USB 2.0 enclosure vs. firewire enclosure

[ebenton]

Greetings,
I have owned a Bytecc firewire enclosure for over a year now. I installed a Pioneer DVR-109 burner into it a couple of months ago, and it works perfectly, burns at 16X etc.

I recently bought an NEC ND-3540A burner and an external USB 2.0 enclosure made by NEO (NEO N525U2-SL-NEC) Silver box with NEC Chipset. I installed the NEC 3540 into the USB enclosure and used it to burn the backup of a movie. The DVD that it created would play on my computer DVD-ROM and burners, but would not play on either of my set top DVD players. The disk would either endlessly "load" or the player would say it would not be able to play the disk, depending on which standalone player I tried. This was burned with Nero from DVD Shrink.

I then tried burning the files on my hard drive using Nero, to my Pioneer 109 in the firewire enclosure. The resulting disk played perfectly in all my players, including the computer drives.

Then I removed the NEC 3540 from the USB enclosure and removed the Pioneer 109 from the firewire enclosure and installed the NEC into the firewire enclosure. I used Nero to burn the same hard drive files to the NEC in the firewire enclosure. The resulting disk also played perfectly in all players and drives.

Since the USB enclosure also had an issue with a loose AC power connection, I have asked for an RMA and will return it. It was only $24.99 including shipping, but what the hell.

Has anybody noticed any behavior like this with any drives, or especially with NEC? I find it even a little more surprising because the NEO USB enclosure had NEC chips in it.

Anyway, anybody know anything about this?

P.S. Oh yeah, the original disks I tried were TYG02, I also tried some Verbatim (MCC) 16x disks with the same results. And both enclosures have 64-wire ribbon cables.

[dipstick]

I can't comment on burners in external enclosures, I only use internal. But I have an External Hard Drive enclosure that supports both USB 2.0 and Firewire. I can tell you without a doubt that Firewire has a much faster transfer rate (25% faster by my tests) than USB 2.0.

Yes, I know they claim that the transfer rate for USB 2.0 is 480 mb/s and Firewire is 400 mb/s. The reality is that Firewire is faster. I don't know if the speed difference is enough to cause the problems you're having, but it's something to consider.

[budz]

It's a known fact that USB has more compatibility issues than firewire when it comes to using a external enclosure for dvd burners. Using a external enclosure with the PROLIFIC chipset will have more success when using a internal dvd burner. PLUMAX external enclosures are successful when using BENQ internal drives. Do a search in google for PLUMAX

[ebenton]

Thanks, guys,
That's good info to have about firewire vs USB fro DVD burners. I am about half a milli-bleem away from taking the original LG DVD burner and DVD-ROM out of my PC and replacing them with the Pioneer and the NEC. The only reason I haven't yet is because of cosmetics. My Gateway PC has some "special" cosmetically different DVD drive drawer fronts and some sort of "special" case front to show the busy lights on the drives. I just haven't been annoyed enough to do anything yet. I'm about there.

[FulciLives]

I have a 120GB HDD in an external USB 2 enclosure and it works fine for me but I did notice that when I tried to capture to it (using my PCI TV tuner type card using HuffyUV AVI) that I got a drop frame issue.

Otherwise the speed is fine for me when it comes to backing up stuff also I tend to keep a lot of disc images on it until it's almost full then I burn them to DVD (an internal model).

It does not surprise me that FIREWIRE external is faster than USB 2 external ... in my case I went for it due to the low price. It's fine if you don't "need" performance. I guess if you do (like capturing or burning) then you "need" FIREWIRE.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dipstick]

One of the main reasons I bought my HDD Enclosure is for DV capture/transfer for my Laptop, that only has a 40 GIG HDD. The basic idea was to shoot the video, hook up the camera to Laptop via Firewire and from laptop to HDD Enclosure throuh USB2.0.

It works quite well with no dropped frames whatsoever. Of cource DV is only around 25 mb/s, no problem at all for the USB2.0 bandwith. I'm sure that Huffyuv would be another story though.

I'm trying to work out a system to eliminate DV tapes all together and record directly to the External HDD enclosure.