Introduction
page 6
LaCie Big Disk
Manual Updates
LaCie is constantly striving to give you the most up-to-date, comprehensive User’s Manuals available on the market. It is our
goal to provide you with a friendly, easy-to-use format that will help you quickly install and utilize the many functions of your
new device.
If your manual does not reflect the configurations of the product that you purchased, please check our Web site for the most
current version available. You can access our manuals at:
www.lacie.com/support/manuals
1.2 What is FireWire/IEEE 1394?
FireWire is Apple's implementation of IEEE 1394, and is capable of transferring large amounts of data between computers
and peripherals at a high rate of speed. A fast, cross-platform serial bus, FireWire is ideal for use with multimedia
peripherals and high-speed devices such as digital video cameras and hard drives.
Benefits of FireWire include:
• Digital interface: no need to convert digital data into analog for better signal integrity.
• Small, thin serial cable: replaces today's bulky and expensive interfaces.
• Easy to use: no need for terminators, device IDs, screws, or complex setup.
• Hot-pluggable: devices can be added and removed while the bus is active.
• Scalable: the FireWire standard defines 100, 200 and 400Mb/s devices and can support multiple speeds on a
single bus.
• Flexible: the standard supports free-form daisy chaining for peer-to-peer implementations.
• Fast bandwidth: the standard supports delivery of time-critical data which enables smaller buffers (lower cost); also referred
to as isochronous data transfer.
FireWire Icons
These icons will help you easily identify the FireWire interface. They appear on FireWire cables and next to the FireWire port
connectors on certain computers.
FireWire icon
iLink icon
DV icon (IEEE 1394 logo
(Apple IEEE 1394)
(Sony IEEE 1394)
mainly used on digital cameras)
