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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."

9 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Aww shit by SlaveTroll · · Score: -1, Troll
    peace my nigga

    well back to workin in the fields

  2. Re:Aww shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    No, you didn't get the first post. You suck ass.

    - The AC Avenger!!!!!

  3. you know what? by forkspoon · · Score: -1, Troll

    fuck slashdot, that's what. I had a thoughtful comment on the subject, and it gave me this lameness filter shit, then i pressed back and it erased my form data! that shouldn't happen, learn to program cowboys! and as for the lameness filter, LOOK AT THE OTHER COMMENTS ON THIS TOPIC. christ, mine would've been the first that had anything constructive to say.

  4. Re:a lot of info is available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    That link is Slashdotted. Try this mirror.

  5. Go with USB 2.0 by All+Dead+Homiez · · Score: -1, Troll
    Firewire has some neat features, to be sure. Hostless operation can be extremely useful. But if you're really interested in performance and reliability, I'd recommend USB 2.0 in a heartbeat. I have used both types of peripherals and found that most of the time, USB (even 1.0) hard drives and CD writers outperform their FireWire equilvalents. You don't need a special card and you don't need to pay the Apple tax for USB. And the Linux support for USB is far more refined than the Linux support for FireWire (although I'd imagine this is probably just because USB users outnumber FireWire users by a factor of 10:1).

    Just my 2c...

    -all dead homiez

  6. Re:My experience: Not good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This is a known problem with the Linux i/o driver model. Patches are available to help the problem, but Linus refuses to make them official, since it doesn't address the underlying problem, that linux sucks.

  7. Re:Aww shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Quick question: how do you fit all that stuff up your ass?

  8. Suprise! by iota · · Score: 0, Troll

    Maybe you've never heard of an old technology called SCSI (yeah, you IDE kids even know what it stands for?) but it's worked with Linux and even better OSes (*BSD, solaris, irix, etc) even longer than IDE has.
    You say you want "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.", well SCSI has had all of that for 15 years. Plus, it is faster than firewire, more time-tested, and there are more people making parts that work with SCSI than firewire.
    Maybe you should check it out. Just because you saw an ad for Firewire in Windows magazine doesn't mean it beats the best interface that has ever been -- SCSI.

    jason

  9. Re:a lot of info is available by Jeff+Probst · · Score: 1, Troll
    The data which you quickly and easily restored from backup?
    Jesus saves, but only Buddha takes incremental backups.

    as seen on IRC