Problem with XM2 and Firewire-HD

[Chris Fangio]

Hi there,

I have two external harddrives connected to my PC, a 160GB Maxtor and a 250GB WD. One is connected via USB 2.0, the other one via Firewire. Everything is running ok as long as my XM2 isn't connected. If I switch on the cam, the HD connected via Firewire gets disconnected from the PC. I changed the HD setup and connected the other HD (both HDs have USB and FW ports) via Firewire but the problem remains the same.

The Firewire PCI-card appears as a NEC-compatible OHCI compliant adapter in the device manager. Is anyone else experiencing the same problems with HDs connected via firewire? Is the only solution to power off the PC, connect or switch on the XM2 an boot again? I alway thought that FW is hot-pluggable?

Any help is appreciated,
Chris

[Jeremy Davidson]

Do you have the firewire hard drive and XM2 daisy-chained, or are you running two cables straight to the PCI card?

I have one dual-interface drive currently wired via firewire on my PC. I'm pretty sure I've captured to it from my Canon Optura camera, but I don't think I've tried my GL2 yet. I haven't used the firewire pass-through port on the drive (both drive and camera go straight to the card).

Am I understanding correctly that the drive won't work again until you reboot? I suppose the chipset being used by the hard drive enclosure could affect its compatibility with other devices, but I don't know which ones are good or bad. What happens if you hook up both drives via USB?

[Chris Fangio]

Hi Jeremy, thanks for your response.

I tried connecting the devices directly to the two-port-fw-card as well as daisy-chaining them. The results were the same, the HD gets disconnected.

The drive works again if I unplug its power cable or the firewire cable and connect it again, even without rebooting. Then everything is ok, even with the XM2 connected.

So, this is the normal procedure: I work with one HD connected via FW, the other one via USB. If I have to capture with the XM2 and I connect it via FW and switch it on, the HD connected via FW gets disconnect. I have to unplug the HD as described above and switch it on again (no rebooting neccessary). Then everything is ok and I can capture from the XM2 to the HDs (even to the FW-HD without problems). If I boot up with the XM2 already connected, no problems occur.

It doesn't matter which HD is connected via FW, the problem remains the same so I doubt that it's the chipset of the HDs.

Connecting both HDs via USB causes a heavy load on the USB bus which affects my 20-channel-soundcard (dropouts and bad performance), so this is not a good solution for me.


Chris

[Ian Stark]

Hi Chris,

I had a similar problem with two WD 250Gb firewire/USB2.0 combo drives. At first I had them both connected via firewire.

As soon as I moved data from the camera via firewire to either the external drives or the internal drives the externals stopped responding.

I did some research and discovered that the Canon hogs the firewire bus and doesn't release it. When this happens the WD's just give up and assume the connection is lost (that's as technical as I can get, I'm afraid!). I believe I found something that supports this on the WD support pages (sorry, I don't have the URL).

So, looks like the Canon is the culprit here.

I'm afraid my only remedy was to buy a 2 port USB2.0 and 2 port firewire PCI combo card and run the drives off USB2.0. That, of course, doesn't help you much.

This all worked great for me until two days ago when one of the WD drives died! But that's another story . . .

I'd be interested to find out if you can sort this issue out. Can you let us know how you get on?

Good luck!

[Jeremy Davidson]

Like Ian said, a second Firewire interface would probably fix this. You might even be able to run both HD's off of one card that way (with the camera wired to its own card). I picked up mine for $20 on ebay.

Speaking of hardware issues, if I use my FW card and PCI modem at the same time, my Mark of the Unicorn audio interface goes berzerk. How's that for weird?!

Ian, your WD drive crashed?! I'm doomed -- I've got about four of them.

[Ian Stark]

<Ian, your WD drive crashed?! >

Yup. Not happy.

The drive spins up then clicks a few times and stops spinning. Device Manager says the USB device is not recognised.

I was quoted around £450 for data recovery! I'm just leaving it on the desk for a day or so because I KNOW that when I come to plug it in again it will work perfactly OK. Isn't that how these things work?

Oh, and before I'm berated by everyone for not backing up, that was what I was in the middle of doing when the drive died. I was moving a whole load of data around and onto the drive ready for a mammoth back up session!

Sucks.

[Chris Fangio]

This is what I found on the Maxtor support pages. It seems like the GL1/XM1 and most likely also the GL2/XM2 are NOT OHCI compliant...

Here's the original text by Maxtor:

Question:
Are there any known conflicts with other 1394 based devices?


Answer:
Yes. It is recommended that you check either the hardware or software manufacturer’s website for the latest, updated information regarding known issues. Here are some of the known issues that Maxtor is currently aware of with PC, MAC and both system platforms.

PC:
1. Millennium/2000/XP has known issues with non-OHCI devices working in the operating system. If you have OHCI devices & non-OHCI devices in the system that are not working properly, remove the non-OHCI device and see if it works.

MAC:
[...] I removed this section.


Both Platform's:
1. The Canon GL1 DV camera is NOT OHCI compliant, and will NOT work on our 1394 PCI card. To use this camera and the Maxtor 1394 external storage it is recommended to put both 1394 PCI cards into the system and attach the units to their own card.

References: http://support.microsoft.com/ Q266103 IEEE 1394 SBP-2 Storage Device Does Not Work