Interface Overkill: FireWire Quagmire
Continued from 'Interface Overkill: Analysis Downloads And Additional Results'….
At the end of my print article, I mentioned the initial Windows XP SP2 bug with respect to FireWire support (before continuing, I highly recommend you peruse this Microsoft Knowledge Base document, if you haven't already done so). In the past few weeks, I've asked Microsoft, the 1394 Trade Association, and a number of 1394-based transceiver IC, interface add-in card and storage device vendors two simple questions:
- Has the down-throttle-to-100 Mbps FireWire bug that initially affected XP SP2 been fixed?
- And if so, does it still require the download and installation of an obscure Hotfix, and the subsequent editing of the Windows registry, or was this initial workaround superceded by a more user-friendly Windows Update-delivered patch?
Believe it or not, I still don't have solid answers to these questions. When I did get answers from a given source (several folks never definitively responded to my inquiries), they'd invariably contradict the answers I'd already gotten from others. However, the specific situation described in the Knowledge Base document seems to only affect folks upgrading to SP2 from a prior Windows XP release (my system came preinstalled with XP SP2 from the get-go), and indeed when I perused the registry entries for the ASUS motherboard's built-in Via Technologies 1394a transceiver, as well as those for the two 1394b add-in cards I tested, I found that the SidSpeed entries were all set to '2' (i.e. S400 speed, the default value).
While I was relieved to see that Windows didn't seem to have tried to operate any of the 1394 transceivers in 100 Mbps mode for my testing, I was still concerned that the 1394b add-in cards didn't seem to have been running in their optimum 800 Mbps configurations. Unfortunately, however, I wasn't able to re-test the Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition with SidSpeed at value '3' (S400/S800 speed, i.e. the Windows XP Service Pack 1 value, per the Microsoft Knowledge Base document). At some point in-between when I did my initial testing and when I revisited it, the Maxtor device's drivers had become unstable, perhaps in response to a Windows Update I'd installed, or in conflict with another program or driver suite now on the system.
The OneTouch Manager configuration utility now constantly crashes, even without the Maxtor storage peripheral connected, regardless of which add-in card is installed in the system, and in fact without any add-in card installed. And the OneTouch III Turbo Edition is now delivering performance results much slower than its slowest results of times past, and with none of the across-the-drive-platter speed variation that I previously saw. This situation exemplifies the Achilles Heel of storage implementations whose drivers aren't built into the operating system and thereby maintained by the operating system vendor, a point I also made in my year-ago Ximeta coverage.
In this particular case, reads and writes to the OneTouch III Turbo Edition now have degraded performance but still seem to succeed. However, it's conceivable that some other future conflict between the storage peripheral (and its software driver) and another piece of system-installed hardware or software might render the OneTouch III Turbo Edition (and your important data stored on it) completely inaccessible. And, since this is a proprietary RAID configuration, in this case you likely wouldn't be able to pull a HDD out of the enclosure, attach it to the system in some other fashion and get the data off the drive that way. Instead, you'd be at the storage vendor's mercy (assuming the vendor's even still in business when the conflict occurs!), stuck with an unusable storage peripheral until its drivers get updated.
Based on Maxtor's acquisition by Seagate, coupled with the dearth of driver and other updates for the OneTouch III Turbo Edition on Maxtor's product and support websites, and more generally the lack of support I received from Seagate on this product throughout my testing, going forward I honestly can't recommend the OneTouch III Turbo Edition to my readers. This situation really is unfortunate; the OneTouch III Turbo Edition is a compelling product (from my past writeups you know of my fondness for data-preserving RAID mirroring!), and in its prime it was a solid performer. But the burgeoning capacity of individual HDDs, coupled with continued cost pressure (which favors less complex single-HDD enclosures) and evolving corporate priorities, has seemingly rendered it prematurely obsolete.
One other note on FireWire before I continue: I met with ADS Technologies at NAB, and VP of Business Development Alfred Bantug suggested to me that SidSpeed settings aside, although I'd measured faster performance with the OneTouch III Turbo Edition when connected to a 1394b transceiver versus 1394a, I likely still wasn't running the storage peripheral in its optimum performance configuration. This is because I was relying on the FireWire software stack built into Windows, which according to him is only cognizant of FireWire 400 peripherals. ADS conversely bundles Unibrain's 1394b-supporting UbCore drivers with the PYRO1394B card, a review unit of which I now have in hand. If I'm able to revive the OneTouch III Turbo Edition at some point in the future, I'll retest it with the PYRO1394B and report my findings to you via the blog.
Continue reading with 'Interface Overkill: AMCC Difficulty'….
