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LaCie PocketDrive U&I

Don Bradbury looks at an external drive running off either USB2.0 or Firewire

The LaCie PocketDrive comes in various capacities, but the one we got for review was of 20GB size. Diminutive, at only 140 x 85 x 25mm, and soft-cased to cushion shocks, it features, beside the front activation LED, three rear-mounted ports and a mains adapter socket.

The three ports consist of one for USB 2.0 and two for Firewire (aka IEE1394 or iLink). The mains adapter has to be used if the former is employed, though not for Firewire - provided you don’t overload the system.

Two CDs bear the drivers and PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) user manual respectively. The AC adapter, one USB 2.0 and one Firewire cable complete the kit if you ignore the pictorial installation guide. Ignore that you may, for that’s the easy and obvious part. The fun starts after you put that on one side!

The user manual PDF file is verbose, and no doubt adequate once you’ve gone through the installation successfully - aren’t they all? But while one part is incorrect, other directions are unhelpfully omitted, notably critical reboots. Groping best describes the way through the cryptic directions of the LaCie install process, and consequently it might take you rather longer than it should.

Fujitsu drive

The drive itself is actually a Fujitsu MHN 2200AT, though installation, again cryptically, refers to it as HAN:2 TPP10STB. Subsidiary to that is the identifier for the drive, “ID:0 Fujitsu Handled by BIOS”, and it’s this device you have to remember to point to during installation.

Another problem with the PDF file is that the install example cited is unnecessarily complex. The best advice is, just look at your system, take note of the hardware identification given here, follow it, and you should be OK.

After driver installation (for which you have to double click on the TPPINST_5_00 icon), when both USB 2.0 and Firewire installations were ready and hooked up to our Adaptec DuoConnect combo card (one connection at a time, of course) you have to install software called Silverlining98, which is used to partition the drive as you want it and then format the partitions.

This all works, once you’ve sussed what it is LaCie is trying to achieve, but the instructions are rather arcane and somewhat difficult to follow. The PDF file should have been given in print, as most installers will certainly need to refer several times to the instructions, and repeatedly calling up the PDF file is something of a pain.

Performance

However, after that, with everything working well and reporting correctly to both Device Manager and My Computer, we wanted to carry out some file transfer rate measurements, comparing USB 2.0 with a standard USB 1.1 port, and the Firewire link.  

The following table shows the number of seconds required to copy 592MB of data files from a USB 2.0 Maxtor 40GB 3000LE external drive to the 20GB LaCie PocketDrive - which can utilize either USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity, as we said. Relative speeds are shown, and it will be seen that, while USB 2.0 can theoretically operate 20% faster than Firewire, in actual application it can be substantially slower. In this example USB 2.0 transfer is seen to run at only 75% of the speed of the older IEE1394 standard.

Thus, while about four hours were required to copy 11.4GB of files and folders between drives using the USB 1.1 protocol, only 24 minutes were necessary using Firewire, and not a lot longer than that with USB 2.0. That, you can rest assured, is far less taxing on the patience, and is something you’ll value if you do have massive amounts of data to move around.

The factors

Many factors are involved in the transfer of data from one drive to another besides the interlink technology. Although the later is, of course, important, in practice you’ll never see full theoretical data transfer speeds that apply to any particular technology.

According to an Intel spokesman, about 10 to 15% of the theoretical speed of USB 2.0 goes immediately to ‘overhead’, the communications protocol. Next, you have to take into account not yet fully optimized controller chips. Driver writers may also have to get up to speed (literally), and the operating system itself can play a part in reducing throughput.

A LaCie technical spokesman commented on our findings: “While the USB 2.0 standard is theoretically faster than FireWire (480mbps as opposed to 400mbps), in all the cases I am aware of, today's FireWire products still currently outperform USB 2.0”. He was sure that, in time, full implementation of USB 2.0’s higher potential would be realized by both hardware chipset manufacturer’s and software driver writers alike.

In conclusion

The LaCie 20GB PocketDrive works well once you have it installed, but that process might, with advantage to the average user, be made a little more intuitive. USB 2.0 connectivity is certainly worth having, but Firewire can still compete and often excel. You should try both if you have the two types of port available, but look out for updated USB 2.0 drivers if that’s your connectivity option.

Incidentally, take care to dismount these external drives properly before disconnecting them. A Taskbar facility is installed with both the Maxtor and LaCie drives. While USB is a hot-plug protocol, you may possibly damage a controller by forgetting to dismount the drive during trials. You have been warned.

Don Bradbury

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