What
is Firewire?
FireWire was invented & patented by Apple
Computer and was adopted by the IEEE as a standard (IEEE-1394) as a high-speed
high-performance serial bus that can move large amounts of data between computers and
peripheral devices. Current high-speed firewire devices are capable of communicating
at speeds up to 400 megabits per second. Firewire supports Plug-and-Play - simply
plug a firewire device to your computer - without shutting down and without having to open
your computer. Firewire allows you to connect up to 63 firewire devices
simultaneously to your computer. Firewire driver support is built into the latest
versions of the Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 and Apple operating systems - MacOS 8.6 or
higher.
What is the difference between
Firewire, iLink & IEEE1394?
There is no difference. Firewire is the
name used by Apple Computer for the IEEE1394 standard & iLink is used by Sony.
What is the transfer rate with
XtraFire firewire hard drives?
Although the theoretical transfer rate of
firewire is 400 Mbps or 50MB/sec, in "real" use, the 1st generation firewire
drives transferred data at 10-12 MB/sec. The new 2nd generation 911 firewire drives
typically transfer data between 20-25 MB/sec with bursts up to 35MB/sec. The write
speed may be slightly slower, depending on the size & number of files (fewer large
files will be faster than a large number of small files). The 7200 RPM drives
transfer faster than the 5400RPM drives & the access rate for 7200RPM drives is significantly faster.
What are the best applications for
XtraFire firewire hard drives?
Digital Video (7200RPM Drives)
Running Applications
MP3 music files
Backup (faster & more reliable than tape
& cartridge-type backup systems)
Extra data storage
Transferring data from one computer to
another (with "hot-swapping" there is no need to shutdown & reboot systems
when plugging-in the firewire drives)
What are the hard drive
specifications in the XtraFire enclosures?
The 3.5" hard drives used in the XtraDisk
firewire drives are typically Maxtor, IBM, Western Digital or Fujitsu hard drives.
They typcially have the following specifications:
2 MB SDRAM Cache Buffer
MTBF: More than 500,000 power-on hours
As of October 2002, the new 3.5" hard
drives come with a 1 year or 3 year factory-direct warranty.
What are the hard drive
specifications in the XtraFire enclosures?
The 2.5" hard drives used in the XtraDisk
XtraFire Lite drives are IBM, Toshiba, or Fujitsu hard drives with the following
specs:
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