[Eug]

Many Macs now only come with just one Firewire 800 port. I actually have a Firewire 800 device that benefits from the speed now and I don't want to be stuck with Firewire 400 only. With my current Mac I have one FW 800 port which I use with my FW 800 device, and then split the one FW 400 port to my other FW devices. With the new 27" iMac that's coming, that's no longer an option.

Anyone know of a good source for relatively inexpensive Firewire 800 hubs? They seem to be quite rare, and the very few out there seem to be 3 digit prices, or else some off-brand that I have never heard of.

eg. Synchrotech and Point Grey

Has anyone ever used either of these?

It's almost as cheap to just buy an external hard drive with 2 FW 800 + 1 FW 400 ports built in. How loud is that OWC drive?

[indigoimac]

FireRepeater 800™ 1394b (Firewire 800) 3 port repeater/hub

It the same as your first link but a few $ cheaper from the manufacturer, otherwise daisy chaining is the next choice and that series of drives is pretty quiet and the enclosures are top quality.

[Eug]

Hmmm... That Elite-AL Pro hard drive is looking better. Anyone ever disassemble one?

[CharlesS]

The Elite-AL hard drive is just an internal hard drive (probably either Seagate or WD) inside an Elite-AL case. Since the Elite-AL case is designed to be assembled yourself, that means it’ll be very easy.

I’d still get the Elite-AL case separately, though. Then, you can know exactly what drive you’re putting in it, you can specifically get a drive that’s known to be quiet if you like (I guess those new WD Green drives are supposed to be pretty nice that way), and, you’ll get some free tools, since the Elite-AL comes with a TORX screwdriver in the box, which you’ll need to open it, and which I doubt would come with the pre-built hard drive (if you’ve already got a TORX, of course, this won’t be an issue). Also, this way you can get the full warranty on the internal drive if you get one with a 3 or 5 year warranty.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...g/MEFW924AL1K/

[Simon]

I'll second both of Charles' suggestions.

Never buy a complete external drive. Get the case you want and the disk you want separately. That way you get exactly what you want, usually for less, and you make no compromise.

Also, the WD Green drives are indeed a good suggestion when it comes to getting a very quiet setup. I bought 1TB Green for TM. It's no speed daemon, but it is very quiet, makes no trouble, and was very inexpensive. I was so satisfied I just bought a second one for a similar purpose.

[Eug]

Actually, I am now also considering getting the 5.25" enclosure, and sticking a Blu-ray burner in it. With those I usually deactivate the fan (if there is a fan), which makes the drive 100% silent when not in use. There's usually no real need for a fan for a desktop optical drive. That way there is absolutely no issue keeping it on 24/7 in terms of noise, to use as a FW 800 hub.

BTW, because of the terrible US dollar, it actually is cheaper for me to get the OWC 1.5 TB drive than it is for me to get the enclosure separately and buy the drive here.

[Eug]

Changed my mind. I think I'm gonna get this from Newegg.ca instead, since they have much better shipping rates:

Rosewill RX81-MP-SC- SLV 3.5" SATA to USB & 1394 a/b & eSATA External Enclosure (Silver)




According to one user there the drive gets spun down when not in use for a period of time on his MacBook Pro. With that and the fact it has no fan, and has 2 FW 800 and 1 FW 400, it's perfect for use as a hub.

I'd order the Samsung low power drive to go with it:

SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

This is only a 5400 rpm drive, but it's uber quiet and very low power usage.

I'll order this soon if there are no negative comments about it from you guys. I'll get the BR drive later. It'd be nice if they were under $200 locally.

P.S. For a basic 3-port FW 800 hub (without the power adapter), it's over $100 shipped here. Ripoff.

[Simon]

This $110 WD Green is a lot cheaper and certainly better than the Samsung. The Seagate LP is a tad cheaper than the Samsung and will be faster than both.

Case looks good.

[Eug]

Hmm... Interesting. I had forgotten about these 5900 rpm Seagate LP drives. Thx.

However, it doesn't really get good reviews there. I don't know if it's just the internet effect for biased opinions, but some people are trying to claim it has a higher failure rate.

[reader50]

I picked up several of those Samsungs for a time machine RAID. They are $100 each if you buy more than one - the best price I've seen on 1.5 drives. You can hear one audible click when they power up, but they are silent after that.

WD greens have a reputation for being troublesome in RAID use. Not an issue here, but it could become one if you swap drives around later.

[Spheric Harlot]

Just for the record:

If you're looking for a FW 800 hub that you want to do actual *work* with, i.e. need to have work reliably and at full speeds, then I hear recommendations for Kramer FW 800 hubs from audio and video pros.

Under $100 Kramer VS-30FW 3-port FireWire 800 Hub - AValive.com - 1-866-93PRO-AV (937-7628)

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Just for the record:

If you're looking for a FW 800 hub that you want to do actual *work* with, i.e. need to have work reliably and at full speeds, then I hear recommendations for Kramer FW 800 hubs from audio and video pros.

Under $100 Kramer VS-30FW 3-port FireWire 800 Hub - AValive.com - 1-866-93PRO-AV (937-7628)

Hmmm... Interesting. That place doesn't seem to ship to Canada, but they have it also at BHPhoto. It's listed at $96 on their website, but if you inquire it's only $80, and it includes the power adapter. Shipping is a bit more expensive, but the more interesting part is they sell Crucial memory for less than Crucial, so I'd save a bit there and wouldn't have to pay extra shipping to get the memory from Crucial.

Hmmm...

P.S. I could always get the hard drive and or Blu-ray drive later, since I don't absolutely need it today.

P.P.S. Ironically, getting the hub plus memory from BHPhoto costs roughly the same as getting the memory from Apple.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Changed my mind. I think I'm gonna get this from Newegg.ca instead, since they have much better shipping rates:

Rosewill RX81-MP-SC- SLV 3.5" SATA to USB & 1394 a/b & eSATA External Enclosure (Silver)

Looks like a solid buy — aluminum case, Oxford chipset for the FireWire side. Can’t go wrong with that.

I’d get either a Seagate or a WD Green drive over a Samsung, though.

[Eug]

Stupid question...

Time machine works with partitions right? For a 1.5 TB drive, I'm thinking 1.25 TB for Time Machine and 0.25 TB for a scratch disk.

[Simon]

Sure. TM doesn't care about partitioning.

[reader50]

You don't really have to partition for Time Machine - just leave it's folder tree alone. There is though the logical problem that Time Machine can't back up anything on the same drive.

You could set it to do so, but since it's on the same drive, it is not a backup.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by reader50 

You don't really have to partition for Time Machine - just leave it's folder tree alone. There is though the logical problem that Time Machine can't back up anything on the same drive.

You could set it to do so, but since it's on the same drive, it is not a backup.

I just wanted to have a temporary scratch disk.

Ideally I'd have yet another drive for the scratch disk, I suppose. Actually, now that I look into it, some of the scratch disks may be more important to have backed up than I originally thought.

[CharlesS]

Go ahead and partition it. It won’t hurt anything. I have three partitions on my Time Machine drive, and it works fine.

[Eug]

Thx everyone...

So, I ordered the Kramer 3-port FW 800 hub from B&H. Just email them to get the $80 price (instead of $96).

I also picked up 4 GB of Crucial memory for $85. Crucial's 2 x 2 GB CT2KIT25664BC1067 (which both Crucial and B&H sell) is the same thing as their Apple specific CT1115264. DDR3 8500 1066 MHz CL7 204-pin SO-DIMMs. Crucial sells it for $94.

As for the drive, I got a pre-assembled refurb Seagate 1.5 TB FreeAgent Desk for Mac for $125. It doesn't have eSATA or FW400, but it at least has 2 x FW800 + USB 2 so for $125 that's fine by me. Hopefully it doesn't suck.

[CharlesS]

Why?! You’ll never be able to get that drive open to replace the internal without a huge hassle.

[Eug]

Cuz it costs the same as a new bare 1.5 TB drive anyway.

[Simon]

Hmm, I would have still gotten the drive and case separately. Hopefully you'll never want to get the drive out of there or use the case otherwise.

[Eug]

Well, I figure if I do eventually need a new external drive, I'll just get a new case and drive then. It didn't make sense to me to pay well over $200 to get a drive and case when I could get the combination with 2 FW800 ports for just a few bux more than the bare drive itself.

BTW, while I have swapped out drives in my FW400 external cases, I've run into a few problems. Some of the older FW400 cases don't support large drives. Mine range from 128 GB to 400 GB, all IDE. In fact, my FW400 enclosure is currently sitting empty, because I didn't think there was much point in getting another 320-400 IDE drive for $70. I was a little worried because the FW800 SATA cases I looked at supported drive sizes up to 2 TB. I wasn't 100% sure if that 2 TB limit due to existing drive sizes, or if it was because a chipset limitation, but on my FW400 drives, it's definitely a chipset limitation. Furthermore, IDE seems to have maxed out at 500 GB anyway. Then the tech switched to SATA. So, if 2 TB is a supposed limit, 1.5 TB is close enough. I wouldn't have a strong urge to go from 1.5 TB to 2.0 TB. At that point I'd just keep the 1.5 TB drive and get a new enclosure for yet another drive. And finally, none of the enclosures work as hubs when the enclosure is turned off.

There are two worries though:

1) The Seagate is faster, being 7200 rpm, so I am slightly worried about noise. I already have another FW Seagate FreeAgent drive though, and it is fairly quiet. It's not 100% silent, but is close to it. (I don't hear if I put it behind my iMac, so I do that.) It must have acoustic management already active. Going with my own choice of internal low power 5400/5900 rpm drive would have ensured silence though.

2) It has no off button. If I'm going to use it as a scratch disk or a Time Machine disk, then that doesn't matter much to me since I'd have it on all the time anyway. However, if I am going to use it as a secondary backup drive, then it would matter. I always turn off my secondary backup drives.

Some may argue that getting a $125 external drive with 2 FW800 ports plus a $80 3-port FW800 hub isn't that much different from getting an internal $110 drive plus enclosure with $86 that has 2 FW800 ports and 1 FW400 port, and they may be right. However, I do like the flexibility having an always-on hub provides, and Spheric Harlot's mention that these FW800 hubs are very well respected influenced me too. These Kramer FW800 hubs seem very popular with the pro video crowd. In fact, they can be rackmounted in batches of three.

All that said, I would not be surprised to see me buying another big drive with SATA FW800 case in the new year.

[Eug]

Well, that's lame...

I got my FW800 hub and my Seagate 1.5 TB FW800 drive and plugged everything in. Those two worked beautifully, and worked perfectly with my FW800 Compact Flash reader too. The hub has one interesting feature with the AC plug. There is a screw that you can tighten that locks the plug into the hub, so it won't pull out inadvertently.

Then I plugged in my FW400 region free DVD drive. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. WTF?!?! Tried it without the Seagate attached. Zilch. Tried it without the FW800 CF reader. Zilch. Tried it without the hub. Zilch too.

It turns out there's no conflict with any of the above, but Snow Leopard itself is the culprit. If I boot my MacBook Pro into 10.5, the FW400 drive works perfectly. If I boot the same machine into Snow Leopard, that FW400 drive stops working. Dammit.

[reader50]

Report the bug to Apple.

[CharlesS]

Well, if that drive did work, it would make all that work you did finding and getting a FW800 hub a complete waste of time, since it would slow the entire bus down to FW400 speeds.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by reader50 

Report the bug to Apple.

Done.

I could just get a USB 2.0 enclosure for it, and swap out the optical drive. Will USB 2.0 limit the speed of a 16X DVD drive? Not that I really care that much, since I usually burn at 8X anyway, and my main reason for keeping it is for alternate region discs and burning DVD+R with the -ROM flag.

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Well, if that drive did work, it would make all that work you did finding and getting a FW800 hub a complete waste of time, since it would slow the entire bus down to FW400 speeds.

I don't believe that is correct:

Directory size: 9418.075 Mbytes (where 1 MB = 1 million bytes) = 75344.6 Mbits

Transfer to FW 800 1.50 TB drive: 218.3 seconds (345.1 Mbps)
Transfer to FW 400 0.75 TB drive: 272.4 seconds (276.6 Mbps)
Transfer to FW 800 1.50 TB drive (direct, nothing else connected): 219.6 seconds (343.1 Mbps)

345.1 Mbps (43.1 MB/s) over FW800 is less than FW400's theoretical max, but faster than I've ever gotten before with FW400. I suspect the bottleneck here is my MacBook Pro's slow 2.5" 160 GB hard drive, since I get the same speed direct through FW800, without anything else connected. I will try again when I get my iMac.

BTW, the new 1.5 TB Seagate Desktop for Mac drive does hum slightly when active, but that hum is reduced significantly if I just put a pad under it. It seems my desk magnifies the vibrations associated with the spinning disk. It does spin down though, and obviously it's completely silent after it has spun down.

[Eug]

Snow Leopard Kills FireWire

Apple - Support - Discussions - Firewire issues after Snow Leopard... ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - No Firewire after install Snow Leopard ...

The problem lies with the extension

IOFirewireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext

If you replace it with the one from 10.5 your Firewire should work properly. One caveat, you MUST repair permissions BEFORE restarting or risk not having the replacement extensions recognized. Even if you repair permissions after restarting the replacement extension may not be recognized.

Hmm... Seems like an interesting solution, but I don't like running non-standard hacks. Instead I'm just hoping Apple corrects it in the 10.6.2 or 10.6.3 update.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Well, if that drive did work, it would make all that work you did finding and getting a FW800 hub a complete waste of time, since it would slow the entire bus down to FW400 speeds.

I thought this is only true if you're daisy-chaining through a FW400 device.

Don't FireWire chips independently agree on a transfer speed and then stick to that, regardless of devices hooked up? That's the biggest advantage over USB!

[CharlesS]

Well, that’s what I’d always understood — that FireWire 800 used the newer beta mode encoding which was incompatible with FW400, so if you connected a FW400 device, everything would have to switch to alpha mode, and thus FW400 speeds. However, a Google search is now turning up information both for and against this, so now I’m not sure which is right anymore.

[Spheric Harlot]

From what I gathered, the big advantage to Firewire is that the controllers on the devices themselves decide on the protocolling, completely independently of the other devices on the chain.

I'll check with our techs on Monday, though.

[CharlesS]

Does that apply to alpha/beta mode, though? I always thought that applied to speeds within the same encoding — a bus running in alpha mode can support devices running at 100, 200, and/or 400 Mbps without issues, for example, but can a bus run alpha and beta mode simultaneously? That’s the question.

[Spheric Harlot]

The speed does not appear to be an issue, as for beta mode vs. legacy mode, there is also a "bilingual" mode:
First Glimpse Article - Keep The Home Fire Burning

If you have only FireWire 800 devices connected, the devices will operate in beta mode, at the new specification's higher speeds. In legacy mode, a group of FireWire 400 devices will still operate (at the same speed as they did before), even on an 800 bus. Finally, bilingual mode permits a mixed environment of FireWire 400 and 800 devices, while ensuring that each runs at its optimal speed.

and http://itcert.ccsn.net/PDF/FireWire....l%20mode%22%22

The concept of beta clouds allows FireWire to keep all devices on the bus to operating at their maximum speeds. Devices are cluster together on a logical level in a cloud. The cloud operates as a single block at 800 Mb/sec. The borders of these clouds are where legacy devices are connected, operating normally. Each device operates at its highest speed.

Under Windows, things get excruciatingly stupid as usual:
RME Tech Info - FireWire 800 under Windows XP SP2

FireWire 800 under Windows XP SP2

Windows XP SP1 did not support FireWire800 (1394b). Nevertheless, it worked, although the full performance of FireWire 800 wasn't achieved in some cases. With the release of Service Pack 2, Microsoft decided to no longer 'ignore' FireWire 800, but to treat it correctly according to the current OHCI specifications (Open Host Controller Interface). For Microsoft, at this time 'correctly' means switching to the slowest transfer mode S100, equalling 100 Mbit per second, for reasons of safety and compatibility.

Microsoft quotes unclear OHCI specifications as the reason for this slow down. Indeed OHCI does not clearly define 1394b. Current FireWire 800 chips send a 2-bit speed code of 0x3 (instead of 0x2 = S400) in the Self-ID-Packet 0. But OHCI only knows this code as 'reserved'. At a second glance, however, it becomes obvious that Microsoft have simply not looked closely enough, because there are additional Self-ID-Packets being sent. Self-ID-packet 8 correctly specifies the speed with the three-bit code 0x3 = S800. Packet 8 had been already defined in the '1394a supplement', and is therefore not an innovation of FireWire 800.

Microsoft's proceeding is thus at least controversial. In any case, it's a prime example of a somewhat unworldly bureaucratic-mindedness. Since there are no devices that only support S100, the need to throttle the bus speed does not actually exist. At least we do not know of any such devices, and as it seems Microsoft did not make this change because of actual complaints about incompatibilities. One is simply left wondering...

FWIW, RME is one of the biggest manufacturers of studio audio interfaces.

[Simon]

Didn't some Macs drop speed on the FW800 port if FW400 devices were connected to the FW400 port though?

[Spheric Harlot]

Apparently, there were some devices - notably camcorders - that would slow down the bus if connected.

I haven't been able to find concrete info, but it seems that this may have been due to a bug in OS X's Firewire implementation.

[CharlesS]

Jeez, no wonder FireWire 800 never seems to be used in the Windows world.

Thanks for the info, Spheric.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Apple - Support - Discussions - No Firewire after install Snow Leopard ...

The problem lies with the extension

IOFirewireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext

If you replace it with the one from 10.5 your Firewire should work properly. One caveat, you MUST repair permissions BEFORE restarting or risk not having the replacement extensions recognized. Even if you repair permissions after restarting the replacement extension may not be recognized.

Hmm... Seems like an interesting solution, but I don't like running non-standard hacks. Instead I'm just hoping Apple corrects it in the 10.6.2 or 10.6.3 update.

The kernel extension swap does indeed fix the issue. The Firewire optical drive is connected --> Belkin Firewire 400 hub --> Kramer FW800 hub --> MacBook Pro.

[Eug]

I reinstalled the 10.6 kext. My drive disappeared again.

BTW, this external FW drive issue is already in Apple's Bug Reporter database, as bug #7201113.

[Eug]

On my quad iMac:

Seagate 1.5 TB FW800 drive:

USB 2.0: 36 MB/s (34 MiB/s), 286 Mbps
FW400: 40 MB/s (38 MiB/s), 320 Mbps
FW800: 86 MB/s (82 MiB/s), 688 Mbps

SanDisk FireWire Extreme CF reader and Transcend 600X CompactFlash:

FW400: 39 MB/s (37 MiB/s), 310 Mbps
FW800: 70 MB/s (66 MiB/s), 556 Mbps