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

Similar Messages

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 ...

Mixing Firewire 800 and 400 on an iMac?

I have 2 external FW 400 drives on my late 2011 iMac. I use an 800 to 400 adapter. I've been thinking of getting a new external drive from OWC. The have both 400 and 800. The 800 case has 2 800 connectors and one 400. Does it make sense to mix? Will they all run at the slowest in the chain?
I was thinking of connecting the 800 directly to the iMac using the built-in 800 connection. Then chaining from there using the 400 connection to the other existing 400 external drives. Will I actually get 800 speed on the first drive?
Thanks

I have a mixed group of external drives, and just bought a new OWC Mercury quad interface drive.
The user manual that came with it says:
Note: If you are using FireWire 800 and add a FireWire 400 device to the chain, all devices will be reduced to FireWire 400 performance
I tested this myself, which confirmed it. I set up the following chain, with the first 2 drives connected by FW800, and with a FW400 drive either connected or not connected at the end:
HD ----800-----DRIVE1------800------DRIVE2-------400-------DRIVE3
I booted from my HD and timed the copying of a large file from DRIVE1 to DRIVE2. Although the FW400 drive was at the end of the chain and was never involved in the copying, just having it attached immediately reduced the speed of the file copy from Drive1 to Drive2. The actual speed reduction in practice was about 40%, not 50%.

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.

FireWire 800 and 400

Can I link up two HDD's one FireWire 800 and one FireWire 400 into one FireWire port on my MBP?
Thanks

It is just that easy. I'm assuming you have a FW800 on your MBP? Just do a search on Amazon for Firewire 800 to 400 cables and you'll find some - very inexpensive - that will suit your needs. Oh! Here are some from monoprice - all under $9.
Regards,
Clinton

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

Mixing firewire 800 and 400

I have an older iMac (3.06 GHz Intel Core i3). I currently have 3 external firewire 400 drives daisy-chained to it. I use a 800 to 400 adapter on the back of the iMac to convert from 800 down for my drives. I was just looking at OWC and considering a new external. Just wondering if it would be worth my while to pay extra to get a USB3/firewire 800 enclosure instead of a 400. If I hook up the 800 directly to the iMac, then use the 800/400 adapter off the extra port on the back of the first drive to run the other 4 400 drives, will I be getting the 800 speed from the first drive, or will it be downgraded to 400 (speed of the older drives). If I was starting from scratch, it wouldn't be an issue, but since I don't want to loose the other 4TBs+ on my other drives. Hope someone knows the answer. I've heard conflicting stories on how this actually works.
Thanks

Just wondering if it would be worth my while to pay extra to get a USB3/firewire 800 enclosure instead of a 400.
If you think you'll ever upgrade you Mac I'd get the FW800/USB3.0 model so it will be usable at it's intended speed with the new Mac.
OT

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

FireWire 800 and 400 ports??

What is the difference between these and can you plug any devices into either?

FireWire 800 rocks! It has twice the throughput of FireWire 400. 100 MB/sec versus 50 MB/sec. They do have different connectors, but you can buy adapters. And like the last guy said, a FW400 device will not run at FW800 speeds. I use a FW 800 drive, and it's pretty zippy, but without a RAID config you're not likely to spit out 100 MB/sec of data!
Hope this helps.
PowerMac G4 FireWire 800 Dual 1.25 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1.25 Gig RAM

Can i use Firewire 800 and 400 at the same time?

I have a HD connected to my 800 port works fine and a GL-2 camera on the 400 and final cut pro won't see the camera. Can I have 2 devices hooked up at the same time?

Yes. But you did not say whether the camera works alone or not at all. In the latter case it could be the camera isn't compatible.
Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

Rear Firewire 800 and 400 Ports

I'm having an issue getting a new Maxtor HD to be recognized by my G5. The front FW 400 port works fine, but I can't get the two rear ports to recognize the unit.
I've tried the shutdown and power plug pull technique but that didn't work.
Any other ideas?
Or does this box have to go in for repairs?
??? Thanks

You could try the Official firewire reset
Mike Mihalik, LaCie
"Seems like the FireWire issue needs to be revisited quite often. Here is my often repeated suggestion which appears to clear up many FireWire issues: reset the FireWire ports. Panther has a Finder Preference to show mounted volumes on the Desktop. You must set this for mounted drives to be visible. Please follow these instructions to reset your FireWire port.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Here is a summary:
* shut down and disconnect all external drives and peripherals ; make sure nothing is connected to the FireWire ports
* use Apple Disk Utility to repair permissions on your internal boot drive
* shut down and disconnect the AC power from the computer as well as the drives; if laptop, also remove battery
* let sit unpowered and unconnected for 15 minutes
* reconnect AC power to only the computer (battery too if laptop)
* restart computer
* verify that FireWire ports are visible within Apple System Profiler
* reconnect FireWire drive (only one); refresh window within Apple System Profiler to rescan the FireWire bus; confirm that drive is visible
* confirm drive is OK by using Apple Disk Utility and apply First Aid
* repeat for other drives, one at a time "
Post again if it doesn't help.

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.

Is there a difference between firewire 800 and firewire 400 besides the connectors

is there a difference between firewire 800 and firewire 400 cables besides the connectors?

Speed. 800 is up to twice the speed, and sometimes faster. You can connect the two connectors with a cable that fits both ends, but you will be left with the slowest speed.

Does daisy chained firewires make performance drop?

Hi all, just looking for a quick answer by someone who knows what they're talking about. Will daisy chaining firewire 400 drives together on a Mac or PC create a performance drop? I'm editing a project using 2 daisy chained drives at the moment with media on both. My co-worker claims it will slow down the computer's access to the media, I say it won't. Neither of us has any hard evidence and a quick google search doesn't turn up anything substantial either. What I'm looking for is hard engineering evidence. Thanks!

The firewire protocol allows for 63 or so devices to be chained together.
Running two FW400 devices should not be an issue. I've run up to a eight on chain in the past.
Still, be aware that some drives do not play well with other drives on the same chain. I have a G-RAID 500GB drive that tanks when there is another drive connected. It runs fine when it is the only drive on the bus.
If you are curious, go to the AJA website and find the "AJA System Test" app. It is a disk drive throughput test. Connect your drives in various configurations and see what happens.
Good luck,
x

Can't daisy-chain Firewire drives reliably from 1-port Powerbook. Hub??

I have found that I cannot get a daisy-chained Firewire drive to mount more than 50% of the time. This problem doesn't happen with Tiger with the same drives. I have tried 4 different brands of late-model Firewire drives (Iomega, Smartdisk, Maxtor, and Seagate) with different cables and what happens is that a drive that is directly attached to the 12" Powerbook will mount, but the second chained drive fails to mount a majority of the time. Since I only have one Firewire port, this is preventing me from using more than one drive at a time, and I lost two Firewire drives to corruption today. Three out of four partitions lost contained bootable backups of Leopard and Tiger. Ouch!
This issue could prevent from using Leopard with my Powerbook, which is supposed to be Leopard-compatible. I can't remake the clones too easily with only being able to attach one drive at a time. I am thinking I will order a Firewire hub and try that, but I am not sure if that would be a solution, and I am wondering why I can always daisy-chain under Tiger, and not under Leopard. Does anyone have experience with Firewire hubs and Firewire operation details? Will I be able to get reliable Firewire with a hub?

I have exactly the same problem !
I have found this :
Using Multiple FireWire Devices at the Same Time
Power Macintosh computers can transfer perfect digital video (DV) on FireWire when no other devices are using the FireWire bus. If you have problems transferring digital video, make certain that no other FireWire devices are being used at the same time. Turning on a DV camera that is already connected may cause a FireWire hard disk to stop working. If this happens, turn off the camera and verify that the hard disk has recovered. Then unplug the FireWire cable from the camera, turn the camera on, and reconnect the FireWire cable to the camera. Check with the hard disk vendor for a possible firmware update to prevent this problem.
here:
http://www.2ndwave.com/firewire.asp
At the moment I can't upset what I'm doing to test it but I intend to do that as soon as I finish copying transferring...
I have the following device attached to different firewire ports:
a firewire video device connecting my G5 Desktop to the TV screen
a firewire ibot
I thought I would give u a head start

Daisy chaining firewire 800 and 400 devices

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for