[Eug Wanker]

My iMac is in for service, so I'm stuck with using my iBook with external everything.

Have you guys tried burning from a Firewire hard drive to a Firewire DVD burner? I just tried this and the burn stalled. Toast 7 hung. Actually it was still working, or so it seemed, but the burn wasn't progressing... It ran for something like 20 seconds and then just stalled. The burn was at 4X.

Is it too much to ask to have a Firewire burner burn from a Firewire hard drive connected through the same hub? (My iBook has only 1 Firewire port.)

So, I unplugged the Firewire cable from the hard drive and plugged it in via USB 2 (and kept the burner on Firewire), and after a restart of the burn, now it seems to be progressing OK.

Do you think this is a limitation of Firewire? Or is this a hardware incompatibility? My guess is the former.

Hardware:
Bytecc USB2/Firewire enclosure with Seagate 400 GB HD.
NewMotion Firewire enclosure with Pioneer 110D (flashed with OEM Buffalo firmware).
Maxell 8X DVD-R media
Firewire Hubzilla

[macanon]

I have to wonder if there is some sort of thru-put issue with the hub? I've had a hard drive and a CD burner daisy chained and it worked ok (IIRC)

[mduell]

The bandwidth you're talking about is so low (~4.8Mbps) I doubt it's a Firewire limitation unless one of the FW chipsets involved is absolutely asstastic.

[asxless]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

My iMac is in for service, so I'm stuck with using my iBook with external everything.

Have you guys tried burning from a Firewire hard drive to a Firewire DVD burner? I just tried this and the burn stalled. Toast 7 hung. Actually it was still working, or so it seemed, but the burn wasn't progressing... It ran for something like 20 seconds and then just stalled. The burn was at 4X.

Is it too much to ask to have a Firewire burner burn from a Firewire hard drive connected through the same hub? (My iBook has only 1 Firewire port.)...

When you burn like this, Toast has to find and copy all the files on the Firewire HD and then transfer them to the Firewire DVD burner over the same physical wire/ interface. AFAIK the success depends on the size of the files being transfered - lots of small files ( or fragmented large ones) -> lots of time spent on HD seeking -> likely failure to keep up with the burn.

I've had the same problem. The way I got around it was to either...
1 - Use OSX 10.3.x 's built in DVD burning scheme which automatically builds a temporary image on the internal HD before burning it to DVD
or
2 - Force 10.4.x to build a temporary disk image by option dragging items into the burn folder.
or
3- Manually build a temporary disk image using Toast (or Disk Utility) and then burn that image to DVD.

Note: All three work-arounds eliminate the time spent seeking for data on the FireWire HD and free up the FireWire interface for only transferring the data to be burnt to the DVD.

-- asxless in iLand

[tooki]

I've burned from a FW HD to a FW CD burner many times. Most likely, a picky FW controller is not liking something (kinda how iSight cameras often cause problems when daisy-chained).

That said, what you did of having one drive on USB is probably ideal.

tooki

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by asxless

When you burn like this, Toast has to find and copy all the files on the Firewire HD and then transfer them to the Firewire DVD burner over the same physical wire/ interface. AFAIK the success depends on the size of the files being transfered - lots of small files ( or fragmented large ones) -> lots of time spent on HD seeking -> likely failure to keep up with the burn.

I've had the same problem. The way I got around it was to either...
1 - Use OSX 10.3.x 's built in DVD burning scheme which automatically builds a temporary image on the internal HD before burning it to DVD
or
2 - Force 10.4.x to build a temporary disk image by option dragging items into the burn folder.
or
3- Manually build a temporary disk image using Toast (or Disk Utility) and then burn that image to DVD.

Note: All three work-arounds eliminate the time spent seeking for data on the FireWire HD and free up the FireWire interface for only transferring the data to be burnt to the DVD.

It was already a disk image... but on the Firewire hard drive.

Originally Posted by mduell

The bandwidth you're talking about is so low (~4.8Mbps)

? No it isn't.

4X DVD is 44 Mbps (5.3 MB/s).

I doubt it's a Firewire limitation unless one of the FW chipsets involved is absolutely asstastic.

The Firewire chipset for the hard drive is fast. Dunno about the optical drive.

Anyways, I tried copying data from one FW hard drive to another (in the same sort of setup, with both drives on one hub), and was getting ridiculously low speeds: Something like 2.5 MB/s (20 Mbps). I guess that explains my DVD burning problems.

Originally Posted by tooki

I've burned from a FW HD to a FW CD burner many times. Most likely, a picky FW controller is not liking something (kinda how iSight cameras often cause problems when daisy-chained).

That said, what you did of having one drive on USB is probably ideal.

Yeah, it may be an incompatibility after all. Now that I think of it, I did have one problem with that optical drive's enclosure way back. DVDs only played properly if it was plugged into a specific Firewire port on the iMac. They would stutter if the enclosure was plugged into the other Firewire port.

Maybe I'll swap the enclosure and see what happens with another attempt at a Firewire HD to Firewire optical burn, but my other enclosure is fuglier.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

4X DVD is 44 Mbps (5.3 MB/s).

The Firewire chipset for the hard drive is fast. Dunno about the optical drive.

Anyways, I tried copying data from one FW hard drive to another (in the same sort of setup, with both drives on one hub), and was getting ridiculously low speeds: Something like 2.5 MB/s (20 Mbps). I guess that explains my DVD burning problems.

I was a bit liberal with the rounding (1.2MBps per X instead of 1.321), but it's still only about 5MBps. That's about a tenth of the bandwidth available for FW400 (assuming all your FW devices support S400).

edit: Oh now I see, I botched the capitalization in my previous post.

Can you try chaining drives instead of using the hub? Could be the chipset in your hub or the chipset in your iBook.

[OreoCookie]

I have done that many times and it has always worked fine for me. I know this is kind of a long shot, but maybe one of the cables is defective?

Any 3.5" harddrive can easily sustain 5+ MB/s, even if you do some other things with the drive, so that shouldn't be the problem.

[k squared]

Is it the way the drives are daisy chained? I have an external HD connected to external DVD-RW and haven't had a problem.

Is there a problem with the location of the cache file Toast needs to create?

[Eug Wanker]

Hmmm... I tried it daisy chained sans the hub, and it worked fine. I guess one of the drives doesn't like Hubzilla for some reason.