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Firewire and Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the how-well-is-it-really-supported dept.

aozilla asks: "I was just at Pricewatch, and I noticed that 80 gig firewire drives are available for only $200. My good old IBM Deskstar just crashed, so I'm in the market for a new hard drive, and I'd love to go with Firewire. External, hot-swappable and the ability to have more than 2 devices without significant slowdown are the main features I'd like on top of what I get from my IDE drives. I'd like to hear from those who have experience running firewire on Linux. How good is the driver support? Is hot-swappability really supported (just umount and unplug, plug and mount)? Are there any recommendations for PCI Firewire cards for Linux? How many drives can reasonably fit before power becomes an issue (I assume the less expensive drives obtain power from the port)? My main goals are capacity, cost, and convenience. Speed is not too much of an issue, and I'm more a fan of automated and explicit backups rather than RAID."

6 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. EPSON Scanners are supported by specht · · Score: 3, Offtopic

    I've never used a FireWire hard disk, but I am using an EPSON Expression1680 scanner that is connected over FireWire. This device is hot-swappable, you just disconnect it, reconnect it and it is still working. I would suspect that disks behave similar as long as they are unmounted.

  2. Try an IDE Controller Card by OneFix · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I recently upgraded to a 60GB Quantum Fireball. I bought the Maxtor Ultra/100 PCI card (made by Promise). What I found was that the integrated controllers on most motherboards are using the CPU more and more for their operations...The processor hit in reverting to the integrated IDE controller is signifigant enough to notice even on a 1GHz system. I don't have benchmarks, but you might try one of these controllers before you switch to Firewire.

  3. Re:Probably hard to boot from by connorbd · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    *slap* Don't steal other people's posts, yeh idgit.

    /Brian

  4. Re:USB question too... by lucifuge31337 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well good luck with that.

    --
    Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
  5. Re:Probably hard to boot from by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    bananjr6000? Oliver Wendell Jones would be so proud!

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  6. Re:Probably hard to boot from by Oliver+Wendell+Jones · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No I wouldn't. The Banana Jr 6000 doesn't have TINT control...

    --
    A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips