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RED DRIVE Power Cable

Tom.Wong

Tom.Wong

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can anybody recommend a good link. U.S. shipping that they've bought from before with no issues where i can get a power cable for a red drive/red ram? i'm freelance DIT and i'm winding up on a lot of jobs where they are missing the power cable, and i hate being forced to running it off the bus power and shortening the life of the drive...
 
Call up RED and ask them if they will sell you one. I'm sure they will if you ask politely :-)
 
Colin Sheldon said:
Is there any official release from RED that you need to power the drive while it's connected via firewire?
Click to expand...

I can't remember if there was an official release - but you definitely should power the drive when off loading. Many issues in the past. You'll likely burn out your 800 port if you don't.
 
Dylan Macleod said:
I can't remember if there was an official release - but you definitely should power the drive when off loading. Many issues in the past. You'll likely burn out your 800 port if you don't.
Click to expand...

That's news to me.

I've never powered the drives when using firewire when offloading. Someone blew my FW 800 port by daisy chaining. Don't daisy chain.

Can someone at RED verify that power is required when using firewire?
 
I've never powered the drive, and never had any problems - and from a technical perspective that makes sense. The FW800 spec is designed to work with devices that support bus supplied power.

I've heard the rumors, though, but I haven't heard anything official... Sometimes hardware just fails.
 
well being on sets and as a DIT and ensuring maximum safety and integrity of the footage, it's just one of those things where i think, why risk it when i don't have to? if there's a chance i can prevent a short off the FW 800 bus, i'll do it. the power supply is there for a reason, and i find that drives perform a little better off a independant power supply rather then off the bus speed. and when i'm using every port in my macbook pro possible to maximize my offloads, reducing the bus power load really speeds things up too. chalk it up to paranoia, but better then shorting out a drive that one terrible day and all eyes are on me.
 
Is there it is a dangerous amount of time to have your fw 800 connected to your computer (Macbook Pro with internal SSD). (amount of time of footage archived/downloaded or played?)

First I have heard of this as well.
 
i wouldn't say a time issue. i mean i'm sure there are plenty of ppl who worked off bus power no problems since r1 #001, but there have been cases where the fw 800 bus shorts, and can take the drive with it, i've even seen it with normal little passport drives. it takes a good amount of voltage just to give you the throughput over the bus, and by tapping into the bus power too, ur throttling the voltage to its maximum capacity. by adding a power cable solution you reduce the amount of stress on the bus, giving both the drive and the bus a longer shelf life. it doesn't happen all the time, if anything it can be considered rare, but it does happen. so if u have ample power where u are, my mentality is, why even risk it?

probably gonna be 30 bux for me to buy the power supply, and many shoots of peace of mind. it doesn't hurt right?
 
Joseph, some have had problems with the firewire bus on the drives getting "toasted" when using bus power, thus the recommendation that you power it off the AC adapter included with the RED drives... even 1 second is too much if your drive gets zapped.
 
i bought one at radio shack of all places....with multiplug and multi-power choices--one of those power adapters for any fitting and most any power output. I also have my red power adapters, but travel mostly with the radio shack because i can use it for other purposes--drives etc....
 
ericyoung said:
Just make sure any power supply you buy has the right polarity of plug and is a voltage regulated with enough current rating.

See this previous thread about halfway onwards:
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27512&highlight=power+supply
Click to expand...

I might add this: I ALWAYS plug into a voltage regulator first (whether home/office power or boat/genset)...all equipment: computer, drive, monitor etc....Not a surge protector--had those burn up and never work. But a proper voltage regulator. Funny i could not find one last visit to USA and Frys, but have them all over mexico since current is also all over the place from 95volts to 155 volts. Over time they can fry your hardware and they are really good and earn their pay onset when running off a generator.
 
does having a good UPS battery have a built in regulator? I usually have everything plugged into there in case house power or generator goes down...
 
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