anyone know stuff about networks and firewire drives?

[beaker]

copying from an external firewire drive attached to a computer over a 100 base-t network of mac g4s is extremely slow (like over an hour for 1GB). it seems to be specific to firewire. copying from the internal or external scsi drive is much quicker (minutes for 1GB). does anyone know why? i don't know where to go to look for help on this kind of stuff.

*cue apple bashing*

 

[Balzz]

Networks, yes. Firewire, no.

 

[Syntax Error]

100 base t - 100 Mbps

firewire- 400 or 800 Mbps

i'm not sure if i understand the problem? 100 base t is always slower than firwire.

 

[H2Whoa]

perhaps the bottleneck is the drive itself?

 

[Isosceles_CAT]

What happens if you try to copy from the firewire drive onto the internal drive first?

 

[beaker]

there is a severe decline in performance over the same network than when copying from an internal or scsi drive. like over 10X as slow. we've tested it through various network paths with different brands of firewire drives. i'm contacting the drive manufacturers to see if they know anything. just wondering if anyone on here has had any experience with the problem.

 

[Isosceles_CAT]

I've never had this problem with firewire transfers FWIW.

 

[Hi i'm God]

I just Got an external firewire HD But I need a Firewire Card for it to work

 

[beaker]

Originally posted by Isosceles_CAT
What happens if you try to copy from the firewire drive onto the internal drive first?

that would solve the problem but it's not suitable for the application i'm trying to create, which is to backup files over a network from a firewire drive attached to the remote computer.

maybe it's the firewire bus on the g4. i'll have to test it out with some other machines.

 

[Isosceles_CAT]

I mean for trouble shooting purposes. This helps track down where the bottleneck is occuring.

 

[beaker]

Originally posted by Isosceles_CAT
I mean for trouble shooting purposes. This helps track down where the bottleneck is occuring.

we've already tried copying the same data from the internal drive. as well as external scsi drives.

 

[Kid Lax]

Originally posted by beaker
we've already tried copying the same data from the internal drive. as well as external scsi drives.

I think he means try copying from the Firewire drive to an internal drive and see if the transfer is really slow. If it fast, then you know the firewire drive isn't the problem and you've eliminated one possiblity.

 

[beaker]

Originally posted by Kid Lax
I think he means try copying from the Firewire drive to an internal drive and see if the transfer is really slow. If it fast, then you know the firewire drive isn't the problem and you've eliminated one possiblity.

oh gotcha! sorry - yeah we did that too in order to ensure we're using the same data. the problem only occurs over the network and only with the firewire drives.