Firewire enclosure for Sun Blade 1500?

We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
that Firewire works better for this platform.
--
Jeff Wieland

Jeff Wieland <> writes:
>We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
>disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
>amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
>ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
>enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
>I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
>that Firewire works better for this platform.

Not having tested this with a Solaris box, I'll still give you my
favorite FW enclosures which are from OtherWorldComputing.
http://www.macsales.com/

I've found them solid, and they tend to use the best chipsets they can
rather than whatever they found on the market.

A little pricer than some of the bottom end ones, but as I said,
pretty solid overall, and not too bad in cost.

Jeff Wieland schrieb:
> We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
> disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
> amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
> ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
> enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
> I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
> that Firewire works better for this platform.
> --
> Jeff Wieland

Hi Jeff,

if you don't have any strong requirement for going the FireWire route, I
would rather you USB 2.0. The speed difference is rather negligible, but
there were a couple of critical bugs (crashes, and performance issues)
related to Firewire. I am not sure if all of those have been resolved.

Maybe somebody can comment on the situation who already has a firewire
box...

Cheers,
Thomas

In article <h8q3ti$f6o$> Thomas Maier-Komor <> writes:
>Jeff Wieland schrieb:
>> We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
>> disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
>> amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
>> ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
>> enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
>> I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
>> that Firewire works better for this platform.
>> --
>> Jeff Wieland
>
>Hi Jeff,
>
>if you don't have any strong requirement for going the FireWire route, I
>would rather you USB 2.0. The speed difference is rather negligible, but
>there were a couple of critical bugs (crashes, and performance issues)
>related to Firewire. I am not sure if all of those have been resolved.
>
>Maybe somebody can comment on the situation who already has a firewire
>box...
>
>Cheers,
>Thomas

I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for disk
drives on SPARC Solaris 10.
--
Jeff Wieland

On 2009-09-18, Jeff Wieland <> wrote:
> In article <h8q3ti$f6o$> Thomas Maier-Komor <> writes:
>>Jeff Wieland schrieb:
>>> We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
>>> disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
>>> amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
>>> ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
>>> enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
>>> I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
>>> that Firewire works better for this platform.
>>> --
>>> Jeff Wieland
>>
>>Hi Jeff,
>>
>>if you don't have any strong requirement for going the FireWire route, I
>>would rather you USB 2.0. The speed difference is rather negligible, but
>>there were a couple of critical bugs (crashes, and performance issues)
>>related to Firewire. I am not sure if all of those have been resolved.

[ ... ]

> I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for disk
> drives on SPARC Solaris 10.

Well .. I've played with both a 250 GB and a 1 TB SATA drive in
a box which can connect to the computer via FireWire or USB. I've got
the card used in the SB-1500 and SB-2500 in my SB-2000, and while I was
able to create a filesystem on the drives, both of them tend to hang up
when I write a lot of data to them -- such as a TAR image of a ZFS
array. They have hung up badly enough to force reboots of the system
while using FireWire. FireWire is faster than the USB 2.0 (based on
timing creating the filesystem on the whole drive), but it is something
which I have decided is not yet right for the current version (2009/05)
of Solaris 10. I did not bother trying a FAT filesystem, though I seem
to top out with CF cards and Thumb drives at 4 GB, and the OS does not
want to see an 8GB one -- probably a different version of FAT.

FWIW The same 1 TB drive and holder work fine with an Intel-based Mac
Mini, so I don't think that the drive or the enclosure are the problem.
(The enclosure is one of those which have a slot at the top into which
you stick the bare drive.)

I've not gone back to see whether the drive is happier with USB
2.0 instead of FireWire -- I *really* don't like being forced into a
reboot of the system to clear problems. It makes it too much like a
Windows system. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Jeff Wieland wrote:

> In article <h8q3ti$f6o$> Thomas Maier-Komor <> writes:
>
>>Jeff Wieland schrieb:
>>
>>>We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
>>>disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
>>>amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
>>>ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
>>>enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
>>>I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
>>>that Firewire works better for this platform.
>>>--
>>>Jeff Wieland
>>
>>Hi Jeff,
>>
>>if you don't have any strong requirement for going the FireWire route, I
>>would rather you USB 2.0. The speed difference is rather negligible, but
>>there were a couple of critical bugs (crashes, and performance issues)
>>related to Firewire. I am not sure if all of those have been resolved.
>>
>>Maybe somebody can comment on the situation who already has a firewire
>>box...
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Thomas
>
>
> I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for disk
> drives on SPARC Solaris 10.
> --
> Jeff Wieland


Hi,

I'm not sure what info you're looking for, but I have an old Sun Blade
100 that I got awhile ago.

If I recall, after I got it, I wanted to add USB2.0 to SB100, so that I
could use a DVD burner and a hard drive for FLAR archives, and I posted
on this NG and got some suggestions for USB/PCI boards.

That was awhile ago, but I think the recommendation was any board that
used an NEC chipset (not sure), so I found a really cheap adapter with 4
USB 2.0 ports, which worked (and still works) fine with both some hard
drives and an old Sony DVD burner that I have in USB2 enclosures.

I still use the old SB100 once in awhile, but haven't upgraded either
the external burner or the drive (an 80GB Seagate in a 3rd party
enclosure) in awhile. I'd guess that I'd probably need a newer
enclosure if I got something like a 700GB SATA drive ...

Jim

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:44:54 +0000 (UTC)
Jeff Wieland <> wrote:

> I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for
> disk drives on SPARC Solaris 10.

No Firewire experience, but I have used a pair of 250GB USB 2.0 disks
with Solaris 11 snv64 /SPARC under SVM/UFS and a 1TB USB 2.0 disk
with Solaris 11 snv_79a x86 under ZFS without any problems. I've used
the ZFS disk to move large quantities of data to and from the two last
Solaris 10 releases, also without any issues.

--
Stefaan A Eeckels
--
A journalist is someone whose business it is to explain to others
what he personally does not understand -- Alfred Northcliff

> I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for disk
> drives on SPARC Solaris 10.

Hello.
On my Sun Blade 2000 (running Solaris 10), I have connected 2 external
discs, each with 320 GB of space.
The discs are USB from Lacie and are organized in a ZFS mirrored pool (so
the total space is "only" 320 GB).

I can say that I'm satisfied because they work well but for some reason that
I couldn't clearly
identified, I had to use TWO different USB 2.0 additional cards.

In fact, when I tried to connect both the two discs to the same card I had
many i/o errors (that usually leaded to rebuild one device).
Anyway, I never lost my data since one device was always available to
rebuild the mirror.

At present, with two cards, all works very well (both for data-integrity and
for speed).

Hope this helps.

Kind regards.

Jeff Wieland wrote:

> I'd like to hear from someone who's used Firewire and/or USB 2.0 for disk
> drives on SPARC Solaris 10.
> --
> Jeff Wieland

Though it's not quite what you were asking for, have you considered a
hardware sata to scsi converter and run scsi to the machine.

May be mistaken, but still feel that usb and firewire (perhaps less so)
are not quite ready for prime time in terms of data reliability, while
scsi is a very well proven interface. This is from experience with
windows, where you would expect the usb or firewire interfaces to be a
most mature and well developed. Everything here runs scsi or fc and it
just works...

Regards,

Chris

Hi,
Jeff Wieland wrote:
> We've got some spare 700GB SATA drives around that came out of a
> disk array that was upgraded, and since I sometimes need large
> amounts of disk space on my Sun Blade 1500, I was thinking about
> ways to use one of them. Can anyone recommend a Firewire disk
> enclosure that's known to work on a Sun Blade 1500 with Solaris?
> I know that USB should work too, but I've seen some comments
> that Firewire works better for this platform.
> --
> Jeff Wieland
I have had trouble with Firewire disk a couple of years ago to Maxtor
drives, but if the problem was on the Maxtor Firmware or Solaris I can't
tell.

Now I use LSILogic SAS/SATA HBA, works perfectly so I would really
recommend adding that to your SB1500 inside the chassis, I have that on
a Blade 2500 and a 1500, screwed to the bottom of the chassis, not
cables or other stuff outside the WS.

/michael