Firewire 800 PC Card

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atct86 · #1 Post by **atct86** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 11:15 am

I just bought a firewire 800 card for my Lacie 200gb external HD.

However it does not seem twice as fast as firewire 400.

Could the fact that is an external card be the culprit?

Aristotle11 · #2 Post by **Aristotle11** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:19 pm

Maybe the Hard Drive just can't transfer data much faster than the Firewire 400 had already allowed.

It's like moving from a garden hose (Firewire 400) to a fire hose (firewire 800). A fire hose can move a lot more water, but it won't move any more water if it gets the same amout coming in. Your hard drive probably has no more water to give.

Check out this review at http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/200 ... 00-06.html

It shows that the Firewire 800 is only about 30% faster than Firewire 400, not twice (200%) as fast when paired with a good hard drive. So what took 100 seconds to transfer on FW400 now takes 68 seconds on FW800. A 10 second transfer might take 6 or 7 now.

Best,
Aris

jtreble · #3 Post by **jtreble** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:06 pm

A few questions:
a.) You bought what Lacie HD exactly?
b.) You bought what FW 800 card exactly?
c.) What is your O/S and patch level?
d.) Did you look at/use Lacie's Device Updater (latest Windows version is 2.1.0)?

atct86 · #4 Post by **atct86** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:39 pm

a) LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface 200GB
b) Orange Micro Firewire 800 Card
c) XP Pro SP2

nrj45 · #5 Post by **nrj45** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:04 pm

another thing : if you transfer data from/to your speedy external drive to/from your thinkpad, don't forget that your internal drive has its own data transfer speed.

jtreble · #6 Post by **jtreble** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:16 pm

You need to upgrade the firmware on the Lacie d2 HDs to enable 1394b/ (Oxford 922/912 FW800 bridge chips)/XP S2.

For detailed info see,
http://www.lacie.com/download/drivers/R ... 800SP2.pdf

For the firmware go to,
http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers/

emorphien · #7 Post by **emorphien** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 4:57 pm

Even with the updates don't expect to see twice the speed. 400Mb/s is 50MB/s, and that's higher than the sustained transfer speed of most drives. You may see better throughput for your bursts, but overall the speed won't change a whole lot.

If you had one of those that was raided for extra performance you might see a gain (not 2x) but the 200gb isn't as I recall so you really won't see much difference.

The water hose analogy is glose enough to give you an idea. The drive (the external one and your laptops internal drive) can only go so fast and Firewire 800 is faster.

#8 Post by **RonS** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:59 pm

Check this:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=8907

Aristotle11 · #9 Post by **Aristotle11** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:05 am

It is as I suspected in my above post...

"I also seen a CNET review http://fineliving.com.com/LaCie_d2_Hard ... tag=glance says: "The Lacie d2 Extreme's performance in our 400MB folder and 1.9GB large-file copy tests was exceptional. It averaged 10.2MB per second with USB 2.0, 11.4MB per second with IEEE 1394a, and a whopping 12MB per second with FireWire 800.". whats so whooping about these differences?"

So it seems you go from 11.4 to 12 MB/sec. You might not notice much difference.

roast · #10 Post by **roast** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:24 pm

I always connect my Firewire 800 cards to PCI-x (the 64bit eXtended ones, not the PCI-Express ones) busses. Connecting a 1394b card on a 32-bit 66MHz PCI bus isn't going to give you the theoretical speeds you're looking for that 1394b offers, AFAIK.

Firewire 800 PC Card

Firewire 800 PC Card

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