1394

Question

My system has four IDE devices. One of them is the original hard drive that came with my XPS B1000r. I have only one PCI slot open and have decided for now not to use it. In order to add any more hard drive capacity (aside from replacing the 40GB drive there now), I have seen advertisements for external 1394 drives from Maxtor. I have three 1394 ports factory installed, but have read the warning from Dell that these are 'only for digital video and have not been qualified to work with any other devices'. So the question is: has anyone tried one of these external 1394 drives? If not, has anyone seen any reviews in any of the magazines? It seems like a good way to go, given that 1394 is a pretty fast bus.

larsknox · Answer

I have tried a 60GB external Maxtor using the 1394 on the 8600c. My 1394 port stopped working about 3 days after I received my 8600c and has been sent back for repairs (again, sigh).

However, the external drive functioned very well while the 1394 port was working.

I believe that USB2.0 is now faster than the 1394 port so you might want to check out external drives using USB2.0 -- PLUS, the 1394 on the 8600c has a fairly flimsy connector, the 4-pin firewire connectors are the PITS to use. I think that USB is much easier to connect and disconnect.

Just my humble opinion.

Storage, Drives & Media

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