Daisy Chain Camcorder- External Hard Drive (firewire)- PowerBook?

Will it really cause problems? I'm going to buy a firewire card to avoid any fw bus problems but for now, would it drop frames and cause trouble?
Thanks
Vito

It does for some, not for others. We always preach that you need the card for the additional bus so that we ensure that it will work.
I myself never had a problem daisy chaining camera/deck/computer. Heck, I have even captured to my internal drive without dropping frames, so...guess I am special.
Nah, others can do this, but most cannot, so we preach the conservative way of doing things.
Shane

Similar Messages

My new iMac will not allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives - what can I do?!

I just purchased the new late 2013 iMac 27" and all is wonderful except it will NOT allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives which is a HUGE problem because I'm a professional photographer & I won't be able to access my images unless I can sort this out. I know I can purchase a new giant hard drive but i'd prefer not to because I have about 12 TB of data which will be expensive & time consuming to transfer & I'd also prefer not to have that much info tied into one device. Ultimately I will need to get a Drive with multiple bays but I'd really like a short term solution that works for the drives I currently have. Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!!

Why can't you daisy chain your drives. If it's because the iMac only has a Thunderbolt port and you have Firewire drivers purchase the Thunderport to Firewire adaptor from Apple: Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter - Apple Store (U.S.)
OT

Cannot Daisy Chain My External Hard Drives on Macbook Pro Unibody

I have a 2010 Macbook Pro 13.3. I am trying to daisy chain my 2 external hard drive enclosures to my firewire 800 port. The enclosures are manufactured by Vantec, model Nextar 3. Both devices have 2 firewire 400/800 ports and they advertise that they are able to be daisy chained.
My issue is: I hook one to the other and power them both on and nothing seems to happen. I can power one up and the drive will show up on my desktop, but when I power the second drive up, I get the pop up screen saying I have disconnected my device without properly shutting it down, and then the drive is gone. I have tried connecting them several different ways. Im not sure if its the external enclosures, if there is a process I'm supposed to follow, of if the Macbook Pro Unibody does not support daisy chaining firewire 800 devices.
Please, if anybody has had the same experience and has been able to fix it, let me know. I am in need of some serious hard drive spance and am going to return both enclosures if I cannot get them to work.
Thank you.

I'm having the same issue.
I'v also found that I am able to daisy chain other drives throught the vantec drives.
And that, when I get the pop up screen saying I have disconnected my device without properly shutting it down, and the drive is gone. I'm only able to remount the drive after restarting the computer while the drive is conected and powered. It won't apear on other computers untill the reboot sequence is preformed.
Strange,
Let me knwo if you've found a solution.
thanks,
joe

New to daisy chaining my external hard drives need some guidence on this

I have 2; 3.5 inch 7200rpm 1TB hard drives, & bought some external enclosures with firewire ports for them.
what would the steps be to set them up?
some things I cannot seem to get a clear answer for even after Google searches is;
say I have drive A & drive B together, with drive A plugged into the firewire port on my mac & drive B plugged into drive A. If I only need to work with content on drive B, do I have to have drive A running as well? even if I do not need to work with it?
I notice in mac os that devices show up as no names, well if I need to eject my drives how can I tell which is which when they both show up with the same no name? I dont want to accidentally eject the wrong drives in the wrong order.
So to prevent something like this I would like to know if there is a way to get mac os to name each hard drive? say drive A would be called photos & drive B music. Is there a way to get windows to see them with these same names as well as in mac os?
another thing is I have windows xp pro installed through parallels on my mac & would like to work with my daisy chained drives in this as well.
what ever I do I dont want to screw up my drives, I have important data on them.
Message was edited by: Sossity

You can rename the drives to be just about anything you choose. That will help you to make sure that you are disconnecting the correct drive. As for the daisy chaining issue, I have found that even though the enclosures have the ports for this, I tend to see more issues with random disconnects. As near as I can tell, the Firewire port may not be providing sufficient power to drive two 7200 RPM drives at the same time. I personally prefer to use one drive on my FW800 port and a second on my FW400 port. Yes, one of the dries gets a lower bus speed, but for the increase in drive stability, it actually tends to perform slightly better overall since there are fewer drive disconnects under heavy load.
You reference Windows XP and Parallels. Parallels allow you to specify to connect a drive to the Mac OS side, or to the virtual environment running Windows. This is easily managed. If you are referring to Boot Camp, then yes, they will still work, as the Boot Camp drivers you should have installed would have installed drivers for the Firewire port. One other thing to keep in mind is that depending upon how the drives are formatted, you might have read-only access to the drives under one of the two OSes. You can buy/download drivers to give you full read/write access to HFS+ drives under Windows, and similarly for NTFS drives under Mac OS. Also, if you choose to connect the drives to a virtual Windows environment, then they will not be available to your Mac OS unless they are shared from the Windows side.

Audio Distortion on FW400 Audio Interface Daisy Chained to FW800 Hard Drive

Hi everyone! I’m an experienced Mac user in need of help resolving FireWire device issues.
I received my 27” i7 iMac a couple of weeks ago running 10.6.2. After a long process of migrating over from my 9+ year old Dual 500 MHz G4 PowerMac tower, I was excited to set up two 1TB drives inside an OWC Mercury Elite Quad-Interface Dual HD enclosure via FW800. I then daisy chained my Focusrite Saffire 10 audio interface (FW400) to the HD enclosure via a FW800 to FW400 converter cable. To reiterate:
i7 iMac (FW800 port) --> OWC Mercury Pro Quad-Interface Dual HD Case with 2X 1TB drives (FW800) --> Focusrite Saffire 10 audio interface (FW400)
Although a lot of people may disagree, I wasn’t concerned about having my FW800 hard drives drop down to FW400 speeds because of the slower audio interface. I have read enough about the 1394 FW protocol and its ability to use something called beta clouds, allowing both FW400 and FW800 daisy chained devices to operate at their maximum speeds. So far, so good. The drives are reading/writing data fast.
As many studio audiophiles have said, you should separate your audio recordings and projects from your startup disk. I’ve done so. However, call me naïve, but I did not imagine that every time my external drives read or wrote data, my audio interface would go into a state of distortion (like raising the gain on a track as high as it can go). When the activity of the disk drops below a certain level, the audio interface usually switches back to clean pristine audio. I am experiencing this within a studio environment and with simple CoreAudio iTunes playback via my audio interface. How is this possible? Am I doing something wrong or is there a blatant limitation with the FW chipset Apple is using for their single bus in the new iMacs? If anyone can provide me with a solution or a convenient work around, I will be very grateful!

Thank you for the feedback, Rick. To shed some light on daisy chaining FW800 with FW400 devices, I provide the following quote from one FireWire technical article I came across on the web:
+"The concept of beta clouds allows FireWire to keep all devices on the bus to operating at their maximum speeds. Devices are cluster together on a logical level in a cloud. The cloud operates as a single block at 800 Mb/sec. The borders of these clouds are where legacy devices are connected, operating normally. Each device operates at its highest speed."+
In short, beta clouds allow both devices to operate at their highest speeds.
Both the audio interface and the external hard drive enclosure has its own, connected power source.
I wish I had the option to use USB2 with my audio interface, but it only has a FW400 connection.

Please advise me on external hard drive for PowerBook G4!

Hi, I have a PowerBook G4 12" and I'm constantly getting rid of photos and music as a result of getting the 'startup disk almost full' message. I don't have a large amount of music/photos, so I need a compatible external hard drive with only a reasonable amount of memory, and preferably costing no more than £100 (less if possible).
My CD/DVD drive isn't functioning, so I'd need something that will just plug in and work!
Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
You have two choices ... buy one or build one. For either option, recommend you get one with a firewire connection. Usually comes with a USB connection also. Powerbooks don't put out enough electrical juice on USB cables and can run into trouble using a USB-connected hard drive (unless it's through a powered hub). Also, if you want to be able to boot off your external hard drive, Powerbooks can only boot using a Firewire connection.
If you can find an external hard drive using the Oxford chipset, that is a plus, as they work well with our macs. Cannot recommend Western Digital external hard drives, as they have dodgy electronics in the case. The hard drives themselves are fine. You can look for something portable like http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go or something desktop-bound like http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATAFW800_FW400USB . OWC does ship internationally, and you may be able to find their brand in UK. Or something similar.
Build your own is actually pretty easy ... find a case you like, buy a hard drive (get a larger size than you'll think you need), bolt the hard drive into the case, plug it into the board, done! The advantage of doing that is you usually get a longer warranty than many external drive/case combinations you might buy. Many are one year and the drives can be three years. Some external drive/case combinations are up to three years warranty, too.

Daisy chain monitors and hard drive

How can I connect two additional monitors and an external hard drive to my iMac?

Only Thunderbolt allows for chaining Displays and External Hard Drives.
In addition your Thunderbolt devices must have an additional Thunderbolt port to chain the next device to.
Apple - Thunderbolt: Next-generation high-speed I/O technology.

Itunes on both external hard drive and powerbook hard drive.

I currently have itunes running on my powerbook G4, but have about 300 CD's that I want to import but wont fit.
I bought a lacie hard drive with the thought that I could move my itunes application and library onto this external hard drive, import all my CD's.
What I want to do is to be able to open up itunes on the lacie drive and have access to all my music, but be able to disconnect my powerbook and be able to run itunes on it with the current library I have. Essentially keeping both applications and libraries separate from each other. When I install the application on my lacie drive, open it, change the library location under preferences to access the hard drive, import a CD, this CD now appears on the itunes app I open on my powerbook. Is there a way to keep them separate? How do I create my full library on the LaCie Drive, but be able to still maintain a more limited library on my powerbook in an easy way?

Hi donnarose -
My music set up sounds similar to what you are trying to do. I have a 250 GB external drive at home that I connect to when I want to access my entire iTunes library. I have the iTunes app in my applications folder on my powerbook. I kept the original iTunes library file on my powerbook and created a new one for all the music on the external drive. If my external drive is not connected I can ask iTunes to use the library on the powerbook, and when the drive is connected iTunes uses the library there. By holding down the option key when iTunes launches, you are prompted to choose or create a library file.
That's probably not the clearest explanation, but it's working well for me.
Good luck.
Darth

Share external hard drive between PowerBook (PPC) and MacBook (Intel)?

Hello.
I recently purchased an HP Portable USB 3.0/2.0 1TB external hard drive (http://j.mp/f9FP4M). I'm trying to figure out the best way to format it so that my girlfriend and I can both use it. Problem is, I have a PPC-based PowerBook G4, and she has an Intel-based MacBook. Hopeless?
If not, here is the ideal scenario:
--One partition that can boot Tiger (I still have the CD).
--A second partition that can boot Snow Leopard (just got it for my girlfriend).
--A third partition where my girlfriend can back up her MacBook using Time Machine.
--A fourth partition where I can back up my PowerBook using whatever means possible/necessary.
Can someone please suggest how I might do this? I would be very grateful for any assistance.
If any part of my ideal scenario has to be sacrificed -- I would not be at all surprised -- then let's forget about my PowerBook and focus on how to format the drive for her MacBook. I presume I would just need to do GUID, but I'd still need guidance on how to create partitions to boot Snow Leopard (and Tiger, if that would still be possible).
Happy to clarify any of the above if it's unclear or incomplete. Thanks for reading and for thinking this through with me!

Question was resolved here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2803825&tstart=0

WD My Book 1 TB External Hard drive firewire cable won't fit into Mac Pro

Hi the firewire cable that came with my Western Digital My book External Hard Drive won't fit into my Quad Core Mac Pro. Is it the wrong cable? What's the correct cable that would connect my Western Digital External Hard Drive into my Quad Core Mac Pro? Any help is greatly appreciated

If you have a port that looks like this one, it's FW400. If it looks like this one it's FW800. If you have one of each it supports both. If you don't have either then it's USB only.

Can't see external hard drive on powerbook g4

I have a 250 gig Formac external hard disk connected to my powerbook, via fast firewire, on which I store music (created with pro tools le 7). For over a year it has been absolutely fine - plugged and played fine. Until yesterday evening when I plugged in and turned on, it didn't appear on my desk top. I've tried rebooting and switched cables but still no sign of it. can't see it in Disk Utility either. Any ideas?

USB and FireWire Quick Assist
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US
What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Dealing with FireWire problems (drives not mounting, devices unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908
 Cheers, Tom

Recording to external hard drives - Firewire 800 problems

Ok so i did post a similar thread on this in the "mac mini" part of the website so im very sorry for double posting but I thought since this problems pertains mostly to recording and specifically recording on garageband, that I would try posting here as well. Heres my deal:
I am a musician working with garageband and I have always been recording to my internal drive until recently. I was unaware until I read some posts here from the good people like you guys, that that is not a good idea to record to your internal drive. So, I got an external firewire 800 drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DGZ05A) and this cable (http://www.amazon.com/2M-Firewire-800-9PIN-Cable/dp/B000XQILWK/ref=pdbxgy_e_imgb). When I received it, I first used disk utility and reformatted it for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Then I proceeded to move a couple sample libraries and my entire "Garageband" folder (with my saved songs in it) to the external. I instantly knew something was wrong. The files were taking forever to get written over. It took about 15 mins for a 5GB folder to be moved over. I was already discouraged. Anyway, I plugged in the USB cable that came with the external (the drive has hook ups for both USB 2 and firewire 400/800) and tried moving the same files and it was MUCH faster. The same 5GB file was moved over in a matter of minutes.
I then tried recording to the drive (using firewire again) and it would hardly even PLAY the song without stopping every couple seconds (too many effects error, and yes ALL the tracks were locked). Tried to record as well and i'd get even less time before garageband would stop the song with the same error. So I disconnected firewire and went USB. Thru USB the song didnt stop once, not on playback OR recording. Then I moved the songs back to my internal and played them (and recorded) with no problem either.
I ran a couple tests on the drive using AJA system test and came back with these results:
Basic test of read/write speed using firewire 800:
write - 14/mb sec
read - 21/mb sec
then, using usb 2.0
write - 18/mb sec
read - 37/mb sec
both these connections seemed to be running slower then they should ..but at least the USB connection would actually let me play a song and record to it without stopping
I manually copied over a 2.04GB file and via firewire 800 connection it took 2 mins and 20 secs. Via the USB 2 connection it was 55 seconds! ..also, while i transfered the files i noticed that the USB transfer was nice and steady with tiny increments of the file being transferred. Firewire, however, was speedy then slow, speedy then slow. Very inconsistant transfer speed throughout the process. kind of choppy
So what gives? I cant figure out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my external HD is bad? Or the cable is bad? Or maybe the firewire port on my mac mini is bad (i've never used it before for anything other than this external drive). Or i'm thinking maybe my processor isnt strong/fast enough to record to the external firewire drive? Im working with a mac mini 120GB internal HD and the 2ghz intel core 2 duo with only 2GB ram (i know thats not ideal for recording and im planning to upgrade at some point, but i have been recording to the internal just fine with the RAM i have now and never had a problem until trying to record to the firewire drive). I was going to go out today and get a new cable and see if that was the cause of it. Anyway sorry for the book-length post! But PLEASE SOMEBODY help me here! ..as i said, im not very computer literate and only just started producing music using computers so please use dummy terms lol ..thanks in advance

Strictly my opinion, and more than happy to be educated with facts and convinced otherwise... but, there are no dangers.
Bottom line is this... does your specific computer setup encounter ANY problems during recording or editing with your chosen software and current workflow? If not, then there is nothing wrong. Simple as that. Further, if you are having problems, then its more than likely dealt with by upgrading RAM amount and internal HDD speed and size. If you have a slightly older machine that is pre FW800, you will find by bench marking your HDD's that an upgraded internal system HDD will significantly outperform any external HDD read/write spec's. Even with FW800, comparing apples with apples, your system HDD will more than likely have better spec's. Please however, do not take my word for this, but try it out for yourself. Make sure you have facts about your own system rather than believing my claims or anyone else's claims. I used Intech's Quickbench http://www.speedtools.com/QuickBench.html to get some facts about my machine.
There will be an argument made that you will be putting strain on your hard drive by recording to the system drive because it not only has to deal with this function but also with other functions related to your audio programs and OS. Apparently you may be working it on the 'hard' side and shorten its life span. Probably technically correct but practically speaking you will more than likely never even notice any such strain. If you are worried about a system HDD crash or death because you are working it too hard then the answer to this is a well planned back up regime. You should have one anyway, regardless of setup.

Problem with External Hard Drive - Firewire

I have a problem with a *300GB Venus DS3 Hard Disk* / USB 2.0 - Firewire 400 (not sure if 400).
I have a +Mac G4 (1GHz Power PC G4 / 1GB DDR SDRAM)+ running +Mac OS 10.3.9.+
I connect Venus hard disk through USB cable and no problem. But when I want to connect it via Firewire it doesn´t appear in the desktop.
If I go to *System Profile* it says that there is a device connected to the FireWire port but i can´t see it in the desktop and if a open *Disk Utility*, there is no other hard disk besides the internal, so I can´t mount the Venus DS3 Hard Drive.
I looked in the internet and found this page -> http://american-media.com/support/downloadDDDS2316CBK.html
I was about to download the *Firmware Update* but i read this:
AMS is not held responsible for any damage caused by misusage of this utility! Use at your own risk and be aware that your warranty might be void! DO NOT CHANGE
ANY SETTINGS WITHOUT CONSULTING TECHSUPPORT. Do not distribute or post these files on the internet!
I searched in Internet and found that many persons had issues connecting Hard Drives using Firewire port and read some tips (like unplugging all the usb firewire devices unless mouse and keyboard, disconnect AC cable, wait 15 minutes, ...) but couldn´t fix the problem.
I also wrote several emails to the manufacturer of Venus hard drives (American-Media) but so far no answer.
I would really appreciate it if someone could tell me how to connect the Venus DS3 to a Mac G4 (OS 10.3.9) via FireWire.
Thank you very much

I suspect the problem is in the size of the drive. You say the drive was formatted for Mac and Windows. How did you do that? With older Macs, there is a 128 gB limit on drive size.
Here is a link to a third party disk utility that claims it gets around the size limit:
http://www.SpeedTools2.com/
Another possibility is to connect the drive to a Windows machine and re-format it into 3 volumes, each less than 128 gB. The Mac should be able to see the partitions.
Sidebar comments:
• The way I read the information on the AMS web page that you cited, you do not need a driver. And that is consistent with my experience with firewire enclosures.
• Inside the AMS enclosure, the drive is a standard ATA/IDE drive. That you can use the drive with a USB connection is proof the drive itself is working.
• The "bridge" is a key component in FW conectivity. (That is a piece of circuitry that sits between the IDE drive and the FW connection. It is inside the enclosure.) It appears your enclosure has the Oxford 911 chipset on the bridge. That is good.

Daisy chaining external hard drives and a video camera from a single firewire 800 port on my imac

I have only a single firewire 800 port on my imac and want to know if I can daisy chain two external hard drives and my video camera, please? If not is there another solution using USB 2?

Are the external HDs self powered or powered by the FW port? If they are self powered there should not be a problem. If they are port powered they may put a strain on the port's power output but I'n not positive on that.

External hard drive mysteriously disappeared.

My external hard drive (Firewire) mysteriously disappeared. I can get it to pop up in Disk Utility, but I can't get it to show on the desktop. I've tried it on a few Mac computers. Do you have any idea what happened?

That's very strange. I don't think I've heard of DU exhibiting that behavior before.
I presume the reason you don't want to erase the drive is that there is un-backed-up data on it, and that if you could recover that data you could either reformat (erase) or dispose of the drive.
You may want to try downloading and using the free demo version of one or more of these data recovery utilities:
Data Rescue II
FileSalvage
VirtualLab
In each case, the demo will show you what files the full version would be able to recover from the drive. You can then decide whether the files you could recover are valuable enough to justify buying the full version of the utility.

Daisy Chain Camcorder- External Hard Drive (firewire)- PowerBook?

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