Chaining firewire drives

Ok not sure where to ask this so I'll start here.
My Mac mini has the "square" firewire port which I connected that to a small "MiniMax" external. All is well, I see the MiniMax on my desktop. But how do I "chain" from the MiniMax now? I've plugged wires from another Lacie hard drive to the back of the external MiniMax and nothing shows up. I've restarted, turned off the drives in different sequence, etc, nothing is allowing the other drive to be visible/mount. What am I missing here? Thanks

Answered my own question. The MiniMac is a usb connection to the Mini. Dah. So I just reversed the plugs and all is well now.

Similar Messages

Can't daisy-chain Firewire drives reliably from 1-port Powerbook. Hub??

I have found that I cannot get a daisy-chained Firewire drive to mount more than 50% of the time. This problem doesn't happen with Tiger with the same drives. I have tried 4 different brands of late-model Firewire drives (Iomega, Smartdisk, Maxtor, and Seagate) with different cables and what happens is that a drive that is directly attached to the 12" Powerbook will mount, but the second chained drive fails to mount a majority of the time. Since I only have one Firewire port, this is preventing me from using more than one drive at a time, and I lost two Firewire drives to corruption today. Three out of four partitions lost contained bootable backups of Leopard and Tiger. Ouch!
This issue could prevent from using Leopard with my Powerbook, which is supposed to be Leopard-compatible. I can't remake the clones too easily with only being able to attach one drive at a time. I am thinking I will order a Firewire hub and try that, but I am not sure if that would be a solution, and I am wondering why I can always daisy-chain under Tiger, and not under Leopard. Does anyone have experience with Firewire hubs and Firewire operation details? Will I be able to get reliable Firewire with a hub?

I have exactly the same problem !
I have found this :
Using Multiple FireWire Devices at the Same Time
Power Macintosh computers can transfer perfect digital video (DV) on FireWire when no other devices are using the FireWire bus. If you have problems transferring digital video, make certain that no other FireWire devices are being used at the same time. Turning on a DV camera that is already connected may cause a FireWire hard disk to stop working. If this happens, turn off the camera and verify that the hard disk has recovered. Then unplug the FireWire cable from the camera, turn the camera on, and reconnect the FireWire cable to the camera. Check with the hard disk vendor for a possible firmware update to prevent this problem.
here:
http://www.2ndwave.com/firewire.asp
At the moment I can't upset what I'm doing to test it but I intend to do that as soon as I finish copying transferring...
I have the following device attached to different firewire ports:
a firewire video device connecting my G5 Desktop to the TV screen
a firewire ibot
I thought I would give u a head start

Daisy Chain Firewire Drives

I have a FW 800 drive connected to my Mac Mini.
I am trying to daisy chain a FW 400 drive to the FW 800 drive but the 400 drive won't mount.
I have a cable that allows me to plug the FW400 directly into the FW 800 port on the computer and it mounts fine when I do that.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

On many drives, the two FW ports are interchangeable, but that may not be the case with your drive if it actually has "IN" and "OUT" labels.
The next test I would try is connecting only the FW-800 drive to the computer, using the "OUT" port. If it fails, you won't know whether you have an intentional asymmetry or a defective port, but if it works, then you can try adding the FW-400 drive dasiychained to the "IN" port.

Random daisychained Firewire drive disconnects under Snow Leopard

OK... so I thought this was specific to my hard drives. However, we're not starting to see the problem though out the studio.
Plugging a single firewire drive into a machine running Snow Leopard has no issues. However... if you daisy-chain firewire drives then they will randomly disconnect. The connection will last 2-5 minutes tops before it just drops the drives as if someone had unplugged them.
We finally verified this on a total of three machines using various hard drives.... ensuring that we were taking specific drives out of the mix.

Next time you plug in the drive, see if it shows up in
Disk Utility. Want to see if the OS is recognizing it
and just not mounting it. If it doesn't show up there,
try the command line version by using the following
command:
diskutil list

Has anyone been able to use an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire to daisy chain a dozen or more FireWire drives?

Ever since I realized that I was not able to connect my FireWire daisy chain to my brand new Retina MBP there has been problems. Four months down the road, I am still unable to use my FireWire drives and have experienced terrible problems whenever I connect my FireWire daisy chain to this new Mac.
I have bought two of these adaptors from Apple now and both do the same thing. The daisy chain has been working perfectly for years with my older MBP and still does! There are no problems until I connect to the new Mac.
I have 15 various hard drives in NewerTech and DatOptics enclosures for over 22 TB. When connected to the new Mac, I would have multiple apps just hang, sometimes just Apple apps, sometimes 3rd party. I will not be able to force quit them and they will keep relauching as you can watch them in the Force Quit window. The Finder will hang and there is no relaunching it. I am having to do a force shutdown twice an hour which leaves no time for work!
After four months of this, now I am being told that Apple will buy back my Mac at full price. But I have basically lost the good part of four month’s worth of work because of constantly fighting the new Mac. This is cost me all my savings and I am about to lose a client. It certainly seems that releasing Thunderbolt1 was a huge, huge mistake.
Does anyone know of any large Fire Wire daisy chain working with Thunderbolt?
TIA,
R

Yes, my first post is all about how darn iffy the adaptors are and I have two of them to return now.
I question your answer because I am betting that four drives that are in one enclosure NOT all RAIDed together as one drive, but as four separate drives that those four drive will count as four devices. The daisy chain that I had going had eight drives in TWO quad boxes, four drives in TWO dual drives and another drive in a single enclosure. A total of five “devices” if you will, but also a total of 13 drives that were usually in this daisy chain.
Both of the Apple branded Thunderbolt to FireWire adaptors chocked BIG TIME on this and it works no problem on my older MBP. You basically can not use a new Mac when you are connected to a daisy chain like this!
Just checked the Apple website and indeed, I can get a new MBP with FireWire 800, just not with the Retina display! I wish that I would have known this five months ago before this all started!

HT5299 Can 2 daisy-chained firewire-800 drives be connected to 1 Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter?

Can 2 daisy-chained firewire-800 drives be connected to 1 Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter?

Nightwatch (NL) wrote:
Thanks Steve!
One more question: Stayed throughput speeds more or less the same as original Firewire (since all my movies are on external disks) or has it become significantly slower?
I haven't done a careful side by side quantitative comparison of what I had on the older Macbook Pro (which had three Firewire800 disks chained together via FW800) versus the new Macbook Pro (which has thunderbolt into which I have connected three FW800 drives daisy chained via the adaptor), mainly because my employer supplied me with these computers and required I turn in the old one when they replenished it with the new one. However, I can say this -- one of the FW800 externals is used for Time Machine, another for making entire disk clones, and the third is for misc storage. I have seen Time Machine start up during a disk clone (with SuperDuper) and there seems to be no impact. The disk cloning is generally pretty intensive on disk and cpu resources, but thunderbolt seems to have a much bigger capacity for throughput than firewire and hence can apparently accommodate multiple streams of FW800 data going back and forth with no apparent impact on each other. The main limit seems to be the FW800 speed itself, not thunderbolt. I see ~ 60 MB/s or more which is as much as I have ever seen on FW800. Ultimately, the ideal setup will be thunderbolt drives daisy chained together, I would expect hundreds of MB/s, but I don't see many of these thunderbolt drives on the market yet. Even better would be solid state drives ...

Firewire drive no longer recognized after upgrade?

having an onset of problems the last 2 weeks.
first upgraded to 10.4.6 on mac mini 1.42 non-duo, worked a few days than acted weird with apps crashing. had to reinstall from 10.4 disk. seemed ok. repaired permissions, ect. after reinstall (and a subsequent power outage) a firewire drive attached at time was no longer recognized by mac mini or connected imacG3. reinstalled 10.4.2 on mac mini. installer unable to reinstall 10.4.6., I would like to have firewire drive recognized again. when attached to other firewire drive in daisy chain, says device unrecognized, other wise unable to get any info on drive. what to do?

I am having nearly the exact same issue as you are experiencing. My Western Digital Dual-Option Media Center 160 GB FW HD is going in and out big time. It seems to be there for a time but then conks out. I have to disconnect the power and now the drive seems to be malfunctioning.
Same story with my LaCie 52x CD Burner. I placed the Disk Warrior CD in there and the computer recognized the disc at first but then spinning beach balls galore!
This has to be one of the worst updates to an OS X system I can remember. I can only think PowerPC QA testing has gone through the toilet since the Intel move was completed.

Daisy-Chained External Drive No Longer Mounting

I have two external hard drives daisy-chained (firewire 800) to my iMac. The hard drive directly connected my iMac mounts fine. The daisy-chained hard drive no longer mounts, after mounting perfectly fine for a few months. I've tried restarting, etc with no success. Any help would be appreciated.

moretoexplore wrote:
No, it does not mount directly. I did however try using the other hard drive's power cord and it mounted without problem. But this doesn't fix the problem.. only one drive is mounting. At least it seems I have ruled out a more serious problem with the drive itself. I'm contacting Lacie to get a new power cord. Hopefully, with a new power cord, this will resolve the issue and it isn't some sort of daisy-chain issue.
I think you have solved the problem by elimination.
You can prove that it's the power cord by using the "bad" one on the working drive. If it stops working, it's guaranteed to be the power cord.
I believe that there were some issues with some of the LaCie Power Supplies.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

External firewire drive won't mount

I've got an external Western Digital firewire drive that's been somewhat flaky recently, and today my Mac won't mount it.
When I open Disk Utilities, I can see the drive (along with the other drives daisy chained together). When I click on "mount," I get a message saying the drive can't be mounted and that I should try running disk repair. I've run both repair disk and verify disk a few, and each time it says that everything is just fine. However, the drive still won't mount.
Any thoughts about how to get the drive working again?
For what it's worth, this drive is basically my manual backup drive that I use each day just as a safety backup. I don't think I'm going to lose anything extremely important if this drive is dead or if I have to try erasing the drive, but I'd like to see if I can rescue it first before taking drastic action like that.
Thanks!

Dale,
That sounded like a brilliant thing to try. I took the drive out of the daisy chain and plugged it into the unused firewire port in the computer. I ran the repairs and crossed my fingers, but came up with the same thing
At least I've eliminated one more option. Wish I could mark your reply helpful, but I'm not seeing that option available . . .maybe I've used my "helpfuls" for one day.
Although this is PROBABLY duplicate material on this drive, I'm going to hold out for another day or so in case anybody else comes up with another brilliant idea before I take the plunge and reformat the drive.
Thanks!

Daisy chain external drives

Hi. Let's say I have an internal drive (drive A) in my MacBook Pro, an external drive (drive B) connected via FireWire 800 to my MacBook Pro, and another external drive (drive C) connected via FireWire 800 to the rear of drive B. All drives are formatted as HFS+. Drive B holds my iTunes library.
1. Can I use Time Machine to back up drive A onto drive C?
2. Can I use Time Machine to back up drive B onto drive C?
3. Is there a brand of external drive that works well with this daisy chain approach?
4. Is there a better way / drive configuration to back up drives A and B?
Pls note my MacBook Pro has only one FireWire 800 port. Also pls note that I am not interested in a NAS.
Thanks

All theoretically possible, but I've found even some of the most reliable Firewire drives despite being daisy chained, such as the Newertech from OWC. They may not stay connected indefinitely, and they definitely don't copy directly between each other. Copying from computer to each of them on separate connections is much faster than trying to copy between them. At times, it is almost as slow as USB 1 when I try to copy directly from one to the other simply with the Finder. Don't expect Time Machine to be much faster. My advice, get a disk copier along with the Newertech Voyager. Disk copiers such as
http://www.amazon.com/HDD-Duplicator-Stand-Alone-Sata/dp/B002OTG0PO'
work a lot faster than trying to deal with the intricacies of daisy chaining.
Firewire 800 is great for single hard drives. But forget about daisy chaining. I've tried all the best brands, and they've backfired.

Can't import from camcorder to firewire drive

I'm having no luck importing video from a digital camcorder to an external firewire drive (using iMovie 6). The playback is OK, but when I try to import the screen quickly goes blue and the importing stops (I get about .5 second of video in a clip before it stops).
This only happens when I'm saving clips to the external drive. If I save the project on my internal hard drive, video imports fine. I've tried with the camcorder daisy-chained through the firewire drive (on my ibook), and plugged into a separate port (on an old iMac w/ dual firewire).
Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video? It's an Acomdata E5, 320gb 400 Mbps drive, formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).
I tried to measure the speed of the disk using Xbench, but not sure how to interpret the results:
Disk Test 34.78
Sequential 26.56
Uncached Write 11.57 7.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 55.80 31.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 31.14 9.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.67 35.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 50.36
Uncached Write 21.41 2.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 97.27 31.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.42 0.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.71 17.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?
Thanks for any pointers.
ibook dual-usb Mac OS X (10.2.x)

You don't say which camcorder you're using.
Many Canon camcorders will NOT work properly with anything else, e.g; an external disc, on the FireWire circuit. Sorry. For those, you'd need to import to the internal disc and then copy to the external, and continue editing with the external drive.
"..Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video?.." No: all modern external FW drives are perfectly fast enough, and a 320gb is certainly a modern drive.
"..formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).." ..are you absolutely CERTAIN..? ..It needs to be, otherwise it'll do just as you describe. And even discs bought for Macs or from Mac stores generally come formatted as "PC Exchange", i.e; MS-DOS formatted. Check it again by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking it and use 'Get Info'. If it really says "Mac OS Extended" you're OK. If not, you'll need to use Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility, select the name of the disc and click the 'Erase' tab (after you've moved off the disc anything which you might want to keep) and then select 'Mac OS Extended'. CAUTION: be sure that you've selected the external drive: don't accidentally reformat and wipe your internal drive!
"..Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?.." No. However..
Some camcorders are not properly recognised by iMovie at first. It pays to open a project which already has some footage in it, play that and then attach the camcorder and try importing. Playing back some existing DV footage often - in my experience, anyway - 'kick starts' the program into accepting more footage from the attached device.
But that only works if (a) the drive DEFINITELY is formatted as Mac OS Extended, and (b) you're NOT using a Canon with an external disc..

Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor does not work when daisy chaining firewire devices

Hi,
I just purchased the Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor for my new late 2012 iMac.
It works when connecting a single firewire device, but when I daisy chain another drive, the first drive disconnects and nothing mounts.
I am trying a Hitachi G-Raid and a couple of WD My Studio II hard drives. They all work when connected directly to the adaptor, but not when more than one drive if daisy chained with firewire.
Has anyone got firewire daisy-chaining working with a thunderbolt adaptor? (just to clarify I am not refering to thunderbolt daisy chaining, as the adaptor is an end-of-chain thunderbolt device).
Thanks

Yikes, that's sad to hear.
I can't test it, no TB here, but are all these drives self AC powered, ie. no bus powered drives?

Flickering video when daisy chaining firewire devices - HELP!

I have a 12" Powerbook with a single firewire 400 port, to which I have attached 2 daisy chained external hard drives. I have no problem capuring video off of my camcorder when I daisy chain it onto the end, but when the firewire is sending video the other way, as in the case of "printing" to tape, or using a television during editing, the audio clips and the video flickers substantially.
I've observed that connecting the camera directly to the computer eliminates this problem. Of course, it's a bit awkward, since I also eliminate my scratch disks (the external drives)! I've tried a firewire hub as well, and it seems that either the extra device or the doubled length of cable is interfering with the signal in such a way as to cause the flickering.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?
In any case, I'm thinking about buying a MacBook Pro. Assuming I run into the same problem, I was thinking about adding firewire buses with the Express Card slot. Has anyone done this, or have recommendations for firewire cards that reliably work with MBPs?

When you say 'flickering' what do you mean?
If the playback is stuttering, meaning the data rate is not being sustained, then it is a Firewire glitch. If the video is strobing or rolling then it a video issue with the timeline or the capture settings or something else.
We daisy chained Firewire back in the day on the first edition Powerbook (400Mhz with 10GB internal) and had no issues, that was 4-5 years ago, so your PB12 should be fine with this.

Daisy-chain internal drives temporarily???

Hello! So after a western digital 1TB external drive failed on me I am looking to recover the data on my own. I have taken out the drives from external casing. Call them DRIVE A. I would like to daisy chain them through my iMac's current internal drive which we'll call DRIVE B. I have no need to copy the data from A to B. I just want to be able to get my computer to recognize A as another internal just temporarily so I can copy it all thru to a NEW external fire wire drive, DRIVE C.
So the goal is to just copy the data on DRIVE A to DRIVE C via a Drive B.
I have never daisy chained internal drives before and would really appreciate the communities guidance on accomplishing this. Thank you!

You should not open up your iMac, when there are far easier ways to do what you desire.
1. You can get an empty external drive (either FireWire or USB 2.0 or one that has both interfaces). Put A in that case. Copy off the data to B. Swap out A for C. Copy off the data from B to C.
2. You can get one of these USB to IDE/SATA adapters for $30.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/U2NV2SPATA/
Connect A to this adapter and connect to USB. Connect your new external drive with C to FireWire. Copy off data from A to C. You don't need the intermediate copy on B.

Daisy chaining firewire problems

Hello. So i'm working on a project where the client has 15 4TB firewire drives filled with footage. I've been working with all of them daisy chained together. As you can probably guess, this is causing some issues. Some days I can come in and work for hours and have no crashes. some days, like today, it's hard to even get all 15 drives to mount without the firewire bus crashing and all of the drives unmounting. It's been getting shorter and shorter between crashing episdoes.
They have 7 Lacies, 6 WD's and 2 G-techs. I'm wondering if anyone knows a) if there's an optimal order to put these drives in based on manufacturer, b) if a firewire hub would be any help in this situation, c) any other solutions that wouldn't cost much that could help to make it run more smoothly.
This happens whether it's on a Mac Pro tower (latest Snow Leopard update) or on my MBP 17" (10.5.8)
Anybody done work with lots of drives daisy chained or know any other ways to work with this stuff? thank you...

ApptrGy wrote:
Same Problem. Just got the newest imac i7 from the previous years model, and now my FW 800 drives dont daisy chain, and kick each other off. Worked with the previous model no problem. Major pain not being able to have all the drives mount up together. Any solutions yet with this FW problem?
It's not the same problem and it's not a Firewire issue. You have too much data and too many signals for a single FW bus to handle which is why we recommend editing on the big Macs for anything beyond DV-size codecs. You cannot add an additional FW bus to the iMac.
bogiesan

Chaining firewire drives

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