I would really like some Firewire info <<<< please help me >>>>>>

[garebo]

I do understand that hard drives come in different speeds, 5400 and 7200, even 10,000. I also understand about seek times. for hard drives that is is the 8 to 10 sec area.
My lack of knowledge comes in the firewire area. I know that firewire can be and generally is faster than usb, which, in turn, is faster than the flavors of ide,33,66,100. But what about the firewire drives that are available?. What about the firewireboxes that accept ide drives? doesnt putting an ide drive in a firewire boxc relegate one back to the ide speed?
And the firewire drives that are available, are they true firewire or are they just the same, ide drives put in a box with firewire cabling? wouldnt that create the ide bottleneck as far as access times and speed?

I am truly confused! I was trying to negotiate with a respected AT member and feel like an idiot (that's ok, you look like one too!!) (ok, who said that????) I am so bad I couldnt resist do it to myself, yuk yuk. anyway, how can I talk to this guy about what I really dont know and understand. I got the distinct impression he even knew less than me but that's his problem, yuk yuk.

Seriously, can I get some help and info here? Please dont point me to a Tom's hardware page that will take 2 hrs to read. I am too busy spending my money here to give that 2 hrs to learn!!

A brief tutorial that will help me put a value on what is offered for sale would be the most helpful to me. When I want to dig into how it works, and I will, I will put aside the hour or two.

I know you people will come through for me. You always have!!! I, in turn, contribute what I can in my own ways.

Thanks

Gary



And God bless America
I will never forget what happened on that day and I am very proud of the way the American people are handling this situation! Nothing but pure class in my opinion!! I am proud to support America, proud to call you brother, and hope all Canadians either feel the same or keep their mouth shut, either one will do!!

 

[LethalWolfe]

Current FireWire drives spin at 7200RPM. It basically gives you the ability to have a very portable, hot-swable, external IDE drive. You can also "daisy chain" the FireWire drives so you can have, let's say, 5 HDDs connected to a single FireWire port (kinda like SCSI).


Lethal

 

[Soccerman]

ok I'm nitpicking here..

I do understand that hard drives come in different speeds, 5400 and 7200, even 10,000. I also understand about seek times. for hard drives that is is the 8 to 10 sec area.

just mentioning that 5400 RPM (revolutions per second) means nothing without the RPM behind it. further, drives access times are not in SECONDS but in milliseconds (thousandths of a second).

I know that firewire can be and generally is faster than usb, which, in turn, is faster than the flavors of ide,33,66,100

actually, usb is not faster than ANY of the ATA specifications. it's limited to 12 megabits a second, which is close to 1.5 megabytes a second. all current new hard drives can exceed that. I think most current hard drives can max out the ATA33 interface too.

Firewire runs at 400 megabits per second, which gives us about 50 megabytes per second. in other words, new IDE drives today are just barely capable of filling up a firewire pipeline.

finally, ATA33 means the interface has a maximum theoretical limit of 33 megabytes per second, ATA66 bumps that up to 66 megabytes per second, and ATA100 goes to 100 megabytes per second. Firewire is theoretically quicker than ATA33, but not ATA66. USB 1.0 is down in the dumps when it comes to using it for hard drives.

And the firewire drives that are available, are they true firewire or are they just the same, ide drives put in a box with firewire cabling

as for what exactly are firewire drives, I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if most were simply ide drives with a firewire converter. performance degradation is not due to the IDE interface, but the fact that a conversion has to take place.

and just some background info on firewire.. the standard is based on the IEEE1394 protocol/standard. firewire is the name given to that standard by Macintosh (so basically, Sony is not allowed to name their IEEE1394 ports as Firewire ports. it's silly, but that's the way it is.

the IEEE1394 standard is somewhat comparable to IEEE 802.3 (which is your typical Ethernet standard). it is peer to peer, meaning it isn't your computer controlling the pipeline. in fact, your computer is simply asking for use of the bus when it wants to talk to something else on the bus (like a hard drive).

 

[LintMan]

garebo - why are you looking at firewire hard disks? Do you need the hot-swappability or portability? If you don't, why not stick with a much cheaper IDE disk? The performance most likely won't be any different. From what I see on Pricewatch, it looks like many FireWire disks are just the IDE equivalent but with the firewire interface.

 

[garebo]

thanks, I meant to put milliseconds and forgot.

I now know a heck of a lot more than I did thanks to you!!!

I believe that the boxes that in which you put yourown hard driveand the ones thatseem to be a single unit are the same, as long as the hard drive chosen has a speed of 5400 rpm's, and all other things being equal. There may be some difference in the cabling and the setup that may allow one unit to perform better than another, maybe even pointing out that there is usb 1.0 and usb 2.0. So there may be some firewire setup that may vary somewhat.

any help with that info, as far as any variance?

 

[garebo]

Lintman, I like to experience and experiment a bit. Plus, I have a usb box that I use for backup and I am glad I have that.

Also, if one is to do certain multimedia stuff then one needs a firewire card, might as well put it to good use and hook up a hard drive to it!

Cant take your money to the grave can ya, yuk yuk yuk!!

On the other hand, I am looking for advice and you have also given me good advice. I am beginning to belleve that there is really no compelling reason to go with firewire.

Thanks to both of you guys for the info and advice!!!!!!!

 

[garebo]

Lintman, I came up with another reason.

If I wanted another drive setup other than the standard ide then it might be a better idea to go to firewire over say usb.Usb does not give a person hot-swappability, either that or my usb hard drive is set up wrong!! So firewire, if truly hot-swappable, might be a good idea for some.
Again, the cost for just the hot-swappability is prolly not justifiable. But then again, we can buy a camaro or corvette that is more airplane than car or just buy a ford escort and sometimes we buy the vette!!! Camaro Z28 in my case!!!!! The babe magnet!!!!!!!!! Yayusssssssss!!!

 

[LintMan]

Well, most USB devices should be hot-swappable, but maybe USB hard disks have issues that make that difficult. If so, Firewire HD's might also have the same issues, so I'd check first to make sure before I bought one.

If you like to experience/experiment, you might want to consider getting a SCSI setup. It can be pricey, but it also offers higher performance hard disks. For example, you can buy 10K RPM and even 15K RPM SCSI hard disks, while the best IDE ones are 7200 RPM right now.

 

[garebo]

As for the scsi, yes, I was thinking of that. Friend of mine gave me 4 x 2gig scsi drives. Gotta get a controller for it. Got any suggestions there? Bear in mind that I know nothing about scsi except they are faster than ide!!

As for the usb and the hot-swapability thing. If I turn my usb box off and then on, all the files will have gibberish names on them. I always have to make sure my usb drive box, which has an ide drive in it) is on first, before I boot up the computer or else all my files will have the gibberish names to them. Unless of course I dont have it set up right but I think I do!!

 

[Pariah]

"Current FireWire drives spin at 7200RPM."

Probably 90% of firewire drives are standard 5400RPM IDE drives in a firewire box. The rest are a combination of 7200RPM IDE and laptop IDE drives.

Firewire drives are hotswappable. The cost of them is not that much if you make your own. You can buy an enclosure for about $100 in addition to any IDE drive of your choice.

 

[garebo]

matter of fact you can get them atone websitefor only $60 something now!!

 

[garebo]

there is a fella here has one for $80.

There seems to be some difference in some of the boxes.

Some can take a 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 drive and some only 3 1/2. I dont think the 3 1/2 is a big limitation, is it? that includes most drives, right?

 

[majewski9]

The 3.5 inch enclosure is for HD's the 5.25 is for CDROMS and such most likely. Buy the 3.5 for HDS. A USB external drive is worthless!

 

[Pariah]

Be careful when shopping for enclosures. I would avoid the cheapest ones you can find. Older generation enclosures killed drive performance due to bad ide-firewire adapters. Granite Digital is highly recommended but they cost a pretty penny.