Daisy chain fw400 and fw800 bad?

I have two lacie rugged external hds that I want to connect to my mbp. Both drives have 1 fw400, 1 fw800 and 1 usb2 connection. I was going to daisy chain the drives via fw800 and then connect one of the drives to my mbp via fw400. I was told by a reputable professional that mixing ports when daisy chaining will cause problems and prove to be unreliable. What do you guys think?
Thanks,
Dave

When chaining always have the fastest drive first (closest), otherwise it will run at the slower speed i.e. MBP - Firewire800 - Firewire400

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The much debated FW400 and FW800 issue, my final verdict.

Ok, so there has been many conflicting theoretical opinions on how FW400 and FW800 work together on the Macbook Pro's. So I went ahead and conducted some tests with my Triple Interface WD Mybook Pro 500GB and M-Audio Firewire Solo using XBench 1.3
You can see the figures at http://memo.tv/mbp_fwtests.htm. (If I had used a FW800 Stripe set such as the Mybook Pro 1GB the difference in performance would probably be much bigger as the current bottle neck in some of these tests is probably the disk and not the interface).
My results indicate that:
Running the disk on its own in FW800 with no FW audio interface provides by far the best HDD performance
As soon as you connect a FW400 device, the FW800 performance drops to FW400 levels. It does not matter whether the FW400 is daisy chained off the FW800, or connected to a seperate FW400 - the disk always drops to FW400 - and for a £2K 'professional' machine that s*cks big fat donkey b*lls
Even having the disk on its own on FW400, seems better than connecting it on FW800 and having another FW400 device connected (that makes sense I guess).
I had no audio dropouts in any config while the tests were running.
Running iTunes and streaming audio (from radio) while the tests were running had no/minimal impact on test results
USB2 performance for disks are a helluva lot slower than FW400 and should be avoided if any kind of disk performance is needed.
I guess this clears up the myth that if you daisy chain a FW400 device off a FW800, the FW800 works at full bandwidth.
Now of course these are the results that I got. I don't know if I have a healthy mac or not! So I am very eager to find out how other people's mac respond to similar tests... so if you are in doubt, please go and download xbench, try a few different configs, run the Disk Test every time, and lets see the results!
cheers,
MacBook Pro C2D 17" Mac OS X (10.4.9) Week 46 Build

to be fair, not even the desktop macs come with more than one firewire buss built in. many ports, yes. but one buss. so, when you realise that your requirements will outstrip the bandwidth you can get from that one buss, you have to consider your other options. luckily for you, you have a macbook pro, which has a PCexpress card slot. this means you can actually add another _totally independent_ firewire 800 buss, via a card. you'd have to do the same thing on a mac pro tower if you needed it, just with a different kind of card.
I doubt that there are many if any laptops available that come with more than one firewire buss built-in, regardless of how many ports they put on them. so your £2K machine isn't really the ripoff that you are feeling it is.. particularly given that it has this vital expansion capability via the PCexpress slot, which will resolve your firewire issues perfectly via the addition of an inexpensive card.
you can even choose to buy an eSATA card instead of a FW800 one, and use an external drive with an eSATA connector. this will give you even faster disk performance than FW800, and still leave your built-in firewire buss free for your audio interface.
btw, one thing you should know. m-audio are notorious for bad drivers. it's quite common for users of other firewire audio interfaces (like RME for example) to have far less, or even no drop out issues at all in sharing a drive and the interface on the one buss. it's possible that it's just your m-audio device that refuses to make any effort to share the buss bandwidth with your drive. and it's also possible that your western digital drive is not a good player on mac firewire either. I recall reading somewhere about WD drives having some issues or less than optimal performance on macs.
in any case, the suggestion of using an inexpensive card to add another high speed buss to your machine will work regardless of what your devices are and how bad or good their firewire use is, cos they'll then have their own uninterrupted buss.

Mixing HDs with FW400 and FW800 in a daisy chain

I have a 360GB with two FW ports and two Quadra D2s with one FW400 and two FW800 ports. Using the three HDs -
Can I Connect FW400 to FW400 then out via FW800 into FW800 then out via FW400 into my eMac?

So it would seem that no matter how the two FW types are threaded between the three HDs the route is open and the chain runs at the 'slower' speed..
As I have yet to format one of the Quadra's can I put it into the chain and then Format it, or should it be formatted with the orher two HDs diconnected from the chain?
Cheers

Can I daisy chain IDE and SATA drives w/ FW400?

I have an 250GB IDE drive in ann ext enclosure with two Firewire 400 ports. Can I daisy chain a SATA drive to this or does it have to be another IDE drive?

If both are in their own Firewire case then yes. The FW interface converts whatever internal interface it is so the computer only sees it as a FW device.
George

Daisy chaining thunderbolt and MacMini power

Hi, I am a little confused by Thunderbolt - can I daisy chain a FW 800 camera (via thunderbolt to fw800 adapter) through a Thunderbolt monitor to a Mac Mini and everything still work/ be identified as expected in the OS (i.e. the camera software I use to control the camera)?
Also - I was planning on buying a Mac Pro, however it is no longer on sale with no apparent window for a re (or new) release. Currently I use 2010 Mac Pros to control high frame rate FW 800 cameras plus read/write (via an esata card) to a hard drive array. Data transfer rates are about 60 MBps both from the camera and subsequently to the hard drives. Do you think the most powerful Mac Mini will be powerful enough for this application? I don't like buying without being sure, but similarly don't want to wait around any longer for a new MacPro release.
Many thanks,
Oli

Yes. Depending on the drive enclosure you may need to power the TBolt drive as it may no longer be bus-powered. My LaCie Rugged drives are bus-powered through the adapter cable. My OWC drives are not.

Problem with daisy chaining HDDs and Time Machine

I have purchased 2 WD My Passport Studio FireWire 2TB HDDs which I have daisy chained to my MacBook Pro. One I have assigned to be the Time Machine backup the other as an additional data drive. Both are formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I setup Time Machine to backup both the internal and external drive. When I set it up everything looked OK in Time Machine Preferences, but the daisy chained data drive displayed on the desktop with the Time Machine backup logo and the backup drive displayed as a standard FireWire data drive. However the backup worked successfully and backed everything up to the correct backup drive.
I have since established the following:
1. If both drives are daisy chained and then plugged in, the data drive shows up with the backup icon and the backup drive shows as a data drive, but Time Machine backs up to the correct drive. This is the case regardless of what order the drives are daisy chained.
2. If the backup drive is plugged in on its own it shows up correctly with the backup drive icon. If the data drive is then daisy chained to the backup drive both drives show up as backup drives. Time Machine backs up to the correct backup drive.
3. If the data drive is plugged in on its own it shows up incorrectly as the backup drive. If the backup drive is then daisy chained to the data drive the backup drive shows as a normal FireWire data drive. But Time Machine still backs up to the correct drive. Exactly the same as case 1 but the drives have been daisy chained after connecting to the MacBook Pro and the result is the same.
4. However if the data drive is plugged in on its own, showing up as the backup drive, Time Machine backs up to the data drive incorrectly.
The first three points are just annoying as the drive icons do not display correctly, although it does indicate to me that Time Machine is confused. But what I don't like is the fact that I can't just use the external data drive without the backup drive being present.
How do I overcome this problem?

Launch Disk Utility and select one of the volumes in question. Click the Info button in the toolbar. In the Information window that opens, note the Universal Unique Identifier. Do the same with the other volume. Are the identifiers the same?

Daisy-chaining Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort

I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro (Early 2011), i7. In the future, would it be possible to daisy-chain a Thunderbolt-compatible product like the Echo Express (http://bit.ly/pTlDFr) with a monitor that only has DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI (http://amzn.to/nohGbj) using a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort/HDMI/DVI adapter, or does the display have to support Thunderbolt as well? Thank you.

@bontistic: it is not true that only the Macbook Air supports Thunderbolt. All models(!) support thunderbolt: also the Macbook Pro's and Mini's. Eg.: http://www.apple.com/nl/macbookpro/features.html#thunderbolt
My Macbook Pro from 2011 already supported Thunderbolt...

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.

Using iMovie6 with projects on external FW400 and FW800 drives ...SLOW!

Shouldn't iMovie6 work smoothly with movie projects stored on external Firewire 400 or 800 hard-drives?____ ...or am I expecting too much?!!
With the FW400 drive, the performance I'm experiencing is unacceptable. It's excruciatingly slow (even simply mouse/slider movements take forever) and the playback is so choppy, it's useless. (this is after converting an iMovie3 project to iMovie6 -- could this be a factor too?__)
Those on FW800 seem to work better (as they should) but even though the audio seems OK, the video playback is very jerky and it still takes a few seconds for it to respond to any mouse action.
Is FW400 simply too slow for iMovie?____
I presume USB2.0 would be just as bad.

Is FW400 simply too slow for iMovie?
Both types of FireWire drives should work fine. I'd look for another cause.
If your camcorder is a Canon, search the forum for how to avoid FireWire conflicts.
Otherwise, perhaps there's a clue here:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1852869#1852869
Try resetting your FireWire ports? Disconnect all FireWire devices, do a Shut Down, disconnect your Mac's power cord from the wall outlet, wait 15 minutes, then reboot.
Karl

Using FW400 and FW800 devices simultaneously

I noticed that as I am using my external FW400 iSight camera that Time Machine suspends backups on my FW800 G-Drive. Is the FW800 logic sharing logic resources with FW400?

There's only a single Firewire Bus ... when connecting two devices of different speeds always connect the fastest to the MBP first then the slower one into that i.e. put the fastest link in the chain first or all devices will operate at the slower speed.

FW400 and FW800

Hi.
Okay, so recently I got a FW400 PCMCIA card to give me a dedicated buss for running FW400 devices off of, so that I could utilise the full potential of my FW800 external hard drive on the internal buss.
But, I've noticed that, when the FW400 PCMCIA card is connected, the connection speed on my FW800 internal buss drops down to FW400 (I am checking this via the System Profiler).
I am stumped, since as far as I know, this shouldn't happen, since both busses should be independent of each other.
As soon as I power down and remove the PCMCIA card, the internal buss speed goes back up to FW800.
Does anybody have any ideas why this is happening?
Thanks,
onlyone-jc.

Yes, you'll find that here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=442212&tstart=30
It has been archived for some reason, thus no more posts can be added to it, otherwise I would have posted there instead. It seems no resolution was found either, so maybe somebody can post a resolution up in here?
Both busses (the Powerbook's internal FireWire buss, and the FireWire buss provided by the PCMCIA card) should remain independent, and thus allow the internal buss to remain open at 800Mbps transfer speeds. But, that doesn't seem to be the case here?
The only way that a FW400 device should prioritise itself over a FW800 device, would be if they were both connected to the Powerbook ports, in which are both connected to the same FireWire buss, thus meaning that they are not able to act independently of each other.
As was said in the linked thread, surely there's a way to prioritise either buss, or something similar?
Can anybody help? Are there any official Apple technicians around here? Or, somebody with the right know-how?
Thanks,
onlyone-jc.

Daisy Chaining Firewire And Thunderbolt

I have a 2009 iMac and a couple of G Tech external drives linked via Firewire 800. Runs FCPX okay if slow on "export/share". I'm about to buy a MBP retina 13 inch, I need the portability, but wish to keep using the iMac as the main editing machine.
I'd use an external drive with the Retina, Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 seems the optimum choice. My question concerns using "material" stored on the Tbolt/USB external drive for use with FCPX on the iMac via the G Tech Firewire external drive.
Can I simply connect the iMac to the GTech drive via the single Firewire port, and connect the Tbolt/USB to the Gtech drive via the Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, and thus transfer files (or even FCPX projects) from the new drive to the old drive?
Ron

Yes. Depending on the drive enclosure you may need to power the TBolt drive as it may no longer be bus-powered. My LaCie Rugged drives are bus-powered through the adapter cable. My OWC drives are not.

Daisy chain BEFSR41 and WRT54GL

I have these 2 devices setup and ALMOST everything works.
I can get to the internet from the desktop, which is connected to the wired router, and I can get to the internet via laptops connected to the wireless router.
I can ping the desktop from the laptops.
I can ping the laptops from the desktop.
What I CANNOT do is see any shared folders or printer.
If I connect the laptop directly to the wired router, it all works fine. Here is a bunch of info on my setup (and I have read this http://linksys.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/linksys.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=358 It didn't help)
So here is all the relevant info I can think of
So I have the following setup
wired router wireless router
Internet -->[E1]Linksys BEFSR41[E2] ---> [E4]Linksys WRT54GL[W1] ----> laptops
The Internet side address[E1] of the wired router
172.x.x.x via dchp from my provider
The intranet side address[E2] of the wired router
is hardcoded to 192.168.1.1
The desktop intranet address (plugged into the wired router)
is 192.168.1.99 (hardcoded)
The wired intranet side of the wireless router
address[E4] is 192.168.1.2
The wireless side of the wireless router [W1]
is 192.168.2.1 (different subnet)
Now my problem is that I cannot "share" resources
between the desktop and the laptops.
I can ping between everybody
from the desktop I can ping the laptop
from the desktop I can ping both sides of the wireless
router[E4 and W1] and the laptops (all dhcp assigned addresses
in 192.168.2.x subnet)
It took much googling to get _this_ far.
The trick, it seems, is to set the wireless router in "Router"
mode and not in gateway mode.
Before doing that I could not ping.
Now, if i direct connect the laptop into the wired router,
I can share and see everything just fine. Doing this eliminates
firewalls on the desktop and laptop as potential culprits.
The routing table from the wired router:
Destination LAN IP Subnet Mask DefaultGateway Hop Count Interface
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 172.22.4.1 1 WAN
192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 1 LAN
192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.2 2 LAN
172.22.4.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 1 WAN
The routing table from the wireless router
Destination LAN IP Subnet Mask DefaultGateway Interface
192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 LAN & Wireless
192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 WAN(Internet)
172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 192.168.1.1 WAN(Internet)
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 WAN(Internet)
Dynamic routing is enabled on the wired router with RIP1
Dynamic routing is enabled on the wireless router with Both selected.

Your setup is either completely incorrect or the figure is confusing/incorrect.
Please see these instructions on how to connect and configure the two routers.

Daisy chaining LaCie and Canon videocamera

I have a PowerBook G4 , a canon video cam and a LaCie external drive, I have no trouble capturing to the internal drive but when I try to capture to the LaCie, an error message says it can't see the camera. I have the LaCie firewired to the Powerbook and the Canon firewired to the LaCie. thank you joanlvh
ps I have read the achieved discussions on this topic.

I have followed Ian and Skydo's much appreciated advice. After capturing on my internal drive, I moved all the files to my LaCie external drive. In the past I have always begun editing by following Tom Wolsky's : “Capture your video in large chunks. Then from the Mark menu select the clips and run DV Start/Stop Detection. That'll put markers at each shot change, making segments. Twirl open the disclosure triangle for marquee select the the markers. Use Modify>Make subclips. This will make each of the shots separate clips in your Browser.” With my captured material in large chunks on the La Cie the DV Start Stop Detection runs, but it does not list any segment to select and the Make subclips is greyed out. ??? thanks joanlvh

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.

Daisy chain fw400 and fw800 bad?

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