Daisy chaining a FireWire drive

I just bought a new 21.5 inch iMac, and I'm in the process of setting it up. I noticed it has one 800 FireWire port. I have a Pro Tools DigiRack with only 400 ports. I have an 800/400 cable, so I'll be able to connect it, and a seperate external hard drive with 800 ports.
What I'm wondering is if it would be better to daisy chain the DigiRack off of the external hard drive and connect the drive to the iMac, or connect the Digirack to the iMac with an 800/400 cable, and run the external drive off of the Digirack? I'm curious if one way would be more efficient than the other, and also if the hard drive could handle the DigiRack feeding off of it.
If I haven't totally confused everyone, I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Hi
Sorry to jump on this topic, but I have a query about the same thing. I need to run a firewire 800 external drive with a firewire 400 dv camera daisy chained to it from my MBP. What happens to the read speeds when daisy chaining externals? does it drop dramatically e.g by half if using two externals on the same port? My only other option is to use the external drive with USB2. but the drive is the priority! would that be faster than daisychaining on a FW800 port?

Similar Messages

Daisy Chaining MULTIPLE firewire drives...

Hello...
I am working on a large video project and have 7 500 GB firewire 800/400 drives, and 1 macbook pro (with no firewire 800 port).
I am working with DVCPRO HD footage so high speed is important. Is there a loss of speed when you daisy chain this many drives together? Any general rules when it comes to doing this? right now, I just have them all chained one, after another with 800 cables, and then going into the computer with a 400 cable.

I ran into problems once when chaining 7 or 8 drives. I was told that there is is a maximum cable length you can get to (can't remember if it was 10 or 15 feet) when daisy chaining after which you can run into problems.
Although it's possible I just had a bad cable in the line, I never checked, I just picked up 6 inch cables to use between drives and it solved the problem.
rh
PS I thought all the MacBook Pro's had one 800 port.

How do I Daisy Chain external Firewire drives

Sorry if this seems a dumb question but.....
I want to add another External Hard Drive as my current one is starting to get full, I'm using a Western Digital FireWire 800 currently and I believe that I can add another External FireWire 800 drive by daisy chaining it with the existing drive using a FW800 connector. Is this correct?
Will it just appear on the desktop as another drive to which I can save files etc or do I have to do anything else?
Once again sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but I just want to make sure I don't do anything that will cause me problems later down the line.

Yes, as long as drive 1 has two sockets, just plug drive 2 into drive 1 and drive 1 into the computer and it all works seamlessly; both appear on the desktop just as if they were plugged into separate sockets. Of course drive 1 must be powered, or drive 2 won't appear.

MacBook Air Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter and daisy-chaining external FW drives

Here is my problem—I have a MacBook Air 13" running Mavericks to which I want to attach external FW drive(s). This is easily achievable by using the Thunderbolt-to-FW 800 adapter. And the adapter works great until I try to daisy-chain two external drives. If I attach a second drive to the first one, it immediately unmounts the first drive and I get the 'improperly disconnected drive' warning.
I seem to recall that this was doable in Mountain Lion (about 85% sure). So is this a software or hardware problem? And, to go even deeper into the weeds, my two external FW drives are self-powered (no external power supply). So if I got wall warts for these drives, would it work? Or am I remembering this incorrectly and the adapter never supported daisy-chaining?
The external drives are a pair of G-Tech G-Drive minis, but one is a year to 18-months older than the other one, which means it probably has an older FireWire chipset, but on the other hand, they do mount successfully as self-powered FW 800 drives from a native FW 800 port, or even from a daisy-chain originating from a FW 800 port. Anyone have any suggestions?

I have 4 FW devices chained together and use the TB->FW dongle. They all have power bricks. I have several bus powered devices. Some are quirky, some just don't function, two work reliably. There's no question it is all about how much power they need and TB doesn’t supply enough. Bottom line for me: my bus powered FW drives are soley relegated to use with my last FW equipped computer and when it does they will too.

Daisy chain two external drives via Firewire, then connect one via USB to the TC?

Hi,
I have two external drives that have both Firewire and USB ports. My 1st generation 500 gb Time Capsule (maybe all of them?) only has USB ports so up til now, I have connected one or the other drive via USB. (I've tried to connect both to a powered USB hub but one drive has problems showing up. At this point I only use the one drive that shows up and connect it directly with no hub to the Time Capsue.)
My question is: Can I daisy chain the two drives via Firewire and then connect one of them (probably the one that has no problems connecting with USB) to the Time Capsule via USB?
Second, somewhat-related problem...
I don't know why one drive isn't connecting very well when directly connected to the Time Capsule. Both are Fantom drives. One is a 1TB, the one that has prblems connecting is a 250GB. I've tried connecting directly or through a powered hub. The 1B has no problems, the 250 gb won't show up most of the time and disconnects itself fairly quickly if it does connect. I've switched cables; that hasn't helped. The 1TB stays connected most of the time but sometimes it disconnects too. I suspect the Time Capsule just isn't able to deal with external drives so I don't puch it. It would be nice to be able to have both drives accessable through the TC though.
Thanks for any help.
Cheers,
John

Doing some experimentation, connecting the drives directly to the MBP:
- Neither of the two drives Firewire daisy-chained and going through the powered USB hub connected to the MBP mount. I was using old aliases on desktop.*They don't show up on network otherwise. (Each drive self-mounts with both Firewire and USB direct connections.)
*Even after making new aliases, neither drive will mount using their new aliases when directly connected (not through hub) with USB or Firewire (and Thunderbolt adapter.) That's weird.
- Both the 240 gb and the 1TB drives going through powered hub connected to MBP mount by themselves.
- Two drives daisy-chained via Firewire and one drive connected to the MBP via Firewire (and Thunderbolt adapter) self-mount. No surprise there but that doesn't help me as I want to have the drives further away from the MBP and connected to the Time Capsule, which doesn't have a Firewire port anyway...
- All of the USB and the Firewire cables work as does the Thunderbolt adapter. I tested them.
I wonder.... I have a Firewire to what appears to be an Ethernet connector. I wonder if that would be any good. I'm afraid to try it though...

Is it possible to daisy chain a thunderbolt drive between 2 imacs?

is it possible to daisy chain a thunderbolt drive between 2 imacs?

You can connect two thunderbolt harddrives to one computer, but you cannot connect two computers to one harddrive. That would result in a data signal conflict.
Hope this helps

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.

Daisy chain Voyager hard drives & iMac Intel Core2Duo (white model)

It would appear that Voyager hard drive enclosures from Newertek won't allow you to daisy chain them via SATA. Yet they conveniently provide you with a SATA cable if you have an eSATA port on your Mac. Is there any sort of KVM switch/ hub that makes the SATA hard drives connect directly to each other via SATA instead of via the iMac's Firewire for data transfer.
I'm finding I large gobs of data to transfer between two hard drives, and a dual drive enclosure never likes to remain mounted on my iMac no matter whom I buy, so I'm dealing with these Newertek Voyagers. The other thing that's messed up about these Newerteks is if both are plugged in to the two Firewire ports of my iMac, when I wake up in the morning, I can't eject either one without a force eject. I'm hoping if I can daisy chain them somehow by SATA I'll get faster data transfers, not have to copy back to my iMac everytime I want to copy to the other drive, and have more reliable connectivity with only one Firewire port of my iMac in use.

You can get them - "firewire to sata bridges" is the term.
I don't think it'll make any practical difference - writes will still have to go from one disk, through SATA to the firewire to the Mac, then back out the firewire to the other SATA. There's no controller to handle the direct connection.

Daisy chain an external drive

Just set up new iMac with a 2TB external Lacie drive, partitioned for Time Machine and SuperDuper, and connected with Firewire 800.
I want to also use my old 500GB Lacie external drive for temporarily holding unedited movies, whilst I work on them in Final Cut or iMovie.
Can I connect the old external drive to the new external drive using a Firewire 400 cable and without adversely effecting my set-up?
Looking ahead, is it true that there will be Thunderbolt adaptors to enable a second or third Firewire 800 connection(s)?
Would the above options be preferable to a Firewire Hub?
All views appreciated.

tom lawrence wrote:
I want to also use my old 500GB Lacie external drive for temporarily holding unedited movies, whilst I work on them in Final Cut or iMovie.
Yes as long as both are self powered, then daisy chaining them should not be a problem. If one drive is bus powered (not self powered) then it should be connect to a powered drive at the end of the chain, instead of into the iMac or mid chain where 3 or more drives are chained together.
FireWire: Frequently Asked Questions
tom lawrence wrote:
Can I connect the old external drive to the new external drive using a Firewire 400 cable and without adversely effecting my set-up?
Yes a FireWire 400 drive can be plugged into the 400 port of a 800 External Hard Drive (if so equipped) or into the spare FireWire 800 port by using either a 6 to 9 adapter or 6 to 9 FireWire cable.
Amazon.com: elago FireWire 400 to 800 Adapter for Mac: Electronics
Amazon.com: Tripp Lite F017-006 IEEE 1394b Firewire 800 Gold Hi-speed Cable, 9pin/6pin - 6ft: Electronics
NewerTech FIR1369AD 9-pin (FW800) to 6-pin (FW400)... in stock at OWC
NewerTech 1394B96036 FireWire 800/400 1394B/A 9 Pin... in stock at OWC
Dennis

Mac Mini 2009 - Can't daisy chain two FW800 drives

I have two FW800 enclosures with 3.5-inch drives and external power.
Each one mounts individually when connected to the Mini FW800 port but when I daisy-chain them the second one in the chain doesn't mount and is not seen by disk utility.
Those enclosures use an Oxford UF934DSB chipset.
What's ironic that I had a FW400 enclosure daisy chained to one FW800 enclosure until this afternoon and that daisy-chain worked fine.
Somewhere on the net there was an article that the daisy-chaining had to be done in a certain sequence, ie Mac FW to top FW port on first external, then from bottom of first FW enclosure to top of second and so forth.
I always though the FW ports were just wired in parallel.
Well, this is interesting - since these new FW800 enclosures also have one FW400 port as well, I just connected the second one using the FW400 ports and now they both mount.
But now the whole chain only runs at FW400 speeds.
Anyone else come across this problem or better yet, what is the solution to get both daisy-chained FW800 drives to mount.
The enclosures are Rosewell, the drive in each a 1.5 TB WD green.

I don't think it has anything to do with the power supply.
The two enclosures are identical and react (work or not) exactly the same when I interchange them or the FW cable.
They also work flawlessly if I connect the second one using FW400 instead of FW800. Would just trying to get the enclosure to mount with FW800 draw more current than when mounting with FW400 to put the power brick over the edge? I doubt it.
A few other things I'm going to try - I do this when I have a few extra minutes since I can't afford to spend my time on this continuously.
1. See if there is a F'W update for the enclosure and/or the Oxford chip.
2. Talk to the Oxford and enclosure support people
3. Update to 10.6.4, I'm on 10.6.2 right now
4. Do a bit more digging on the net to see how others got the FW800 daisy-chaining working.
The two enclosures react the same when I try each one separately and also when I switch them around. Whatever the problem is, it affects both equally so it's not some defect on one of them.
With the rest of the testing I have done, I'm now pretty sure it's a Mac software problem.
Although I would have thought someone else would have this problem as well but I can't even find any discussion on daisy-chaining with this chipset when running OS 10.6.
There is a 15-digit number in disk utility called connection ID.
I assume that is the Firewire ID number that some threads I read refer to.
That ID is the same for the two FW800 ports and the FW400 port on each enclosure but it's different for the two enclosures, so some conflict there is definitely not the issue.
So far I couldn't find what the latest issue of firmware is for the Oxford chip set, but I copied all the information that comes up with the firewire hardware listing so when I find the information I can check it against the firmware issue on my two units.
Now, another interesting tidbit - some people say they had to power up the enclosure a few times occasionally to get a single drive to mount.
I never had that problem, a single FW800 drive always mounted right away, but I decided to try that with the daisy-chained drive.
So I turned the power switch on that second drive off and then on again...and lo and behold - doesn't it mount now........
But that is not the interesting tidbit........the tidbit is when I check back in the Mini Firewire hardware listing.
Whereas before it showed all the expected detail with either drive when connected individually via FW800, now with both FW800 drives connected I get this:
*FireWire Bus:*
*Warning: Unable to list FireWire devices.*
*Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec*
....and oooops - both FW800 drives just disconnected by themselves.
Sure seems to point to a Mac software issue.
And if you google for "Warning: Unable to list FireWire devices." you get pages of hits - many on Leopard but also a fair share on SL.
I updated the software to 10.6.4 - still the same problem.
Daisy-chain with FW400 is fine, with FW800 the second drive in the chain - doesn't matter which one it is, won't mount.

Extreme base and daisy chaining lacie stackable drives...

Had a external lacie drive working fine, showing up on my desk top. proceeded to daisy chain another drive on top, and can't get the thing to show up on the desk top for the life of me. What and where do I plug in the connecting usb or firewire, how do I get it to show up. Any help is greatly appreciated. thank you in advance.

thanks for response. So indeed the wires were wrong. Have everything on firewire now and the drive shows up. turned computer off and restarted everything. Now here is the issue. The original drive is recognized and mounts appropriately. When I hit connect to the next drive (the new one connected to first via firewire), I get this:THE ALIAS "NAME OF MY AIRPORT" COULD NOT BE OPENED BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL ITEM CANNOT BE FOUND" with my options to delete or fix alias. Deleting tells me I don't have sufficient privileges (not so sure I want to do that anyway) and fix just directs me to pick an application to open . I am at a loss.

Good Idea, Bad Idea: Daisy-chaining external hard drives

I'm about to buy a White Macbook (maxing out RAM) which has one Firewire 400 port.
I currently use a Firebox to record audio and I know that I will need an external hard drive. The consensus is that Firewire is far superior than USB 2.0 due to a stable transfer rate.
However, I'm wondering which is superior in this case- getting a Firewire 400 external hard drive (7200rpm of course) and daisy-chaining it, or getting a USB 2.0 hard drive?
I typically only record 2 tracks at a time with my Firebox, but I would prefer it if I could use it to its full capacity and record 6 if I wanted to. I assume that this will have a great effect on it when daisy-chained.
With my current machine (details listed below), I get messages all the time from Logic Pro telling me I'm overloading it or maxing it out or whatever. In buying a new machine, I strongly desire not to have these problems again, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm under the impression there isn't a laptop being currently produced that has two Firewire 400 slots and is capable of running Logic Pro. Apple's offering has two choices - 1 Firewire 400 slot in the White Macbook for $999, and 1 Firewire 800 slot in the Macbook Pro line, starting at $1999. It is absolutely horrific, I know, but I didn't design the current line.
Since the biggest advantages between the $1999 model and the $999 model have very little to do with audio editing, I decided against the extra grand for some fancy new toys.
Advantages of higher-end:
A) Better graphics card
B) 0.3 Ghz more processing power
C) multi-touch trackpad
D) environmentally friendly
E) possibility of installing a solid state drive- at 128 GB.
My current machine was upgraded once, but was quickly smited back to original specs by a power surge (seriously- all I lost were the upgrades). It has since then been a bit of a finicky computer. It freezes now and then, and the kernel errors are frustrating. Plus, it's noisy.
So yeah- I would totally take you up on the notion of upgrading my current machine first, but it's not really worth the trouble anymore.
I've also posted before and have been told that pretty much any Mac I buy now will be far superior than my current machine.
That being said, I suppose I ought to look into USB 2.0 external drives.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Advice for what to look for? If I could find one that is 9600rpms, will that make a difference or is 7600rpm pretty much the max for the 400mbs transfer speed? Any suggestions for external drives that use both Firewire and USB 2.0? Any other ideas in general?

Daisy chaining mixed connectivity drives

I have an iBook (OS X 10.5.8 Leopard) with 2 USB 2.0 ports and a Firewire 400 port. The USB ports are in use, as is a hub plugged in one of them. I have a CalDigit AV drive connected to the iBook via a Firewire 400 - Firewire 800 cable. The drive also has an additional Firewire 800 port and a USB 3.0 port.
I'm wondering if a USB 3.0 drive can be daisy chained to the CalDigit drive through the USB 3.0 port, even if it is connected to the computer via Firewire 400. If this is possible, I realize I would only get Firewire 400 speed, which is okay.
Or do I need to find another Firewire drive to daisy chain?
Thanks

For the most part, these drives with USB and FW don't share to the other;
the intent was to allow either one or the other. FW for older Macs that may
be able to boot from a HDD (with oxford chipset) or USB2.0/3.0 for storage
or for newer Intel Macs that may boot a clone from USB. However a Mac
could use FW or USB when both are available, separately to boot clones
if the computer hardware supports both. And if the external HD does.
Depending on the circuitry in the external enclosure, are the possibilities.
A logic circuit and extra cost, may allow the ports to share data across
the two separately supported channels. Lacking that, most can't do it.
Usually that is because they are like different frequencies, no converter.
However you could try. Or contact the maker, to see if you get a reply,
then share that information along with enclosure brand/model number.
That may be curious, conditional, if it were to work at all with one setup.
Good luck

Will Aperture backup to a vault with daisy chained external hard drives

I am moving my Aperture library to a 6TB external drive. I want to back that up to a disaster drive consisting of 2 g-drives daisy chained, one 2TB and the other 4TB.
Will Aperture recognize the daisy chained drives as a single drive and backup the Aperture library to these drives as a single vault?

Caveat: answering your question requires one to make lots of assumptions, any one of which might change the answer. I do not know if Aperture would do so or not but personally I would not recommend it.
Note that daisy-chaining is simply a method of connecting drives; the drives themselves each remain fully independent. One needs to build a RAID array to combine independent volumes, and that is usually best done with fairly identical drives rather than with a 4TB and a 2TB.
I strongly believe that unless one is a true mass-storage expert very large Managed-Originals Libraries should be avoided. IMO far preferable is to instead use Refererenced-Originals Libraries.
Databases invariably perform better in numerous ways when smaller.
-Allen

Daisy Chaining External Hard Drives

How many self-powered, or powered HDs can be daisy chained to the TC's USB port? Will all of the external drives be available on the Mac? I have several HDs I routinely access for files and would like to do it wirelessly. I would also like to be able to backup those drives on the TC or other external.

There is no specific documentation (that I could find anyway) that state exactly how many devices can be daisy-chained to the Time Capsule. Although I would assume that the USB port on the Time Capsule is no different than the one on your Mac - which would mean up to 127 devices per host controller or USB port. Although I don't have any personal experience connecting more than one (4 port) USB hub, I noticed a reduced connection speed when trying to use more than one drive simultaneously besides the obvious fact that you are already limited by the wireless network speed. This was compared to using the same procedure while having the USB hub directly attached to my iMac.
The way the external drives show from your Mac is similar to how the Time Capsule internal drive shows. When you select the Time Capsule from the Finder window, it will show all the external drives by name. The external drives, of course, should be formatted appropriately.
In order to backup these drives, you would need additional software such as Prosoft Backup or similar. You would not be able to accomplish it using Time Machine.
Attaching an external drive using this method is referred to as network attached storage. Not all software can fully use this connection method to all of it's capabilities.... yet. So it does not function quite the same as attaching the drive directly to your computer. You would lose certain functions, like most backup solutions or being able to boot from the drives. Even some software doesn't recognize the drives as usable storage.

Daisy chaining a FireWire drive

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