Raid 0 on FireWire 400?

I'm purchasing a Sony HDV camcorder and editing using FCP 4.5 on my PowerMac and need more fast storage space.
I was thinking of purchasing 2 identical 300gb Maxtors with 16mb cache and 2 external firewire cases.
Am I right in thinking that I can install these in a Raid 0 config, as long as I plug them in to 2 different firewire ports? (I have a 4 port PCI firewire card installed) Or do I have to daisy chain them?
Your advice would be much appreciated.
thanks
Andrew

is it possible to have one IDE drive and one ATA drive in a single dual drive enclosure?
cause mine ain't workin'. If I unplug one of the drives, it works fine (OWC AL FW800 RAID enclosure), but if both are in, then Drive Utility sees them as a single 2TB drive.
thanks

Similar Messages

Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u knocked

I have a Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme + Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u , which I have been using with an emac ( 1ghz power pc 4 , macos 10.5.8 ) for past few years.
A couple of days ago The drive was hit rather hard on side while on and up , the computer hung as the computer was up on a mac os 10.5.8 partition on this drive . Computer was rebooted and comes up on internal drive, lacie drive just made beep and click sounds ( i am actually deaf and this was what I was told ) every couple of seconds. Attempt was made to boot on CD to use latest available disk utility ( Macos 10.5). Lacie still does not show up. 15-20 minutes into this, I powered lacie down. This is when I started noticing a burned circuitry smell.I powered lacie down and disconnected it at this point.
Most Folks just suggest data recovery which can cost as much as $3000 or more which I really don't have .
I figured I open and examine the internalsof drive . I did so. The circuitry smells
like burned near the point where power comes in and the death diode is located, otherwise circuitry looks fine. One of the two drives , when taken out did not have a burnt smell and the other had a burnt smell towards the center but it dissipated in about an hour after it was taken out. There also was one loose screw inside drives chasing which ended up being one of the 4 screws that holds the disk drive's circuitry. I dont know but I don't think this could have shorted anything out but even though slim it is possible that such happened.
While I have Three DC voltmeters, I could not find the one that would accurately measure the voltage on the external power suppy to see if the output voltage on the 4 pins is accurate . I am still looking for the one meter that can do this.
I figured if I can find the exact drive in like new condition and swap the disks, if the disks are not damaged and if the culprit is actually burnt circuitry, then the drives should come up as they were as though nothing had happened.
I talked to a friend that suggested getting other cases and swapping disks but I guess that is not possible because the two disks are raided? ( raid 0 ) . I am also not even sure if the drives are raided the way they were put into use ( only through firewire 400) as the documentation suggests that only firewire 800 denotes use of built in raid0 but I am not sure. So again assumption is made that the drives are raided .
I contacted dealership of the drive which again suggest that Unfortunately it is not possible to obtain another drive like this one because it has been obsolete and out of manufacture for a long time. It is also a risky idea because if the problem is not with the drive enclosure hardware, there is a genuine risk of making the recovery process more difficult, or impossible.
This though does not follow logically. I have been able to see the exact drive with the same sku number offered as new or excellent condition more than 1/2 dozen times in the past few weeks so I guess drive can be acquired and tested before any such swap. If drives are not the culprit , I figure after a swap with a new enclosure and everything other than drives, the thing should not even be noticed and all should work as they did before the accident. If the drives are the cause , then the thing has been on 1/2 hour after the accident so the swap should not do any more damage or cause future recovery attempts any more issues than already might be there.
Any sound advice is greatly appreciated.

I tried the two good disks in the main chasis with new cables and power supply , and I could not get them to come on or show.
I put the good disks back in the second chasis with new cable and power suppy and it again shows ( prompts telling you that it sees a readable MAc OS disk and asks if you want to Initialize it ).
I put the first set together again with new cable and power supply and the light does not come on anymore . being hearing impaired , i put my head on the drive and hear this clicking sound every one or two seconds. The fan operates . The drive does not show when rebooting and it does not show on the disk utility. The drive does not smoke but smell of burned mica ( circuitry ) is still in my throat after a couple of hours.
From what I have learned the possibility exists that each drive is calibrated and the calibration is added to the control board , So like chances are that even if the two original drives are good and connected properly and everything else is good, they might and probably just wont work with a control board of another even exact drive. There are three tables / charts marked on each drive and specific locations marked on each chart which differ between drives . These I think are from calibrating the drives.
So I guess its data recovery...
Lacie Data Recovery wants $600 ( $300 x 2 drives ) if they recover data without need for a clean room , $3000 ( $1500 x 2 drives ) if there is need for clean room. If they don't recover , you dont pay , if they recover and you do not want to pay, then they just send you the damaged disk ( or perhaps keep it , or smash it then return it to you) .
There are many other data recovery services so I guess a few days to sift through them but I guess the maker reference should be the best way ( I think its actually a sub-company that lacie forwards data recovery to.
Too many factors are involved. One that will such be a secure thing to do or 6 months later you find out that someone opened 10 accounts under your name , or emptied your bank account ( thats actually not a problem because there is almost never any money in my bank account) . So security is a concern. I have encountered individuals that make it their business stealing peoples stuff from their disks. Once I even had one Tech guy which was refered to solve a problem I had , copying disks contents right in front of me for absolutely no reason. So I ask him what are you doing, and he says , I am copying everything just to make sure they are safe ( : ) )
Then there is the dalai lama , everything happens for a reason scenario. In which case I guess I have to consider the whole thing as Good Omen. and just forget about it and go on with my life ( maybe I go work in Mc Donalds : ) )
The bottom line is I can't believe that I am such an idiot not to have a proper backup system in place .
Thank you for the links, I will check them out.

Firewire 400 transfer rate

Hi all,
i've bought a brand new G-RAID from Apple Store and after three weeks i gave it back because noisy and slow on transfer.
This morning i took my new G-RAID and few minutes ago i've checked with speedtools its transfer speed and bench recived is more or less the same of the one i've changed.
(see below)
Good news is that is no more noisy. Bad news is that to move my aperture library is taking ages (66gb).
Before to see apple store about this issue i've contacted G-Technology and also for the support guy that followed the performances don't sound great.
I've also tried to perform speedtools check removing all the drive connected (a Iomega 1TB attached to USB) but still the same speed average.
As it sounds strange that i'm having problem with both the HD i'm wondering if the issue could be related to my macbook and the Firewire 400 itself.
Looking to the bench below, what do you think? do you have any suggestion to check it? I've another mac book (white one) having firewire 400 so i can perform the same checks.
Or, do you think that average speed is normal and i should just get a more performant mac?
Thanks for your help.
QuickBench(TM) 4.0 Test Results
©2000-2007 Intech Software Corp.
Test file created on samedi 11 septembre 2010 at 15:15:03
Test Volume Name: G-DRIVE
Test Volume Type: MacOS Extended
Test Volume Size: 1.818 Terabytes
Test Volume Free Space: 1.818 Terabytes
Allow Disk Cache Effects: Disabled
All reads and writes performed sychronously
Standard Tests Not Run
Extended Tests Not Run
Extended Tests Not Run
Custom Test Results:
Transfer Size: 200 Megabytes
Transfer Count: 10
Contiguous File Only: No
Custom Test Cycles: 2
Custom Read Custom Write
Max Speed 19.078 17.131
Ave Speed 18.902 17.072
Min Speed 18.775 16.944

Justin Nightingale...
It much depends on either counterparts, the built in IDE Controler or the FW Bridge. Next kicks in the other parameters such as HD specs and so on.
Now the IDE bus is more than likely shared with the Optical Drive on a Mac mini. Internal 2.5" form factor HD do not seem as fast as the 3.5" HDs. As you may see what I am driving at, there is some trivial bottlenecks here.
Next is that FW is processor direct, so it can cut out some of the bottlenecks as long as the 3.5" HD is concerned. Dropping down to a 2.5" HD reduces any speed advantages again.
So my conclusion as long as a Good FW based on an IDE 3.5" HD it should the tops of the speed race. Next probably would be a near toss up but more favorable FW /2.5".

SATA or Firewire 400 striped?

Hello knowledgeable ones, could some one offer me an opinion on:
I have a dual core 2 GHz G5.
a. 160 Gb main drive
b. 250 Gb internal SATA drive
c. 240 Gb (2 x 120 Gb striped) external Firewire 400 volume
Working with FCP et al, which would be the the faster volume b? or c?
As I am planning on using one and backing up to the other.
Cheers
PB 12" 1.5GHz and others Mac OS X (10.4.5) ManyMacs

I disagree. I think C would be faster. I'm guessing
C would offer about 80 megs/secong, and B would give
about 60. for even more performance, do 2 external
striped SATAs. Any of the above should work fine
though
C wouldn't be able to achieve much more than 45, since FW400's maximum speed is 50MB/sec, and that includes overhead and whatnot.
I also have a hard time believing that a single SATA drive could achieve 60MB/sec (unless it's spinning at 10-15k rpm). I have a FW800 RAID-0 setup that achieves ~72MB/sec with two drives.

*** Front and Rear Firewire 400 Ports Share Same Bus? ***

I am wondering if the front and rear Firewire 400 ports are just linked together on the same bus, or do they connect to the CPU on separate channels.
- thanks for any wisdom.
Ted.

You are assuming that the FireWire controller is capable of something I've never seen confirmed, that there is 240MB/sec. And there isn't. I've created RAIDs on multiple FW PCI cards. I've used ATTO SCSI adapters.
And one thing I know about the old G4 was there is a maximum of 240MB/sec for ALL PCI slots that gets shared, not for each PCI slot, though there are adapters like FirmTek's Serial ATA SeriTek controllers which tend to "hog" all the bandwidth and limits the performance of or number of other controllers.
PCI-X was suppose to get past that by providing two buses, one @ 100MHz and the other @ 133MHz that keep them from 'stealing' the others.
PCI Express is an improvement (PCIe 2.0 is beginning to show up) but rarely do buses perform as well as they are suppose to on paper.
That can mean front side bus, memory bus, as well. The G5 memory bus never lived up to its expectations or white paper potential. The Mac Pro seems to have its own memory bandwidth limitations.
And I am not trying to cover up anything. Shed a little light, if not sunshine. More from testing and having talked to developers rather than an engineering background.

Firewire 400 on back of g4?

I vaguely remember reading a post a while back about the two Firewire 400 ports on the back of some systems not being equal and that only one was good for external hardrives. I have two lacie 250's running on firewire 400s and am wondering if I can plug them in independently or if they should daisy cahin through one port? Wouldn't make much sense to me that one should be better than the other but I thought I'd check.
dave

I've been doing what the Captain suggests above for a while now and have no issues to report. I use a fw 400 pcmcia card on my laptop, and a Sonnet 800 pci card on my desk top.
On the laptop the deck plugs into the card as I use a fire lite drive that needs the power from the built in port. On the desk top I have two g-raid 500gb drives raided together through the Sonnet card.
This being said, there is agreement that an external SATA RAID is a better solution if you need the speed, and a second internal drive will do well for DV25 material.
I see you have a fw800 card, so that should get you past the single bus bottle neck.
Tom

How will an external Hard drive designed for the macbook Pro work with my White Macbook? My white macbook has a Firewire 400 and the G-Tech HD has a 800 to 400 compatible cable for the firewire.

I am asking this because I want the G-Tech Hard drive says that it is designed for the macbook pro. Yet, I want to back up faster with by using my firewire 400 which is not an option on the one designed for the white macbook that does not have a firewire (only a USB port.) The G-Tech Hard drive comes with the 800 to 400 compatible cable and has 5400 RPM with 750 GB. Also, I've heard that laptops with low battery (mine all the time) won't have the power for a bus powered Hard drive (as in no ac plug in adaptor.) Can I just plug in my laptop? Any one know the answers from experience with this hard drive?

As far as I know, if a harddrive works with a Macpro, it should work with the Macbook: if your Macbook is low on power, plug in the AC adapter
If your Macbook has a firewire port, then it should be fine. BUt i would do somemore research first.

I have an iPod G2 with a firewire 400 lead. how can I attach it to my new 13 inch Mac book Pro, is there a 400 to 800 firewire converter. USB lead wont work with the Macbook Pro. iPod used as an external drive to archive memory cards on the go.

My G2 iPod that I use as an external drive to archive memory cards on the go cannot link with my new 13" Macbook Pro cause it uses a firewire 400 lead. It will not work with a USB lead. Is there a firewire 800 ipod lead or converter available? Can any one shed some light on this please?

As far as I know, if a harddrive works with a Macpro, it should work with the Macbook: if your Macbook is low on power, plug in the AC adapter
If your Macbook has a firewire port, then it should be fine. BUt i would do somemore research first.

How to connect an external harddrive with firewire 800 to a macbook with firewire 400?

Hello,
I just got the external harddrive "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB 3.0 1TB" with a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Upgrade Kabel FireWire 800. I have neither a USB 3.0, nor a Firewire 800 on my white macbook (2008). I already know, that it's possible to use USB 3.0 with an USB 2.0 port, but I would like to use it with the firewire to spare the USB port for other devices. My question: Is there an adapter or cable to use the Seagate Firewire 800 with my Firewire 400 port? I don't know, where and what to look for.
I'm glad for any advice.

There are many adaptors, try here

I am using IMovie 11 with a new iMac. Unable to import video from a Panasonic PV-GS400 mini-DV camcorder using a Firewire IEEE 1394 400 cable connected to a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter which is then connected to a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter.

How can I get iMovie to recognize my Panasonic PV-GS400 as a device so I can import video to my iMac? I have a FireWire IEEE 1394 400 cable connected to the camcorder. Since my new iMac has only Thunderbolt ports, I purchased a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter to connect to the cable. I also purchased a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter to connect to the computer. My camcarder is still not recognized.

I would suggest that you try a 9 pin to 4 pin Firewire Cable along with the Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter.
Those Firewire 400 to 800 adapters do not seem to work well with iMovie.
The 9 pin to 4 pin cables are available at reasonable prices here, for example.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030104 &p_id=3541&seq=1&format=2

I currently have a MAC Mini, which has 1 Firewire 800 port. I have a 1TB external hard disk that runs at Firewire 400. Can I insert another external hard drive that runs at Firewire 800?

Here's the deal. Currently running SL 10.6.8 on a MAC Mini. Planning for eventual upgrade to ML. Have a 1TB external hard drive partitioned into two volumes, one volume for Time Machine and one volume for SL which I periodically update using Superduper. Thus I always have a point-in-time bootable backup on the external hard drive.
The MAC Mini supports Firewire 800. However, booting from my current external hard disk is pretty slow, since it only supports Firewire 400. I am considering buying an Iomega MiniMax which supports Firewire 800. Then, I would use the MiniMax as my bootable backup volume, and relegate the older hard drive to Time Machine.
So, question #1 is, can I daisychain the new MiniMax between the MAC Mini and my existing external hard drive? My expectation is that the new Mini Max would run using Firewire 800 and that the existing hard drive would run at Firewire 400 speed as it does today. If it doesn't (e.g., daisychaining in the Firewire 400 external disk with the MiniMax Firewire 800 external disk ends up running the whole leg at 400), my resolution will be to run the existing hard disk off an available USB port and have just the MiniMax running at Firewire 800.
Why am I going to all this trouble? That's question #2. I don't trust upgrades; they always break something. When I upgraded from 10.5.x to 10.6.x, the web directories got renamed, and all of my web apps 403'd until I figured out what happened. Plus, I have accounts for other family members, and in order to ensure their ability to use the computer during my upgrade process, I need to have the ability to fall-back quickly to a known-stable version of OSX. So what I'm trying to do is insulate myself from problems by partitioning the MiniMax into two volumes, taking a Superduper image of my current installation on the Mac Mini to MiniMax external drive volume 1, then upgrading to ML on the MAC Mini, and take a SuperDuper image of that to MiniMax external drive volume 2. Then, if the upgrade results in problems I can't resolve immediately, I can simply reimage the MAC Mini from MiniMax volume 1. BUT ...
... I've read that the ML installation creates a "service and support" partition that is different than the startup disk. I'm concerned that I won't be able to reimage the hard disk in the MAC Mini once I upgrade it to ML because of the partitioning changes it introduces on the startup disk. Theoretically, I +should+ be able to use the disk utility on my SL system to repartition the disk in the MAC Mini prior to reimaging it from my backup, but I'm considering the possibility that the new partition may be of a type that the SL disk utility cannot identify, and might therefore be unable to delete or even detect. So I'm hoping someone else has been down this road and can advise me. Even at Firewire 800 speeds, booting from an external disk is still going to be slow, so I want to be able to restore my SL image to the MAC Mini hard disk.
A little background on me. I work for a major disaster recovery provider. I used to have a Mac PRO G5, which I got used, and the first thing I did with it was install a second hard disk, SuperDupe an image from the first disk to the second, and made sure I could boot from the second. THEN I started using and customizing the MAC. I really feel vulnerable with the MAC Mini, since it only has the single internal hard drive - sort of like going out in public dressed only in a long T-shirt. So my whole thing is, I ABSOLUTELY MUST BE ABLE TO PUT THINGS BACK THE WAY THEY WERE before I do the migration to ML.
Obsessive-cumpulsive? Yep. Anal? You got it. That's why I'm in the DR business.

You may have overloaded the port, following the instructions below it should reset:
+1. Shut down the computer.+
+2. Disconnect all devices and all other cables, except the keyboard and mouse cable(s).+
+3. Disconnect the computer from the power outlet and wait for 3 to 5 minutes.+
+4. Plug the computer back in and turn it on.+
+5. Reconnect the device(s) (one at a time if there is more than one) and test. Test with each port if you have more than one.+
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US

How to tell if Firewire 400 or 800? In any OS and this laptop: Toshiba Satellite A350D - BA3.

Hello.
I was wondering how someone can tell the difference between Firewire 400 and 800 in their computer and in this model of Toshiba laptop: Toshiba Satellite A350D - BA3?
If a person looked in device manager or something would it say? With Usb it says Enhanced when it is usb2 compared to usb1. I don't know what usb3 says, I don't have it.
With firewire there is large sizes and small. On my laptop it is a mini firewire and it looks like a 4-pin inside. On the toshiba.ca site, in the product specs, it only says firewire.
I am planning on buying a cord that has a large connection on one end and a small connection size at the other end. Eg: Some cables for firewire are a 4-4pin, 6-4pin, 6-6pin, 9-4pin,9-6pin,9-9pin. There are also firewire 400 to 800 adapters. I'd like to buy the right cord for an external enclosure I bought to connect to the small laptop firewire port. The enclosure is a Vantec NexStar 3, 3.5" enclosure, usb2, eSATA, Firewire a/b. It has two firewire b ports in back, but an included cord converts b-a (the a is still to big for the laptop firewire).
Does anyone know if any of the mini ports are as fast as the larger ports? Will a 9-pin firewire 800 cable converting to a mini connection go at the mini connections speed if it is only firewire 400, I don't think it can force full F800 speed?
Thanks.

Hello.
I was wondering how someone can tell the difference between Firewire 400 and 800 in their computer and in this model of Toshiba laptop: Toshiba Satellite A350D - BA3?
If a person looked in device manager or something would it say? With Usb it says Enhanced when it is usb2 compared to usb1. I don't know what usb3 says, I don't have it.
With firewire there is large sizes and small. On my laptop it is a mini firewire and it looks like a 4-pin inside. On the toshiba.ca site, in the product specs, it only says firewire.
I am planning on buying a cord that has a large connection on one end and a small connection size at the other end. Eg: Some cables for firewire are a 4-4pin, 6-4pin, 6-6pin, 9-4pin,9-6pin,9-9pin. There are also firewire 400 to 800 adapters. I'd like to buy the right cord for an external enclosure I bought to connect to the small laptop firewire port. The enclosure is a Vantec NexStar 3, 3.5" enclosure, usb2, eSATA, Firewire a/b. It has two firewire b ports in back, but an included cord converts b-a (the a is still to big for the laptop firewire).
Does anyone know if any of the mini ports are as fast as the larger ports? Will a 9-pin firewire 800 cable converting to a mini connection go at the mini connections speed if it is only firewire 400, I don't think it can force full F800 speed?
Thanks.

Firewire 400 External Drive Not Recognized in Yosemite

I have a Fantom external hard drive that is plugged into my Mac mini. The external hard drive uses the old firewire 400 standard. The mac mini only has a firewire 800 standard port. I have an adaptor to bridge the two, and this worked fine until I updated to Yosemite. Now the drive isn't recognized. Can anyone offer suggestions on what to do to get this drive to work on this computer?? None of the other macs in my house even have a firewire 800 port anymore.

Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk
See the mount section.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal

External Hard Drive is not being recognized by Firewire 400

Hi everyone,
I update my Mac OS X (Leopard) last night, so this morning when I was going to connect my External Hard Drive (EDD) to my MacBook; the Firewire, which I normally used through Firewire 400, did not recognized my EDD. However, I tried by connecting using the USB option and it recognized the EDD working perfect. Thus, I would like to know how do I turn the Firewire 400 on/available, since it seems not being working properly.
Thanks a lot,
M
Macbook (Intel) early 2007.

if you have the power supply that comes with the external, use that if you haven't use it instead of rely on bus powered port.
connect your external, click blue apple on top left corner > about this mac > click more and on system profiler click firewire, and see if your external detected there.
You can try to reset PRAM to refresh your hardware behavior too:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Good Luck.

Is there any kind of adapter/converter that converts an older Firewire 400 to Thunderbolt?

Is there any kind of adapter/converter that converts an older Firewire 400 to Thunderbolt?

Is this to plug in an older FW 400 device into a Thunderbolt port on a Mac?
Or to plug in a Thunderbolt device into a FW 400 port on a Mac?
The first can be done but not the second.

My iMac won't recognize my external hard drive connected by FireWire 400

I have an external hard drive connected to my Intel-based iMac through a FireWire 400 cable. The drive doesn't come up on the desktop after turning on the hard drive power.
If I connect through the USB cable, it appears quickly on the desktop. Why isn't this working through FireWire? I had some trouble with this in Tiger as well, but was somehow able to get it to work.

The drive does not appear in Disk Utility.
And I don't think I'll be installing DiskWarrior until Leopards countless bugs are fixed, especially after reading THIS:
Alsoft: There are some DiskWarrior "compatibility issues" with Leopard
After previously stating "you can run the (current version of DiskWarrior under Leopard) knowing no harm will come to the hard drive or to your data," Alsoft has now posted a message to its Web site stating "there are some compatibility issues when running an installed copy of DiskWarrior 4.0 while started up from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Alsoft currently recommends that you do not run DiskWarrior 4.0 while the computer is started from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard."
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071026153956503

Raid 0 on FireWire 400?

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