LaCie FIREWIRE 800/400 user manual FireWire 800 Ports and Performance

LaCie Biggest Quadra	Technical Information
User Manual	page 46

■7.3.1. FireWire 800 Ports and Performance

To utilize the newly enhanced FireWire 800 per- formances, your computer must be equipped with a FireWire 800 host bus adapter card (either sold sepa- rately, or integrated by your computer’s manufactur- er); these host bus adapter cards include one or more FireWire 800 ports, and you must be running Mac OS

10.2.4and higher, or Windows 2000 or Windows XP in order to achieve FireWire 800 performance and func- tionality.

If you use FireWire equipped peripherals (either the original FireWire standard or the new FireWire 800), one of the easiest and least expensive ways to improve the performance, reliability and value of your system is by installing additional ports. By adding a FireWire PCI/PC card you can isolate fast and slow devices, cre- ate more effective RAID configurations, take full advan- tage of bus-powered devices and protect and increase the overall value of your system.

Not all FireWire devices are created equal; some de- vices support faster transfer rates than others. For exam- ple, DV camcorders deliver data at the slower 100Mb/s and 200Mb/s rates, while hard drives typically deliver data at the 400Mb/s rates. When the devices are daisy- chained (connected to each other and sharing a single port), the devices may be reduced to the transfer rate of the slowest device. With a separate FireWire PCI card,

you can isolate the slow devices to one port, while dedi- cating another port to your high-speed devices.

This principle also has a great effect on the efficiency and performance of RAID 0 striped configurations, where each interface can operate at maximum speed without being affected by the other devices on the same bus. Essentially, by adding an additional PCI card, you create another controller for the data. Instead of hav- ing four drives connected to one port and daisy-chained, with an additional PCI card you can connect two drives to one port, and two drives on a second port on another controller, improving speed by spreading the data over two controllers instead of one.

Also think of an additional FireWire bus as a se- rious way to protect your expensive computer system. If you happen to work in an environment where you frequently share devices with other computers and us- ers, you can inadvertently “blow” a FireWire port, if, for instance, you have a defective cable, or the connector is forced in upside down. Replacing a FireWire PCI/PC card is far less expensive than repairing or replacing an entire motherboard.

Contact your LaCie reseller or LaCie Customer Support for information abut FireWire 800 PCI or PC Cards, or visit our website: www.lacie.com.

Important Info: At the time of publica- tion (Sept. 2006), only Mac OS 10.2.4 and higher, and Windows 2000 and Windows XP, support FireWire 800 functionality, and the IEEE 1394b interface is not a standard feature implemented on the motherboards of all PC-compatible comput- ers.