IEEE 1394b aka Firewire 800

[Doug A.]

I'm running Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 and all
the latest security and driver updates on an ASUS P5AD2
Premium motherboard, 3.6GB processor, with 2GB of DDR2
unbuffered memory.
I recently purchased a quad-hard drive enclosure
that allows me to daisy-chain four-parallel ATA 250GB
hard drives via 1394b, each drive has its own bridge.
The controller is a 32-bit PCI card with two 1394b ports
and one 1394a port.
The first problem I'm having is with data transfer
speeds which barely surpass the old USB 1.0 standard
transfer rates. I thought that 1394b should approach
800mb/sec and be faster than even USB 2.0 transfer speeds
of 480mb/sec, but my benchmarks tell me differently.
What am I doing wrong?
The second problem I'm having may or may not be
hardware related. Windows "forgets" partitioning
information routinely on these drives and often gives me
a delayed-write failed error. Each drive is formatted as
a 250GB NTFS partition - it makes no difference whether
they are formatted as a primary or an extended volume or
if I break each drive into smaller partitions. I'm out
of luck formatting them as 40GB partitions (FAT32 limit)
because of the shear number of "drives" created. At
least the "forgetting" problems goes away but the slow
transfer speeds remain. I'd appreciate a solution to
this problem as well. Thank you in advance.

 

[Alvin Brown]

Hello

See link below, but from what I know and understand USB is a bit
faster than firewire 1394


http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=885

Alvin

 

[Nathan McNulty]

There is a common misconception when dealing with external buses such as
USB and FireWire. FireWire 1394b is 800 MegaBITS per second which there
is 8 bits to a byte. This means you are going to get 100 MegaBYTES per
second. Your speed on FireWire B is going to usually be limited by the
speed of the source/destination. You should see somewhere around 70
MegaBytes pers second though.

Since FireWire B is so new, it is probably a driver issue which I would
check for newer drivers. Your second problem has to do with not
properly disconnecting the drives. You must use the Safely Remove
Hardware icon when you remove the drives. Otherwise Windows will fail
to empty the I/O buffer and result in a delayed-write failure. This
only happens with NTFS because of the performance optimizations of NTFS.

You can format the volumes larger than the 32 GB restriction of Windows
XP. I would suggest grabbing a Windows 98 Bootdisk and format the drives
FAT32 if possible. Another thing you can check is open Device Manager
(Start-Run-Devmgmt.msc) and double click on your hard drive under Disk
Drives. This should open a properties screen and go to the Policies Tab.
Now see if you can Optimize for quick removal. This should prevent
those errors you are seeing

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Alvin, there are two standards of FireWire. There is 1394a which is
only 400 MegaBits per second which equates to 50 MegaBytes per second.
USB 2.0 is 480 MegaBits per second which equates to 60 MegaBytes per
second. The one the OP is talking about is 1394*b* which is 800
MegaBits per second which equates to 100 MegaBytes per second.

 

[armypilot]

My apologies on the unclear use of mb versus MB - my
shorthand, which I thought was industry standard. I
should have spelled out megabits - of course 800mb/sec =
100MB/sec Of course that is in theory the "fastest"
and I've seen the ~70MB/sec you quoted before from my own
reading which is why I chose the interface over USB2.
I did drill down even further into the Knowledge Base
articles on FAT32 and sector/cluster sizes after your
recommendation and that seemed to fix the delayed-write
issues and stopped partion/files/information from
disappearing. It shouldn't have by my reasoning but it
did as the problem still persisted whether "optimize for
removal" or "performance" was checked on the drives
before I tried repartitioning with FAT32.
Big difference between Microsoft, Unibrain, and
Orangeware drivers too as I've tried all three. At this
point I'm just afraid I'll have to let each "mature" a
little more and hopefully the transfer rate issue will
disappear. Thank you for jogging the brain - sometimes
it is hard to see the forest for the trees. Take care.

 

[Jim Macklin]

The ASUS website describes the 1394a/b as...
IEEE 1394b/a
1394b (FireWire 800) - with its higher bandwidth up to 800
Mbps, longer distances and much higher-powered bus - is more
suitable for bandwidth-intensive applications like digital
video (DV), professional audio, hard drives, which often
consume hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data per
file. With backwards compatibility with 1394a, this
motherboard provides 1 x 1394a and 2 x 1394b ports.

Did you check in the BIOS to see that you have enabled the
1394 b protocol? Did you install the ASUS mobo drivers?
Are you using Firewire cables rated for 1394b, with the
extra wire pairs?

Are you using the correct 1394b ports?


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


| There is a common misconception when dealing with external
buses such as
| USB and FireWire. FireWire 1394b is 800 MegaBITS per
second which there
| is 8 bits to a byte. This means you are going to get 100
MegaBYTES per
| second. Your speed on FireWire B is going to usually be
limited by the
| speed of the source/destination. You should see somewhere
around 70
| MegaBytes pers second though.
|
| Since FireWire B is so new, it is probably a driver issue
which I would
| check for newer drivers. Your second problem has to do
with not
| properly disconnecting the drives. You must use the
Safely Remove
| Hardware icon when you remove the drives. Otherwise
Windows will fail
| to empty the I/O buffer and result in a delayed-write
failure. This
| only happens with NTFS because of the performance
optimizations of NTFS.
|
| You can format the volumes larger than the 32 GB
restriction of Windows
| XP. I would suggest grabbing a Windows 98 Bootdisk and
format the drives
| FAT32 if possible. Another thing you can check is open
Device Manager
| (Start-Run-Devmgmt.msc) and double click on your hard
drive under Disk
| Drives. This should open a properties screen and go to the
Policies Tab.
| Now see if you can Optimize for quick removal. This
should prevent
| those errors you are seeing
|
| -----
| Nathan McNulty
|
| Doug A. wrote:
| > I'm running Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 and all
| > the latest security and driver updates on an ASUS P5AD2
| > Premium motherboard, 3.6GB processor, with 2GB of DDR2
| > unbuffered memory.
| > I recently purchased a quad-hard drive enclosure
| > that allows me to daisy-chain four-parallel ATA 250GB
| > hard drives via 1394b, each drive has its own bridge.
| > The controller is a 32-bit PCI card with two 1394b ports
| > and one 1394a port.
| > The first problem I'm having is with data transfer
| > speeds which barely surpass the old USB 1.0 standard
| > transfer rates. I thought that 1394b should approach
| > 800mb/sec and be faster than even USB 2.0 transfer
speeds
| > of 480mb/sec, but my benchmarks tell me differently.
| > What am I doing wrong?
| > The second problem I'm having may or may not be
| > hardware related. Windows "forgets" partitioning
| > information routinely on these drives and often gives me
| > a delayed-write failed error. Each drive is formatted
as
| > a 250GB NTFS partition - it makes no difference whether
| > they are formatted as a primary or an extended volume or
| > if I break each drive into smaller partitions. I'm out
| > of luck formatting them as 40GB partitions (FAT32 limit)
| > because of the shear number of "drives" created. At
| > least the "forgetting" problems goes away but the slow
| > transfer speeds remain. I'd appreciate a solution to
| > this problem as well. Thank you in advance.

 

[Pavel A.]

The second problem I'm having may or may not be
hardware related. Windows "forgets" partitioning
information routinely on these drives and often gives me
a delayed-write failed error.

A very bad sign. Something is basically wrong: cables,
bad power supply, maybe even wrong divers.

Also, some time ago I've seen a message
that firewire disk driver of XP is just defective and data loss
can occur. Don't know whether SP2 fixed this.

--PA