives to be used on the network without much cost or effort involved. I might look into an older Shuttle SFF box and stuffing a couple of big IDE drives into it.