Firewire H.D.'s 1

[pavNell]

Hi, I've got two external firewire hard drives daisey-chained together. I would like to copy everything from one to the other. Using Linux, I invoke the command,
cp -vR /mnt/fireDrive1/* /mnt/fireDrive2

This works, but at a snails pace. I mean REALLY slow!!

I noticed that while doing this, there is almost no load on my cpu. I'm thinking that copying lot's of data on daisey-chained devices is the issue. Perhaps plugging in the second external HD into a different firewire port.

Anyone have ideas or suggestions?

 

[bcastner]

The problem is the IDE bus that sits behind the ATA connection. When you daisy chained the drives they are running of a single IDE interface controller that is single threaded.

The IDE controller only permits 1 operation at a time, so you get a read to drive A, a write to drive B, etc.

Putting the drives on seperate ports where each will use its own IDE hard drive controller as master should work fine.

 

[franklin97355]

bcastner: "firewire"

 

[bcastner]

franklin97355,

Thanks.

But the principle remains. The fireware is a connection to an IDE bus controlling the drives.

 

[franklin97355]

bcastner: do the ports on a firewire card connect to the same connection or do each connection have it's own?

 

[pavNell]

Thanks a lot for the response bcastner. I'll give it a try. Will post a response tomorrow with results.

 

[Kofy]

the you would probably get the files copied faster by pulling them onto your internal HD and then moving them back out to the external you want them on.. as the firewire controller is making the files LEAVE the old drive.. got THROUGH the circuits to middle drive then OUT of Middle Drive INTO Controller in PC then back OUT of PC and then back INTO the Middle HD to its new location. I dont see a way around this..

 

[bcastner]

Franklin, Kofy others,

The existing IDE interface is actually parallel ATA. The newer serial ATA maintains register and software compatability with the older standard.

Usually there is on chipset per ATA port. Like its parallel ATA cousin it is capable of DMA level 5/6, and supports lower DMA levels and well as PIO.

The controllers are bus-mastering devices, and in DMA mode would not require anything other than the PCI bus to accomplish their transfers.

 

[pavNell]

FYI, plugging ext. drive 2 into another port on the same card made no difference. Plopping down $20 and installing another firewire card did the trick. I appreciate all of the feedback. Thanks a lot!!
M