Granite Digital FireWire 800 Hot-Swap Series - Manual (Page 21)

Granite Digital • 3101 Whipple Rd. • Union City, Ca. 94587 www.granitedigital.com
DRIVE INSTALLATION Page 21
Troubleshooting
3- THE DRIVE DOES NOT RUN AS FAST AS IT SHOULD :
FireWire bus speed is determined by four things:
1- The drive performance level. Faster drives (7200rpm) have higher data
transfer rates and make a difference in speed. Larger buffer size also improves
drive performance.
2- The bridge technology. In this case you have chosen the fastest case
available. Our Hot-Swap System will transfer up to 80MB/s (Megabytes per
second). This is currently faster than the fastest drives on the market (IBM
7200rpm Deskstar's).
3- The computer itself and its FireWire host adapter. The faster the com-
puter the faster its FireWire performance. Also important is the actual PCI
speed that the computer supports. The FireWire host adapter will work faster
with faster PCI speeds. We have also found that the TI (Texas Instruments) host
adapters seem to be the most compatible and fastest.
4- The Operating System. Older Mac OS’s and Windows OS’s do not
perform as well as newer ones. Using the most advanced and recent OS will
offer a dramatic improvement in speed.
4- THE DRIVE DISAPPEARS WHEN I TURN OFF OTHER DEVICES :
FireWire is a serial bus and every device that is daisy-chained together
actually acts as a repeater. When powering down a FireWire device, all the
devices after it will disappear from the computer. The way to eliminate this
problem is by adding a FireWire HUB. The HUB allows each device to be
easily removed and reinstalled at any time without disturbing its neighbors.