Daisy chain FW 800 issues!

I'm having problems getting my ext. hard drives to daisy chain via the FW 800 ports! Sometimes it will connect the first drive but when I try to daisy chain a 2nd drive to the 1st, it either bumps it off or does nothing, and it worked a few hours ago!D

Any firewire device which needs to use bus power (rather than having its own power supply) should be connected upstream (closer to the Mac's port) than devices which do have their own power supply.
I prefer to use FW devices which have their own power supplies. This removes the burden on the bus (hence the Mac's power supply) from needing to supply power.
Have you tried shutting the machine down, connecting the FW drives, then booting up? Sometimes this works because it forces the machine to recognize (via bus scans) and configure itself to everything connected at that time. Inconvenient, yes, but if the config is semi-permanent, having to do that once in a while is not too bothersome.

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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 ...

Daisy chaining Firewire 800 drives

I am considering daisy-chaining a pair of WD My Passport Studio drives off my mid-2007 iMac's Firewire port.
I'm already using one of these drives for my data, having replaced the internal HDD with an SSD. I'm about to buy a second drive to replace an old and noisy USB drive for Time Machine backups. Will I get decent performance from this daisy-chained FW setup (Im guessing that I should, at 800 mb/s full duplex).
FYI, the WD My Passport Studio drives are FireWire-powered and have have no external power.
So, is this a good or dumb idea? If you know FireWire (I do not) I'd be interedted to know its pros and cons.
Thanks.

Daisy chaining FW 800 drives works just fine, I did it for years before upgrading.

Daisy-chain Firewire 800 versus USB

Hi. I have an external drive (drive A) connected to my MPB via Firewire 800. I have my iTunes media library on this drive (movies, TV shows, music etc). When I watch a movie on my Apple TV, the content is being streamed from this drive via my MBP to the Apple TV. This works fine.
I also have a second external drive (drive B) that I use only as a back-up for drive A. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up drive A onto drive B. I can connect drive B in one of two ways: Option #1 is to connect drive B directly to my MBP via USB (USD 2.0). This is how I currently have it connected. Option #2 is to connect drive B to drive A via a Firewire 800 cable, daisy-chaining the two drives.
Two questions:
1. Which option will give me better performance when backing up drive A to drive B?
2. If I am watching a movie on Apple TV (streaming from drive A) at the same time that I am backing up drive A to drive B, will option #2 affect streaming of the movie?
Thank you

Have you Shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about ten minutes then reconnect and try. Also, it is important to disconnect the AC power to your Mac, this helps to reset the FireWire port(s).
Have you checked to see if Disk Utility sees it/ can mount it?
Do you have TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior, both of which you could use to try to mount it.
It is also possible that you have a bad cable or a bad port, do other FW devices work?
-mj

Does daisy chaining Firewire 800 drives reduce performance?

Hello,
Based on the recommendation of a very knowledgable Apple Cert. Instructor, I learnt that a very good drive configuration for editing in FCPX is to have 3 separate drives: Boot disk, Events, and Projects. The reason, I suppose, for having the Events and Projects folders on separate drives is because FCPX is constanty reading and writing data into those 2 databases, which would mean that having both databases on one drive strains performance since the drive would have to write all edit changes constantly in the projects folder while reading video footage constantly from the events folder.
That sounds logical so I'll accept it as being true, but here's the intro to my question: I have an iMac (see the specs below) with 1 firewire 800 port, and my extra 2 drives would need to be daisy chained (FW800) to share the 1 port.
1. Does the communication to the two drives suffer for being daisy chained into 1 port, i.e. is the 800Mb/s transfer rate halved between the 2 drives or is full 800 to both at the same time?
2. Does the computer handle the communication with the 2 FW drives via that 1 port evenly so that I takes full advantage of having separate physical disks dedicated to just reading and writing Media and Project data?
It might seem riduculous to go to such Media Management extremes, but FCPX seems to struggle when I get deep into a project and the performance gets sluggish. that's why I'm trying to optimize the workflow.
Thank you,
Reynaldo
System specs: 27" iMac (mid 2010) 2.8Ghz quad-core i5, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5750 with 1GB GDDR5 Memory
External Drives: LaCie D2 Quadra 2TB 7200RPM and Lacie D2 Quadra 3TB 7200RPM

If all the devices in the chain are FW800 then there will be no degradation.
If any of the devices in the chain are FW400 then complete chain drops to FW400 performance.
Allan

Daisy chain FW 800 for TM?

i thought i saw a post here that cautioned against having the drive being used by TM daisychained with other FW 800 drives, but i cannot find it. is that a legit restriction??

Forrest:
That's exactly what I'm doing. My 750 GB TM drive is first in the chain and I have 2 additional drives daisychained from it. The are all self powered drivers so there's no issues of FW port power capacity. So far it's working fine.
OT

Daisy chaining firewire 800 and 400 devices

I am considering purchasing a blue-ray DVD recorder that has two 800 ports and one 400 port. My sony video camera has a firewire 400 connection and I am wondering whether that camera cable may be used to import video using my 400 cable connected to the 400 port. One 800 port would be connected to the computer. Or should I purchase a firewire800 to 400 (4 pin) cable and use the second 800 port on the recorder, or go direct from the computer swapping the cables when importing video?

Hi Charles
If your using the Core Duo with 2 400 ports listed in your profile, then you might be better off just connecting the player up 400 and then using the second 400 port for the camera. If however we are talking about a newer iMac, one with a single 800 port then you will want to connect the recorder up 800 and then the camera up 400 to that.
Also see > http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26476
Dennis

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

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

Daisy-Chained G-Tech 400/800 and Mini

I've got a Mini that I use as my entertainment system (all music, video, TV, etc.)... I use a lot of harddrive space and currently have a G-Tech 500gb Firewire 400/800 drive that has one firewire 400 and two firewire 800 ports. I use this drive to store all my music, movies, TV shows, etc... and a second one to backup my Mini, my media external hard drive, and my MacBook Pro...
My question is as follows:
I know that with Firewire I can daisy chain the drives... however, my Mini does not have an 800 port... So, can I do the following without running into problems:
Mac Mini connected to "Media Drive" via Firewire 400 - connected to "Backup drive" via Firewire 800?
Basically my question is can some devices in a daisy chain be connected via 400 and others via 800 or does a daisy chain need to remain consistent using only 400 or only 800 throughout?
Otherwise, I guess I'll just use a hub... though this option rubs me the wrong way for some reason... it seems like I'd be sacrificing something by going through a hub... is this unfounded?
Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.9)

That's what I thought you meant. The issue is whether the drive in the middle has a cross-connection between FW 400 and 800 ports, and that is not likely (though technically possible despite the different specifications).
I would check with the manufacturer of the drive you intend to use in the middle of the chain to see if there is such a cross-connection on the FW 400 and 800 interfaces, but FW 400 and 800 aren't like USB 1.1 and 2.0 with their backwards compatibility.

Daisy chaining two Lacie Firewire 800 drives on a G%

I've had one external drive working perfectly for months. Tried to daisy chain a second drive and can't get the second drive to register on my desktop. Support said to reboot. My system freezes upon shutting down. If I restart with the two connected, neither drives shows and my Eye TV shuts down. As soon as I disconnect the second drive, Eye TV works and the one drive appears. Any suggestions? Apple Care had none except purchasing a port that would handle firewire 800. How trustworthy would that be?

I've tried daisychaining a new d2 Big Disk Extreme FW800 and a d2 FW800 drive on my G5's FW 800 bus. I can't copy files from one drive to the other without an Error -36 code. I CAN copy to and from the drives to the Mac at nice fast speeds with no errors. Both LaCie drives are updated to their latest firmware, respectively.
The few times that I was able to copy a small folder from the d2 to the Big Disk, it took forever.
As a result of this thread, I'm now awaiting the delivery of a Belkin FW800 3 port hub. I hope this will clear up this issue, as I need to be able to move data between the two drives (both of which passed their tests via Disk Utility, Drive Genius, and DiskWarrior in flying colors).
I have noticed the older d2 FW800 has a lower firmware number than the Big Disk, however, the LaCie Update Tool reports that each drive is at its current appropriate firmware number. And yes, I ran the Update Tool independently on each drive, while the other was unmounted and unplugged.
Any advice?

FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

Hello everyone, I have three firewire drives. Two 2TB 3.5" drives and one 2.5" 1TB drive. All three are connected to my MacBook Pro 13" via the one firewire port in a daisy chain. I usually always have the 3.5" disk connected. When I add the portable drive to the daisy chain, it crashes the desktop drive, and I get the "do not disconnect drives without ejecting" message. Is this normal? I am thinking of purchasing the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter, only to avoid the crashes of the other drives in the Daisy chain.
My Mac is an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro i5 2.3GHz with 16GB RAM.
Thank you for your help in advance

Sorry for my late answer.
The disc has 2 FW800 and 1 USB2.
If you buy a TB to FW800 you should give to the disc more power from the TB port.
If you connect the disc with USB you could use a special cable with 2 plugs on one side and one smal USB plug on the other. This cable is designed to give to one disc the pover grom 2 USB ports but one of the 2 can also be connected to an USB power supply, so ytou will give to the disc more power.... of copurse with USB you have a lower speed.
If you have Thunderbolt you should try to use TB discs. I know they are expensive but there is a trick which I like to use... have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa3BXmQVpc

Daisy-chaining firewire 400 and firewire 800?

I would like to daisy-chain two Western Digital MyBook Pros to a Macbook:
- FW 400 from Macbook to first drive
- FW 800 between the drives
Would this work or not? I have one of those, they have 2 x FW 800, 1 x FW 400, 1 x USB at back.
(If not, I'll buy a 'Premium' which has 2 x FW 400, and 1 x USB..)

JoeyR wrote:
I'm not sure if the hardware in the first drive, that's connected by firewire 400 is "smart" enough to jump the data over to the FW800 connectors for daisy chaining.
Just pulled this from the WD site. I would say this indicates it would work. You won't get more speed but they should work daisy chained. This indicates the drive is smart enough to do this.
+Question: Will Western Digital FireWire 400 (1394a) external hard drives work connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port?+
+Answer: The FireWire 800 Specification (1394b) states that FireWire 400 devices will work while connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port. The FireWire 400 cable (4-6 pin or 6-6 pin) will not connect to a FireWire 800 port (9 pin) therefore you will need to connect the hard drive using a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable (1394a to 1394b cable). These cables are available at most computer stores.+

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.

Firewire 800 & Firewire 400: Daisy Chain or Not?

I've recently added a LaCie FW 800 to my system. Does it make any difference if I daisy chain my FW 400 drives with the FW 800 as opposed to leaving them plugged into the FW 400 port (on the front of the G5) and just plugging in the FW 800 all by itself.
Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks. BTW, after my purchase (doh!) I did a little research and read that FW 800 doesn't have the performance is should on G5s. And it's something Apple never really bothered dealing with. I believe I read that on Barefeats. Oh well, I needed more storage space anyway. For DV projects where it's simpler just to dump oodles of media onto a drive and there may be revisions or versions in the future, with the falling cost of external FW drives I've decided you might as well just put the cost of buying one in the production budget and stick the drive on the shelf when you're done. No messing around with consolidating media. Ok, it's a lazy workflow but I don't have an assistant.
Jeff

Daisy chain FW 800 issues!

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