[KLUG Members] Firewire 1TB drive under Linux worth trying?

[Marr]

On Thursday 29 April 2004 01:52pm, John Pesce wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I read in Digital Video Magazine about a new drive from LaCie that was
> suitable for HD video editing. It is a 1TB external drive with FireWire
> 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces for $1100.
>
> http://lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10118
>
> I also read on the http://www.linux1394.org homepage that some people
> have used FireWire 800 (1394b) hard drives under Linux.
>
> Does anyone here have any experience with FireWire drives under Linux?
> Are they safe for regular use under Linux?

Yes and yes.  :^)

Since July 2002, I've owned a Maxtor (Model FWRA080QVQ001) 80 GB external 
FireWire (-1394a, i.e. 400 Mbit/sec) hard disk drive (HDD), bought expressly 
for use under Linux (Slackware 8.0, back then, Slackware 9.1 today), although 
I've tested it under W98se and it works fine there too, of course. At the 
time, I also bought a Maxtor IEEE-1394 PCI card (which has no apparent model 
number).

Although it doesn't see daily use, this HDD has always worked flawlessly.  The 
PCI controller card has worked perfectly under Linux as well, which was no 
surprise since I checked the Linux IEEE-1394 website (mentioned in your post 
above) first to find that the PCI card uses the known-compatible Lucent (now 
'Agere') FW323-04 chipset.

The only thing I noted back then was the inability to 'spin down' the HDD, 
since it's essentially seen as a SCSI device, so 'hdparm -y /dev/xxx' won't 
work. Maybe there's some equivalent spin-down technique for SCSI HDDs that I 
haven't yet heard of.... Anyone???

This Maxtor -1394 HDD also works fine on my Shuttle SN41G2 SFF (Small Form 
Factor) PC with built-in IEEE-1394a ports (nForce2 chipset, using Realtek 
8801 FireWire chip).

Aside: Although this SN41G2 IEEE-1394 setup has worked perfectly with the 
Maxtor HDD, there was one oddity that I've not tried very hard to solve. My 
Sony DCR-TRV38 camcorder would _send_ video just fine to the SN41G2 using the 
built-in -1394, but when trying to send video _from_ the SN41G2 back _to_ the 
camcorder (e.g. using the popular 'Kino' video editor app), it never worked 
right. I wound up sticking that aforementioned Maxtor IEEE-1394 PCI card into 
the single PCI slot of the SN41G2 PC and everything worked fine since then. I 
have not tried any recent Linux kernels (or any other drivers or updated 
-1394 libraries) to see if this has improved any with the SN41G2's native 
IEEE-1394. I rarely export video from PC --> camcorder, so it's not a big 
issue and the Maxtor PCI card works flawlessly.

----------------------------------------

Summary: The IEEE-1394 controller (on-mobo, plug-in card, whatever) is 
important. Check compatibility first!

Bottom Line: Although I don't use it on a daily basis, I'm very pleased with 
(400 Mbit/sec) IEEE-1394a hard disk drive use under Linux. I have no 
experience yet with IEEE-1394b (800 Mbit/sec), though. Furthermore, IMHO, 
short of having no free PCI slots, I cannot understand why anyone would use 
USB (even USB2.x) for an external HDD when IEEE-1394 is so nice (easy, fast, 
well-supported, problem-free, etc).

HTH....

Bill Marr