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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Non powered firewire cables!

Harry Clark

Harry Clark

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Hi everyone...
Sorry if this is old news. I know there has been a lot of discussion in the past regarding the use of the Red Raid power supply cable to ensure that the Red Raid Drive receives enough power during offloading.
The idea is that most laptops provide barely enough power through the FW 800 bus to power the Red drive, and you run the risk of overloading the bus, shorting out the 800 port on the drive, and generally unstable and slow data transfers.
Many red users, and employees of Red, have posted on the forum here that it is advisable to use the power supply on the drive while offloading footage.
However, the important but missing bit of information in all of these posts is that the FW 800 cable should be a special, NON-POWERED cable. Apparently if you feed the drive bus power AND use the power supply you can cause a surge that can blow the board in the drive.
I recently found this out the hard way... to the tune of a $620 repair. The folks at Red were kind enough to point me to a source for these cables, to prevent this in the future. I had to order the minimum of 10 cables, though, so I will have some leftovers. If anyone is interested in one please PM me. They are $25 each.
But mostly I wanted to share this info so everyone will be careful.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The boys at Red specifically said NON POWERED Firewire cable. Not plug in the power first. Not plug in the FW 800 cable first. Not shake chicken bones and do a voodoo dance.
Brent/ Deanan/ Brian Byrne/ Daniel V./ someone please verify this. Only going by or email conversations about my dead/ repaired drive.
Cheers,
Harry
 
To clarify, the BEST practice is to use a non-powering FW800 cable and the AC power adaptor when offloading from a RED-DRIVE or RED-RAM. This way you only have data and power running on separate channels.

Dusty's method is better than just powering via FW800 (ie, not using the supplied power adaptor AT ALL), sure, but the best is above.

BC
 
Best to contact Red about vendor info.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Last edited:
Brent,

Red needs to start selling non-powered firewire cables then, because no one sells non-powered firewire 800 9-pin to 9-pin cables. Only 4-pin firewire 400 is non-powered.

This must be custom order.


Dusty
 
I'm still totally confused as to why all new Drives and RAMs from RED have not been modified to eliminate the Firewire and USB power connectors on the drive. Then it doesn't matter if we use a powered cable or not and it forces people to use the AC adapter.

@John, this has not been officially documented anywhere, unless they are now including a warning with new drive or RAM purchases. It is, however, old news if you follow the forums regularly. Unfortunately many people do not. I believe it has a sticky notice in the forums around here as well as being mentioned in a few related threads, the tips and tricks thread from Jim, etc.. I think it is mentioned on the order page in the RED store for the RED Drive, but I don't recall for sure.

I agree that RED should be supplying non-powered firewire cables as an option. I've found only a couple vendors to offer such a thing -- special order only, rather expensive and with minimum order quantities. And It's difficult to remove the two power pins from a FW800 cable connector without damaging something else, so that is not recommended.

That said, we use regular powered cables here. Always use the AC adapter, plug it in first, then attach the FW cable to the computer. In more than 2 years, have not had a blown FW connector <knock wood>. The real issue I have had is getting my AC adapters back from rental customers, but I've bitched about that enough in other threads...
 
Jeff,

I have been on Reduser almost every single day since it started, and I missed this.

Red needs to modify the drives. Not expect the rest of the world to change. Luckily I have never had a problem with this, but for anyone who rents their red out this could be a serious problem.


Dusty
 
Yeah this whole thing kind of bites. A very expensive fix. Downtime. Shipping. Yuck.

Had no idea you could avoid this with a specialized cable or different port.
 
Dustin Cross said:
Jeff,

I have been on Reduser almost every single day since it started, and I missed this.

Red needs to modify the drives. Not expect the rest of the world to change. Luckily I have never had a problem with this, but for anyone who rents their red out this could be a serious problem.


Dusty
Click to expand...

Agree if it was critical, then those connections shouldn't even be on the circuit board inside the drives - however, we have thousands of drives already out there, so would be great if RED US, UK, Japan etc have stocks of reasonably priced non-powered FW800, and FW800 to FW400, cables available individually for sale. I can't find one in the UK.
 
Hope I'm not stirring up a hornet's nest here.
Just trying to alert everyone to what I think is a relatively unknown risk.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Brent@RED said:
I will see if that is something we can do.

BC
Click to expand...


Well, this is the first I have heard of this. I feel RED has not informed the user if this is a concern.

Non-powered Firewire cables?? Never heard of them. Never knew I needed them.

Maybe this unknown and hard to find cable would have been a good idea to included with the drive or sell on their website???

Better yet make the drives so they don't have this issue!!


Steve
 
OK, before this becomes a tempest in a teapot, this HAS been discussed before. I've been using this method for a couple of years now. Have even educated folks on set about the practice.
 
Discussed on Reduser does not mean it is documented. I have been on Reduser almost every day since it started and this is the first I have ever heard of non-powered firewire cables being recommended. Tons of stuff gets lost on Reduser and the search here has been broken for a long time.

It is one thing to have alpha software hidden on Reduser, but something like this should be properly documented.


Dusty
 
I agree that there needed to be clarification. When my drive failed on set, and the folks in the RMA department at Red first told me that I should be using such a cable, I was stunned. I felt sure that there had been discussion on the forum about this.
However, the only posts that I was able to find from actual Red employees were ambiguous.
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7676
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10963
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39008&goto=nextnewest
A big thanks goes to Brent and Daniel for clearing it up for me personally. I just wanted to share with the community.
Cheers,
Harry
 
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