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    firewire 800 on m15x vs usb2.0

    Discussion in 'Alienware' started by chr15green, Dec 10, 2008.

  1. chr15green

    chr15green Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi,

    First off I'm assuming the 1394b port is 9-pin firewire 800 on the m15x (if I'm wrong please correct me), but was wondering if anyones used theirs yet? And if so, does it run as fast on vista as it does on a mac? (I would imagine not, but surely considerably faster than usb2.0).

    Now to the main question, I've been looking for a 500GB-1TB external hard drive for a while, and found the WD mybook studio which has a firewire 800 connection. Its only fractionally more expensive than the 'standard' my book, so have been seriously considering it. I know the hdd would have to be reformatted for windows, but was wondering if anyone knew if it ran considerably faster through firewire than usb2.0 in vista (by the looks of reviews it appears to be nearly double that of usb2.0, but thats on mac's).

    Thanks,

    Chris
     
    chr15green, Dec 10, 2008
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  2. t2ppp124

    t2ppp124 Notebook Consultant

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    Righty, As i have found out only in the last few weeks (after getting my new 1394b external HD) vista does'nt actually support firewire 800 ):
    So forget about using it if youre on vista.... But on XP i do indeed believe it works perfectly..

    Tom
     
    t2ppp124, Dec 10, 2008
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  3. chr15green

    chr15green Notebook Enthusiast

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    may have found a solution - some company called unibrain have a firewire800 driver for vista...am about to install it...although I dont have any fw800 devices, so will wait till after xmas to see if it works, will post if it does/doesnt though - watch this space :D
     
    chr15green, Dec 10, 2008
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  4. t2ppp124

    t2ppp124 Notebook Consultant

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    Ah i tried that aswell old bean, no luck for me unfortunately. But if you can get it to work be sure to let me know :)

    Tom
     
    t2ppp124, Dec 10, 2008
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  5. chr15g

    chr15g Notebook Enthusiast

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    Finally got it working thanks to a walk through at:

    http://forum.tcelectronic.com/viewtopic.php?pid=17432

    I'm over the moon at the moment, supprised at how simple it was to get it working, and am getting around 69-70MB/s transfer rate, which seems amazing to me.

    Just to explain...I'm the same person as chr15gr33n - just forgot the logon details to the email adress for this account, have just got that working again, so will probs be using this one most of the time.
     
    chr15g, Jan 17, 2009
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  6. t2ppp124

    t2ppp124 Notebook Consultant

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    Yo Chris,

    I've just tried this also, installing the 'OHCI Compliant Host Controller' does bugger all however i realise that the driver used on that forum is a legacy one (something my driver list does not have)...

    Anyways i just wondered if that was the exact driver you used?

    Tom
    +rep for the update anyways :)
     
    t2ppp124, Jan 17, 2009
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