Lacie FireWire 800 PCI card (#107755)

[troublechuter1]

I am looking to get into the faster Firewire 800 world. I have a P4 PC, 2.4GHz PC.

I read somewhere that, although the Firewire 800 PCI card that Lacie sells (their number=107755) is a 64 bit card, it will only operate as a 32 bit card in a non-64 bit slot, and thus it will only operate at FW400 speeds.

1a. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Based on the Lacie information for this card, I didn't see anything that would indicate to me that it would NOT operate at FW800 speeds, unless, of course, a 9pin to 4 or 6 pin cable were used.

2. What are the conditions under which FW800 speeds are obtained with this card?

Please specify if you have used this Lacie product. Thank you!

[edDV]

Sorry, can't answer driectly but what is the application?

If it's for an external hard drive, you might find external eSATA easier to implement and the drive enclosures will be cheaper and faster.

http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp

[redwudz]

You may be right. At least it says:

Note: The LaCie FW800 card is a 64-bit card, and can plug into a 32-bit or 64-bit slot. Best performance will be achieved when plugged into a 64-bit PCI slot.
Also, this product is not compatible with PCI Express (PCIe) slots

on this site: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10173

You might DL the manual or the spec sheet for more info. It's for a Mac, but there shouldn't be any difference between the hardware in the card.

I'm assuming you have a FW 800 external drive to go with the card?

I would also suggest you check out SATA external. It runs the same speed as an internal SATA and is still hot pluggable. I've got 3 of them and they work great. You can have up to a ~30" SATA drive cable also.

[troublechuter1]

Thanks, all.

I already d/led the manual and did the basic checking. If I understand it correctly, it should do what I want. I posted here to find out if it *really* works, if people have had trouble with it, etc.

Ed...Different app's, mainly digital audio and video work. I'm considering SATA, however, I have an Alesis ADAT HD24 (hard drive based audio recorder) which uses PATA. If possible, I'd like to stick with one type of hard drive, at least to start. Otherwise, I'll very likely end up paying twice as much for hard drives as I need to. The hard drives will be used for various projects, so I'll be formatting/reformatting them as my needs demand. And, oh, by the way, most critical video captuing that I do is done straight to an internal PATA hard drive on my PC, not through the FW interface. It would be nice if the FW800 would help me in using external HD's for capturing. I also want to see if this card will play better with my Lacie ext. DVD recorder over FW. I have a FW400 card now that gives me trouble.

Red...The link that you gave claims the card is for PC and Mac, not just Mac. (See below.) If you have other information that says this is a Mac-only product, could you please post a reply? I'm very interested to know if this truly is a Mac-only product that will "happen" to work with PC, vs. being a Mac & PC product from the get-go.

"System Requirements : Mac G4 and G5 PowerMac with OS 10.2.4 & newer; Pentium III or higher. Windows 2000 or XP 128MB RAM or higher. PCI V2.0 compatible PCI or PCI-X slot
Note: The LaCie FW800 card is a 64-bit card, and can plug into a 32-bit or 64-bit slot. Best performance will be achieved when plugged into a 64-bit PCI slot.
Also, this product is not compatible with PCI Express (PCIe) slots"

[redwudz]

troublechuter1, my fault with poor typing. I just meant that ad showed up in a search as a Mac site, and I thought the manual there might just be for a Mac. The card, AFAIK, should work with either platform. LaCie is well known in the Mac market, but they make devices for both PCs and Macs. I have a LaCie 10GB 2.5" hard drive that I've used for years. It's a good company in my experience.

[edDV]

I still don't understand your need for Firewire 800 with the ADAT HD24. The adapter I'm looking at is limited to 400 Mb/s.
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ALEFP1394

As for video, it depends on the camera but none at the prosumer level seem to be supporting Firewire 800. Not even the AG-HVX200 or the new XDCAM support it.

Sorry, I can't help with the Lacie card.

[troublechuter1]

Ed,

I'm aware of the Alesis adapter that you provided a link for.

I'll try again to define the applications:

I have set up an external hard drive enclosure into which I can plug project drives for my audio and video work. I would like to take advantage of the greater speed of the FW800 connection, to minimize copy/transfer times from one hard drive to another--this would include the "internal" drives in my PC, as well as the "external" drives in the enclosure.

I am trying to--for the time being anyway--stick to using PATA drives, since that is what the Alesis uses. When I finish with an Alesis project, I may want to format that project drive to use for video work (as an example). If I were to start getting into SATA, I would only be able to "directly" re-use a SATA project drive in my PC; I would not be able to use it in the Alesis, since the Alesis is PATA-based and not SATA-based.

Again, for the sake of example....suppose I were to purchase a 500GB SATA hard drive for $250.00; I wouldn't be able to use it in the Alesis at all. If I wanted to use a 500GB drive in the Alesis, I would have to purchase a PATA drive for another $250.00. By sticking with PATA, my drive cost is cut in half.

(By the way, for anyone reading this, please note that I pulled $250.00 out of the air for the sake of example only.)

Because FW800 is backwards compatible with FW400, I should be able to use the same Lacie FW800 card with either speed, plugging in the appropriate adapter cable as needed. So, if and when I get to purchasing the FW adapter from Alesis, my PC will still be able to talk to it via the Lacie card. (I realize the speed will be limited to FW400.) I'm also aware that my video a/d capture device and my camcorder will be at FW400. It wasn't my intention to somehow increase the speed of those connections. Also, I fully do not expect to necessarily be able to mix both 400 and 800 speeds on the Lacie card simultaneously. (Again, once I go to copying big video files to and from the PC, that's when I'm hoping to notice the increased FW800 speed.)

In addition to all of the above, I had some issues trying to get my Lacie external DVD burner to work with my PC over FW. I've already tried to resolve those issues by chasing driver upgrades/firmware upgrades, etc., talking with Lacie customer support and so on. I've tried a total of 3 different FW400 cards in my PC, but with little success. (I asked Lacie if the cards that I tried would work. They said that they should.) I'm hoping that having the Lacie card will help eliminate those issues.

I can see how some of this might have been a little unclear before. I hope this helps clarify it.

Oh, and one more thing...the enclosure that I've set up cost me nothing--it was a throwaway item from someone's old file server configuration. It included space for multiple drives (up to 5, from what I can remember off the top of my head), a couple of large cooling fans, power supply, and panel cutouts for the IDE bridgeboard that I'm using. So far, it's working well. I just received the Lacie card today and will be installing that in a few days, once I've done some other system upgrade work.

[edDV]

My main concern was the Firewire800 (expensive) vs Firewire400 (cheap and reliable). File copy is the only advantage so far. I hope you have better luck with FW800.