Haywire firewire

[Josh Bass]

I was capturing today (or thought I was), and I come back to find that my firewire drive is having weird issues, and nothing actually got captured. I close out 4 or so error message windows, and wonder, "did I somehow fill up my drive?" I go to my computer/G (that's the firewire drive), and select properties to check the amount of disk space used/available.

Then I get a message telling me there is no drive in this device, or some gibberish, and it says "0 bytes used, 0 bytes free"), and I think "dear God no," and then close out the firewire icon and turn off the drive (it's external). I turn it back on, and everything's fine.

What the hell happened here?

One thing I noticed is that when I came back to check the capture progress, the power light on the XL1s was blinking 'cause of a low battery. Is there some way that the low battery message might have. . .like. . .um. . .surged back and thrown the firewire drive out of whack or something?

[Rob Lohman]

1. which OS are you using

2. what type of drive, brand, size, speed etc.

3. how where the camera and drive connected

4. it would help what those error messeges where, most probably it was something along the lines of a "defferred write error"

It doesn't sound too good. BUT, it could also just have been a
fluke. Did you have your camera connected through your drive?
That sometimes gives similar problems (and dropped frames) for
some reason.

[Josh Bass]

. which OS are you using

Win XP pro

2. what type of drive, brand, size, speed etc.

Lacie 80 GB external firewire drive

3. how where the camera and drive connected

Camera connected to firewire drive via firewire cable, drive connected to computer via firewire cable to a firewire card on the computer

4. it would help what those error messeges where, most probably it was something along the lines of a "defferred write error"

Don't remember.

This hasn't happened since.

[Rob Lohman]

Probably just a fluke then. If you want to be more safe I would
connect the camera and drive to a seperate firewire card if you
can. This isolates them from eachother. If you daisy-chain them
or put them on the same card (if it has more than 1 slot) such
devices see eachother and can interfere (I could not capture
in such a daisy-chained fashion on my old laptop for example,
haven't tried on my new one).

My external drive has USB2 as well so I have it hooked up in
that fashion since my laptop only has one firewire port to which
I hook up the camera.

Anyway if it works again....

[Josh Bass]

So you're saying two separate firewire cards? Interesting. . .I don't think I have any slots left, though.

[Rob Lohman]

That's what I'm saying indeed. If you don't have any slots left
you can try to get a bigger firewire card if your current one only
has one slot.

[Josh Bass]

Actually, the one I have has two ports. I just never thought of doing anything but hooking my camera right up to the firewire drive, but I guess trying it the other way couldn't hurt.