External Firewire Storage: Welland ME-740U2F vs Nspire Sil 352C 3.5" USB/1394
- From: gordonmcdowell@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 11 Feb 2006 20:23:52 -0800
I had some trouble hooking up an external firewire drive enclosure to a
WinXp (Sp2) machine recently. I figure at least some people reading
this forum are using PCs, and might one day use an external firewire
storage solution. Hopefully this will help someone.
A month ago I bought a Welland ME-740U2F external drive enclosure, and
a 300GB drive for inside it. While it formatted correctly on my
machine, and APPEARED to be stable, it was never 100% stable. I tried a
different drive, same results. Not immediately of course... it would
sometimes take days for errors to appear. But they always did (I was
rendering a video file to the drive so it was seeing constant heavy
use).
Eventually found postings detailing trouble people were having with
WinXp and certain external drive enclosure's chip sets.
In short... I could never get Welland ME-740U2F to become reliable with
either of my 2 PCs.
I replaces the enclosure with a Nspire Sil 352C 3.5" USB/1394, which
has been run flawlessly (with the same HD) for one month now.
If you are buying an external firewire drive enclosure for a PC, I
would recommend avoiding Welland ME-740U2F or at least running the 1394
Delayed Write test (see link below) and WHILE it is running, launch
Nero. If you get an error, then (in my estimate) you have an unstable
combination of OS/drivers/firmware... something in there is going to
cause you grief.
The problem did not rear its head immediately for me, but once it did,
it cost me plenty of corrupted video footage, and man-hours trying to
isolate the issue.
Some tech details of how and what I found follow, in case its of use to
any one.
-Gord
http://opensourcevideo.blogspot.com/
---
External Firewire Enclosures:
- Welland-740U2F (recognizes up to 500GB drives)
- Older 5.25\" Firewire enclosure (recognizes up to 120GB drives)
Firewire adapters:
- Dynex DX-FC202 (CardBus)
- Dell Inspiron built-in (device manager says Texas Instruments 1394
compatible)
Laptops:
- Toshiba Satellite Pro (uses Dynex 1394 CardBus card)
- Dell Inspiron 5100 (has built in 1394)
I experienced data loss on my Toshiba, and exchanged a 300GB drive
thinking the drive was unstable. I experienced data loss again with the
replacement drive.
The following website...
http://www.bustrace.com/delayedwrite/index.htm
....has followed this issue, and bustrace has written "1394 Delayed
Write Stress Tester"...
http://www.bustrace.com/downloads/free_utilities.htm
I can not create the error strictly with the stress-tester, as it still
happens too infrequently. But by launching Nero ("Nero Burning ROM")
while the test is running, I can cause the test to fail. I've tried 3
different versions of Nero 6 (including the latest 6, although I have
not tried any 7 verisons yet), and they all cause the test to fail. I
don't have to burn anything, just launch Nero before the test is
complete.
This error occurs on both Laptops (so that covers 2 different 1394
adaptors). This error occurs with either my new 300GB drive in the
Welland-740U2F enclosure, or an old 10GB drive.
This error does NOT occur on EITHER machine, with EITHER drive when I
move the drives into my old 5.25" firewire enclosure.
I know I've experienced data loss with the Welland enclosure, and I
didn't have to launch Nero to do so the 1st time (it took 1 week of
constant HD use for it to happen 1st time). With the 2nd 300GB hard
drive, I'm sure it WAS the launching of Nero which caused my data loss.
I don't know why Nero causes it, but I suspect its a useful way of
detecting whether a firewire enclosure is suseptible to "delayed write
failure".
At some level its probably due to an error in WinXp. So I'm notFrom what I've read about this issue, Mac users don't suffer from it.
suggesting these devices shouldn't be sold at all.
In my case, it appears the Welland enclosure combined with WinXpSp2 is
responsible for:
- 2 lost video projects
- 1 exchanged (perfectly good) 300GB drive
- lots of wasted time
....which might surface for other users more slowly depending on how
much less demanding they are on their hard drives.
I went to a different store, they carried a firewire enclosure by a
different manufacturer. The salesman let me open one up, put in my
300GB drive, and run the combined "1394 Delayed Write Stress Tester" +
Nero to see if it generated an error. It did not. Night and day, same
procedure ALWAYS generated an error with the Welland enclosure.
I bought the Nspire enclosure, and have not had a single drive error
since.
Nspire enclosure (as advertised by OEM Depot):
http://www.oemdepot.com/Itemdesc.asp?CartId={651CC1D6-AC18-4353-BD4C-098FE657D4FA}&ic=USBNSP%2D352C&Tp=
Welland enclosure (as advertised by Memory Express):
http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=EmbedProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5119&SID=
.
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