[X4U] Firewire 800

[Michael Winter]

On Apr 1, 2009, at 9:45 AM, James Hurley wrote:

> Of course I will lose the advantage of the 800 speed of the Mini.  
> Any advice on whether I should bite the bullet and cough up the  
> dough for an 800 firewire HD?
>
> LaCie has a 1T HD on sale for $149 which allows for both 400 and 800  
> firewire speeds.

I'd check the specs on whatever drive mechanism is actually in the  
LaCie drive to see if it is even capable of delivering data fast  
enough to "saturate" a Firewire 400 bus. My (probably out of date pre- 
SATA) recollection is that most drive mechanisms can't even saturate a  
FW400 bus. I ran through the specs when Firewire 800 first came out  
and FW800 only delivered better performance if that 800 Mbps bandwidth  
was being used by more than one device at the same time. That could  
happen if you had multiple drives (or other devices) operating at the  
same time on the same bus. For example, some multiple-drive enclosures  
with the proper RAID configuration could "saturate" a FW800 bus.

Maybe others on the list will have more up-to-date info than I do. But  
at the very least I'd check the specs before purchasing to see what  
the drive can actually deliver.

-Mike