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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 :)

Is anyone else losing the Firewire 800 port on their Red Drives?

I haven't lost mine yet, but I do plug them in when the computer is on. Is that more likely to cause damage? Should I make it a practice to plug in drives with the computer off?

Hey Jarred, can I turn in my red drives with my camera when i get the upgrade? I'd rather not have my drives fail during a shoot.
 
ChristopherKenworthy said:
We unmounted the drives, but didn't switch the camera off and still lost three FW800 ports. Eventually, we resorted to switching the camera off, but I found that very frustrating, as it broke our rhythm. However, we never lost a FW800 once we started doing that.
Click to expand...

Hmm...interesting, so is this where the firewire 800 is getting fried? On the camera rather than at the DIT station (I hadn't considered that). So is this what Red would recommend to us (i.e. power the camera down before removing the Red Drive rather than unmounting it while the camera is on)...HELLOOooooo, Red...is there anybody out there......out there....out there...????
 
Okay, here's a clue. . .

We've lost the FW800 port on one of our drives, and until just reading this thread, I assumed it was my fault!

We have NEVER attached our drives to the camera, only using them as our download waystation for our footage. We attach a Lexar CF reader to our computer via FW800, and now have to go FW800-to-FW400 cable from the Lexar CF reader to the drive. The FW800 port still works on our other drive. Whatever is frying them isn't related to the camera.

And to tell you the truth, I don't notice much difference in speed between 800 and 400, anyway. Maybe it's just me, but they seem about the same.

Stephen
 
Hi Stephen,

Just to be clear I'm talking about the firewire 800 port on the Red Drives - are you talking about firewire 800 ports on 3rd party, back-up hard drives? By the way you should definitely notice a difference between fire 400 & 800!

Cheers,
 
Lacie support said that daisy chaining sometimes causes problems with their FW ports when talking to other drives.
 
Burning out firewire ports is not an uncommon problem. Apparently, it only takes the tiniest variation of voltage to do so.

For firewire 400 I use a firewire cable that does not pass any power to protect my equiipment.

Rob
 
Are you guys using the power adapter when you plug them in to your computer. I think that bus powering them can kill the port. Its a good idea to put a sticker or tape on the drive that says something to the effect of: USE AC POWER ALWAYS!!!
 
We always use the power adaptor for the Red Drive but where can you get firewire 800 cables that don't pass any power? That seems like a sensible idea...
 
This quote from the FWdepot link explains it now:
"The 1394b FireWire Isolator cable allows you to hot-swap devices as it does not pass buss power. In addition, FireWire Depot noted that it can be used to find out bad cables in a FireWire chain.

The cable is intended to prevent charges from bad cables travelling up a FireWire chain by simply not passing any bus power through to devices. The FireWire spec provides bus power so that (some) devices do not need an external power supply, but a bad cable can ruin a device."
 
ChristopherKenworthy said:
We unmounted the drives, but didn't switch the camera off and still lost three FW800 ports. Eventually, we resorted to switching the camera off, but I found that very frustrating, as it broke our rhythm. However, we never lost a FW800 once we started doing that.
Click to expand...

It seems that hot-swapping the drive on the camera is exactly when we lost our FW400 port.
 
How do you know that you didn't lose the ports when you plugged it into the computer?

Looks like the power isolation cables aren't on the website anymore.
 
Ariana said:
How do you know that you didn't lose the ports when you plugged it into the computer?

Looks like the power isolation cables aren't on the website anymore.
Click to expand...

You're right, I don't know for sure. But it worked perfectly until the ONE TIME I hot swapped it on the camera. And then no more FW400. Could be coincidence, but at the time, I wondered about the hot swapping connection, and now reading about others' experiences, it seems there's a chance that the connection is real. Anecdotal evidence only, however.
 
Reading about all the other drive brands and camera brands that have been losing ports, I'm inclined to think it's a fundamental firewire problem.
 
http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=3054&highlight="fried+firewire+port"&page=2

"Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a technical guy from Kramer Electronics. I was interested in obtaining the PT-1FW, but wanted some more insight.

His response was - "if you want to protect your equipment, do NOT HOT PLUG FIREWIRE". (btw this I have also seen this stated in a few firewire device manuals now that I'm looking for it). "Firewire is a bad design, and is prone to having the wrong sequence of pin connections burning out devices - so if when you plug in the angle isn't quite right, you are asking for trouble"
"
 
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