Has anyone else tried one of these - Firewire Dockable HDs

[EwanG]

Am looking at picking up one of these units that allow you to put an inexpensive tray around a standard HD, and then pop them in and out of a dockable bay.

This seems like the ultimate answer for archiving tons of data, video or audio or otherwise.

However I get a little nervous when I see something that seems like a great idea but hardly anyone seems to be using them that there's a problem I'm missing.

Anyone?

[BJ_M]

there are 100's and 100's of thousands in use ... i prob. have somewhere near a 100 of them ...

[sullen]

I have something similar. I have just a simple external enclosure for my DVD Writer. Since the writer rips so slow and I have two computers I put it in the enclosure so that I can use the USB 2.0 connection to burn from either computer. Works great. I have one that has USB 2.0 and Firewire connections. I got mine for around $75 from Ebay. If you go with just one connection they are cheaper.

[EwanG]

Just to be clear, these units allow you to dock multiple disks in, pulling one out and putting another in. I'm familiar with (and even have) a couple drives in external firewire enclosures. But this was the first one I found where the drive goes in a tray, and then the tray is docked in the bay. So, for my case, I can have two bays and then four disks to allow me to have two data disks, and two backup disks.

Assuming the first reply was saying they had several of these, I'm curious where y'all got yours from in case they may have a better price.

Thanks,
Ewan

[BJ_M]

its the same thing really as external which are also hot swap .. just they fit differently ..

i use these (and others) http://www.granitedigital.com/

but they are a lot more money

[g_shocker182]

Also known as mobile racks (IDE). Ive seen them for $10.

[testicool]

What is faster:

USB 2.0 or
Firewire

[testicool]

I just realized FireWire 800 is out and it damn fast. (FireWire 800 PCI 1394b)

Can I get a card and put in my computer and buy a 250 GB HD and use the 800x?

[BJ_M]

Also known as mobile racks (IDE). Ive seen them for $10.

he is showing firewire though -- which are hot swap -- just as 80pin scsi can be

[BJ_M]

I just realized FireWire 800 is out and it damn fast. (FireWire 800 PCI 1394b)

Can I get a card and put in my computer and buy a 250 GB HD and use the 800x?

the cards for pc are just now starting to ship ... yes you can do it .

[EwanG]

Well, my fears seem to have been somewhat grounded. Though I'm hoping someone will be able to tell me there's something in the setup of Win XP or the Drive jumpers or ...

Here's the setup, Firewire HD Bay. Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB ATA/133 HDD with jumper set to Master, Belkin PC Card 2-Port Firewire, Toshiba Portege with 1 Gig of RAM running WinXP SP 1 and with a 60 Gig internal HD with 30 Gig free space.

I go through Windows Explorer and select 10 Gigs of Video files. After the first couple files are copied, the drive gets to a point where the time keeps going up and up, and then finally I get a message that Windows couldn't write to the drive, and it appears in Device Manager with a Yellow Caution sign.

Policies for the volume are for quick removal (though setting to performance has the same effect), and the Indexing service has been turned off.

Help please...

[BJ_M]

maxtor drive is 7200 right ? and there is no fan in that unit .. prob gets pretty hot .. i run it with a fan ... gets hotter than snot ...

also

Belkin PC Card 2-Port Firewire+Toshiba Portege -- need i say to much more ..

[EwanG]

maxtor drive is 7200 right ? and there is no fan in that unit .. prob gets pretty hot .. i run it with a fan ... gets hotter than snot ...

Actually the Bay has a rather nice fan - which is one of the reasons I was hopeful it might work well. Touching the case even after close to two hours doesn't result in any involuntary hand twitching

Belkin PC Card 2-Port Firewire+Toshiba Portege -- need i say to much more ..

I guess you will since I'm evidently missing something. Are you saying that the Belkin is a problem (I'll test with a Compaq desktop tonight with built-in firewire) or the Toshiba, or the PC Card interface, or... ?

Based on the comments so far, I assume that there's no special magic I should be performing with the Maxtor drive? Could the problem be that I have a single 190 Gig partition (NTFS)?

Thanks,
Ewan

[BJ_M]

based only on the experiances we have had with toshiba -- it hasnt been to good ..

don't know about the belkin .. never used one .. ads stuff always works it seems (at least the firewire cards)

[g_shocker182]

don't know about the belkin .. never used one ..

Here's to give you an idea about Belkin..they sell simple dual IDE cables for $30.

[BJ_M]

i know the belkin networking products are low end .. they make nice molded cables though for serial and par. ports ..

[EwanG]

OK, attached the unit to my Compaq Desktop, and it has worked just fine.

So looks like it's either my Toshiba (which would be very bad news) or the Belkin. I'm going to go with the Belkin for the moment - since I can at least afford to replace that.

Looking at the CompUSA listing, it appears my other choices are a StarTech or an Adaptec PC Card. My gut instinct is to go with the Adaptec even though it's more expensive. Anyone care to tell me if that's going to be a good idea or not?

Thanks,
Ean

[EwanG]

Actually it turned out Circuit City also had the Adaptec card (much closer to get to), and so I picked that up. Put that in, and my problem went away.

So, +1 for Adaptec and -5 for Belkin.

FYI, the Adaptec box mentions in a couple places that it supports "isochronous" data transmission. I'm guessing that the Belkin doesn't and that this is the explanation for the problem.

FWIW,
Ewan

[EwanG]

Seems I spoke too soon...

Evidently the Adaptec can deal "better" with whatever the underlying problem is, and so was letting me get through larger directories of large files than the Belkin was. However, today I was trying to copy several large directories of large files, and started getting the "Delayed Write Failed" message again.

I now have to think there's a problem with the Toshiba since I don't have this problem on my Compaq desktop. The question then becomes if there's a setting with my Cardbus slot that I need to change, or some weird XP setting somewhere that I'm missing.

I just can't believe that it is this hard to work with a couple of hard drives...

Thanks again for your help. Any ideas on where to go from here would be appreciated.

FWIW, I'm going to return the Adaptec since it was the more expensive card. Figure if I'm going to have problems either way, I should at least have the comfort of saving some money on doing so...