Daisy Chaining External HDDs

Okay, I know this has been asked a couple of times around the Discussion Boards, but I want to clarify and expand upon it.
Right now I have one 500GB LaCie d2 External HDD that I use only for Time Machine. This works out great, however, as I download more content from the iTunes store, buy more music, etc., it's evident that I'm going to need more space eventually.
My plan is to buy two or three more 500GB HDDs. Each will be used for a different purpose: one for iMovie, one for iTunes and video, and maybe one more just for extra storage if I need it. I don't really need to go any larger, and I don't want to ever put too much on a HDD anyway incase it ever bites the bullet.
My question relates to daisy chaining all of the drives. I use Firewire 800, and I just want to make sure that I should have any problems if the HDDs run daisy chained together. Also, do you think I would have any problems keeping the drives on all of the time if they were rack mounted?

Theoretically you should be fine daisy chaining the drives as long as they are individually powered. I think those people having problems may be related to the particular drive cases being used. One way you could cut down on the number of external cases is to get a dual drive enclosure. This is the one that I am using:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL2K/
Just buy two hard drives and install them into the case. Set the jumper to JBOD and both drives will mount over a single FW800 connection.
George

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Daisy chaining external HDD with FW 800? How do I do this?

I have a new My Book 500G HDD hooked up to my iMac with FW 800. I want to daisy chain a new one to it. Do you have to then use a FW 400 between the two external drives? How do you do this? Does that slow it down noticeably. I use it for HDV editing. Thanks!

Hi Dan,
if I recall correctly than the FW800 MyBook has two FW800 ports, so that you can use one for connection to the Mac and one for daisy chain a second with FW800 to the first (assuming the second has also FW800).
If the second has only FW400 than you have to use the FW400 port of the first.
And since WD delivers all needed cables with the drives, you should have the needed cable to do so.
When using FW400 you will have a slowdown, since the harddisk itself has a higher throughput than what FW400 can do.
Regards
Stefan

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.

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-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

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 HD's Question

I'm wondering what the best way to setup a few external hard drives with the fireface 800, and the correct order.
I have 3 External hard drives
2 HD's (500GB and 1000GB) dedicated to Samples and loops
1 HD (500GB) for recording logic pro projects directly
And a Fireface 800 interface
Each has 2 firewire 800 ports and 1 firewire 400 ports
I then have a 20" Imac with 1 firewire 800, and 400 port
1- Is it okay to daisy chain all these on the imacs 800 port?
2- What is the best order to put these in? Interface first or last? Sample drives before the recording drives? Is there a preferred route?
3- Would it be best to get a firewire hub?
4- Or what does everybody else do? Any guides or help would be much appreciated
Message was edited by: floatdownaliffy

Recording to a external audio drive is fine. It is in fact RECOMMENDED unless you have a second internal drive to record to as the internal bus is faster but is better than recording to drive your system is booted from.
If you can keep it all FW800 then that is better than using FW400 & FW800. There is only one FireWire bus on the system and it is only as fast as the slowest device. So a FW400 device will slow your FW800 devices down to half speed! Some interfaces work with hubs while others don't so check with RME about using the Fireface 800 with a hub before buying one.
With that in mind the best way to know what will work is to test the different configurations and see what kind of results you get. Ideally direct is always better cannot always be done.

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 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.

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.

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.

Can i daisy chain external drives and use multiple disks for my iTunes libraries

It's amazing how much content you can acquire. I've filled my 2TB external drive with content. I purchased another drive and daisy chained them. How do I get additional uploads to automatically go to the new drive? Itunes is indicating that the drive is "full".
Please help! I've got 6 downloads effectively "paused"

No, sorry, Time Machine can only back up to a single volume.
Short of getting a larger disk, your best bet is to back up one drive (probably the OSX drive) with Time Machine, and use a different app to back up the other one to a different drive. See the green box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some suggestions.

Can i daisy chain external drives

I have 3 drives but only 2 800 wire ports. Can I daisy chain, or use a 400 wire?

daisy chaining should work fine. I used to have about 11 drives chained (which was pushing the envelope - but it worked with dv material). If at all possible, avoid firewire 400 as it will reduce your thruput.

Daisy chain external drive?

I was looking into getting something like this:
http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Coolmax-Aluminum-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/24790 01/product.html
for two computers to work on outside of a wireless/AirExtreme router where there isnt an option to connect a harddrive to the usb port. so i was wondering could potentially one computer be hooked up to the usb port of an external drive like this and the other via firewire and share and swap files if necessary or atleast access them?
or unless there is a more stable, reliable and better option, id love to hear any suggestions
thank you so much!

Hi AppleNewton;
You asked; "one computer be hooked up to the usb port of an external drive like this and the other via firewire and share and swap files if necessary or atleast access them?
You never ever what to connect one drive to multiple Mac directly. Mac OS does not support disk lock with multiply system. Hence this is a sure way to corrupt the data on the drive.
Allan

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 Chaining External HDDs

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