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K-9
The Merovingian
Joined: Mar 15, 2006
Posts: 571
Location: U.S.
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 Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:03 am Post subject: |
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No firewire is defintely not cool. I missed that one.
they try to go forward and they seem to go backward. |
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MacRat
Sake Horner
Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 364
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:43 am Post subject: |
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| ovvldc wrote: | | But Apple has swtiched it iPods over from FW to USB 2 or 3 generations ago |
Exactly.. And it takes FOREVER to update the data on the iPods because of this.
USB is dog slow compared to firewire. |
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Lorinda
Captain Mifune
Joined: Jun 20, 2006
Posts: 2051
Location: Midwest, USA
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 6:59 am Post subject: |
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And what about Time Machine? If I understand correctly, it requires either a Firewire drive or Time Capsule. I have seen some reports that other drives hooked up to a wireless network will work, but that seems "unofficial." So if you purchase a new Macbook sans firewire, you're essentially required to purchase Time Capsule if you want to use Time Machine?
Or am I missing something here?
Lorinda |
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MacRat
Sake Horner
Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 364
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:23 am Post subject: |
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I just plugged in the USB jack from my quad interface enclosure and Time Machine will use USB drives for backups.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL1K/
Also, a later update of Leopard allows Time Machine to work over file sharing mounts from another Mac.
The built in Gigabit ethernet is faster than USB anyway. |
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Lorinda
Captain Mifune
Joined: Jun 20, 2006
Posts: 2051
Location: Midwest, USA
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:34 am Post subject: |
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Ah, I had forgotten about file sharing mounts!
And I didn't know about USB drives working.
Thanks for allaying my fears. We're anticipating buying a new Mac next spring--potentially a MacBook--and I was concerned about how I was going to make Time Machine work if I opted for a firewireless MacBook. Of course there's still the issue of being able to hook up my parents' MiniDV camcorder....
Lorinda |
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MacRat
Sake Horner
Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 364
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:05 am Post subject: |
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Get the white MacBook now!  |
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yoxi
Cipher
Joined: Sep 07, 2004
Posts: 1799
Location: Dawlish, Devon
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:21 am Post subject: |
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But... it's all so 20th century - when are we going to get eSata ports on our portable macs?  I'm just getting an eSata expresscard (yes, girlfriend just broke up with me, not moving to Scotland now, needed some technocomfort as I'm not allowed sugar/alcohol), things should speed up a lot now on the backups front but as far as I know you can't boot from a drive on an expresscard...
- padmavyuha |
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MacRat
Sake Horner
Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 364
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:48 am Post subject: |
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Have you used eSATA?
Not exactly user friendly as a plug-n-play interface. |
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yoxi
Cipher
Joined: Sep 07, 2004
Posts: 1799
Location: Dawlish, Devon
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:28 am Post subject: |
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I'm about to find out, one way or 'tother. I'm running out of room on my MBP's 120Gb drive, so I'm getting a much bigger one to replace it (cue much fooling around with tiny, tiny screws) - and the knock-on effect of this is that I need a much bigger backup drive! So I've plunged in and ordered a 1Tb 4-way drive (it has FW800/400, USB2, and eSata) so I can do very speedy backups (and access the data I'm storing on the backup drive) but can also boot from it fast via FW800. I may even be able to boot straight from the expresscard, depends on the chipset, apparently. This is all to do with starting to make music and stop-frame animation, and needing room for all that crap I generate in the process...
- padmavyuha |
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:10 am Post subject: |
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| MacRat wrote: | | ovvldc wrote: | | But Apple has swtiched it iPods over from FW to USB 2 or 3 generations ago |
Exactly.. And it takes FOREVER to update the data on the iPods because of this.
USB is dog slow compared to firewire. |
To quote a famous person, "It's the speed, stupid"
Smokey
_________________
"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki |
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ovvldc
Captain Naiobi
Joined: Sep 13, 2004
Posts: 2352
Location: Zürich, CH
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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| rob_06 wrote: | | The migration assistant works with usb drives rather well. |
I checked that, it is not a new issue. As of the MacBook Air (not blessed with a great number of ports either), you can migrate over WiFi and Ethernet as well..
They updated the migration assistent some time ago to make this possible.
Best wishes,
Oscar |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: |
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Yeah there are some nice "quad-interface" drives out there now  With one of those you're covering all bases!!
I think the biggest thing is that I have yet to see any type of FireWire device bridge, either USB->FW or Ethernet->FW. There are some Ethernet->USB bridges Keyspan makes that actually work surprisingly good, but of course don't solve the issue. The only solution I can think of is to use one of the PC Card (or whatever they're calling them, ExpressCard?) FireWire adapters, but the metal MB doesn't have that option either.
In theory USB2 is 480mbs while FW400 is, well, 400mbs. In practice, though, I don't think I've seen USB2 be faster than FW400 for sustained data transfers. I suspect there may be some type of overhead in the USB protocol itself that's taking up more bandwidth. Maybe it may be the adapter itself...after all keyboards are USB so if it's on the same bus every time you type the data transfer has to be interrupted from the drive, etc.
ed |
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yoxi
Cipher
Joined: Sep 07, 2004
Posts: 1799
Location: Dawlish, Devon
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, USB2 still does fairly constant device polling (one of its overheads) - they're getting rid of that in USB3, which should be around 10 times as fast (and still backwards compatible). Meanwhile, FWS3200 is coming along! And so it goeth on...
- padmavyuha |
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yoxi
Cipher
Joined: Sep 07, 2004
Posts: 1799
Location: Dawlish, Devon
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:23 am Post subject: |
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eSata drive & expresscard are banging along now! Blimey it's quick...
There are no eSata interfaces for macbooks that allow for bootable drives (because the expresscard drivers aren't loaded early enough in the startup), but my drive has FW/USB for that too. And it's quiet!
- padmavyuha |
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