Problem with 2 External Drives on my new iMac

I am having a problem when I daisy-chain a second external HD to my first external HD connected to my new iMac. This is the second external HD I've tried this with, with similar problems arising.
My setup: OS 10.5.6. First external HD: G-Tech Q 1TB; 2nd External HD: also a G-Tech Q 1TB (the first time I was daisy-chaining a LaCie 250GB drive to my first external drive).
Problem: when my second external HD is daisy-chained to the first external HD my system starts to go wonky. I can't force quit apps for one. My system hangs. On reboot I don't get past the blue screen. If I remove the daisy-chain all is fine.
I initially had this problem with another external HD I tried to daisy-chain to the first. Same issue.
I was trying to partition the second external using Disk Utility. When I hit the Partition button, Disk Utility just hung with the beach ball.
When I attached a second external the first time I tried to do this all sorts of havoc ensued. A lot of apps were hanging and I couldn't Force Quit them. The whole system seemed to go wonky.
Can anyone tell me what might be happening here?

I've been doing a bit of research on these boards about daisy-chaining problems and am reading that sometimes daisy-chaining can overwhelm the Firewire bus and even corrupt data. This is what I had experienced the first time I tried to daisy-chain. Someone recommended a powered Firewire repeater (like this: http://tinyurl.com/kl84n5) would be a better solution.
Given I've got only 1 Firewire port on my iMac, what do you think?

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