[plug] USB2 or FW (digging up an old thread)

[Cameron Patrick]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 09:38:36AM +0400, Brad Campbell wrote:

> Firewire is pretty good now in 2.4 and late 2.6 kernels. Go for an Oxford 
> Semi chip if you can as they are the most solid under linux. (A low of 
> external FW boxes use the Oxford chip)
> 
> If using FW under a 2.4 kernel make sure you grab the patch of 
> linux1394.org to enable effective hotplugging of FW disks. It just works 
> under 2.6
> For large data transfers, make sure serialize_io=1 on the sbp2 driver (It 
> now defaults to that but I'm not sure if the patches have made the official 
> kernel yet).

Thanks for that tip, Brad.  Just used firewire for the first time ever
(choosing it over USB due to vague memories that "someone on PLUG said
it was more reliable") and setting serialize_io=1 looks like it solved
a problem where the drive stopped working after transferring 2GB or so
of data.  For some reason it still doesn't seem to be the default in
new kernels (i.e. 2.6.10)...

Cameron.