Daisy-chaining FW drives

My new iMac is on the way, replacing a Power Mac. I have three external FW drives, two are 800 and one is 400. Is there any reason why I couldn't connect this way: 400 FW drive to 800 FW drive to 800 FW drive to iMac? It has the right connectors, but not sure if that will work. Anyone know? Thanks.

Hello,
Well, it does not look like this is a question that can be answered by technical / published specifications. It is one that will have to be answered by trying it.
For every statement I find supporting one answer, I find another person saying the opposite. So, there does not appear to be a general agreement that I can find.
The specification states that you can have FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports on the same bus, and it will not slow down the FireWire 800 ports to use a FireWire 400 device on the same bus.
In-fact, this is how Apple has wired their Macs with both FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports. I don't know about the current iMac. But, previous Macs (PowerBook for example), had the FireWire 400 port on the same FireWire bus as the FireWire 800 port.
And, the specification specifically states that you can have a FireWire 400 device share the bus with a FireWire 800 device without affecting performance.
But, when you read Apple's tech document, there is a bit of double-talk. Well, actually, it is a statement that can be interpreted two different ways.
Understand that 1394a is FireWire 400, and 1394b is FireWire 800. With that in mind, here is their exact statement:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/HWTechFireWire/Articles/FireWconcepts.html
"FireWire 800 is backward-compatible with FireWire 400. When a FireWire 800 device is properly connected to a FireWire 800 port on a Macintosh computer, the two communicate using 1394b protocols at 1394b speeds. When a FireWire 400 device is connected to that same port, the port conforms to 1394a specifications to communicate with that device. FireWire 800 ports with this capability are commonly known as bilingual."
Now, you can interpret that to mean that the port will only use the slower protocol to speak with that specific device and will maintain faster communication with the other devices.
Or, you could interpret it to mean that it will switch the entire port to the slower standard and all devices will communicate at the slower speed.
They could be a little more specific there.
The second interpretation would seem more likely.
But, the FireWire standard does specifically state that FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 devices can operate on the same bus without affecting the speed of the other device.
I found an "official" 1394 document a little bit ago stating that they could share the same bus without affecting speed. But, now I cannot find it again. So, this one will have to do:
http://8help.osu.edu/1249.html
But, that would not technically be in conflict with either statement above. Because, it is saying they could share the same bus, but not saying anything about sharing the same port.
So, feel free to interpret that as you like.
Basically, from various perspectives, you could say they can share the same bus and not the same port. Or, they can be used either way.
We can further confuse this by bringing to the surface the fact that many FireWire 400 devices are actually FireWire 100 devices (such as many video cameras and web-cams). So, then we could start the whole discussion over again, and debate why we don't really see it affecting the performance of our FireWire 400 drives. But, I suspect that it is entirely possible that it does affect the speed, but that it is not significant enough for us to notice.
It comes down to, you'll have to try it. Only with real benchmark testing will we be able to truly determine the exact extent of the performance loss / difference.
Now, if you want to watch a whole bunch of other people argue about this same thing, I just found this discussion here:
http://forums.dealnews.com/read.php?4,2607362,2609352
And, if you want, you might read over this article from Apple discussing (very briefly) how FireWire is integrated into their various machines (including the new 24-inch iMac):
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/HWTechFireWire/Articles/FireWimplementation.html
So, now that I have given you enough information to not answer the question
Anyway, I'm not sure how much help this is. But, I hope it will be useful and helpful to you.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

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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

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-chain internal drives temporarily???

Hello! So after a western digital 1TB external drive failed on me I am looking to recover the data on my own. I have taken out the drives from external casing. Call them DRIVE A. I would like to daisy chain them through my iMac's current internal drive which we'll call DRIVE B. I have no need to copy the data from A to B. I just want to be able to get my computer to recognize A as another internal just temporarily so I can copy it all thru to a NEW external fire wire drive, DRIVE C.
So the goal is to just copy the data on DRIVE A to DRIVE C via a Drive B.
I have never daisy chained internal drives before and would really appreciate the communities guidance on accomplishing this. Thank you!

You should not open up your iMac, when there are far easier ways to do what you desire.
1. You can get an empty external drive (either FireWire or USB 2.0 or one that has both interfaces). Put A in that case. Copy off the data to B. Swap out A for C. Copy off the data from B to C.
2. You can get one of these USB to IDE/SATA adapters for $30.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/U2NV2SPATA/
Connect A to this adapter and connect to USB. Connect your new external drive with C to FireWire. Copy off data from A to C. You don't need the intermediate copy on B.

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.

Daisy chain thunderbolt drives and RAID

Hi everyone!
I was wondering, is it possible to buy several thunderbold drives, daisy chain them, and then make them act like a RAID 5 ?
Another question would be: I looked around the lacie drives and they said they can be put as RAID 0 or 1, but when you daisy chain them, so every one of them become a RAID 0 or 1 independent from the other or do they act as one?
Thank you for the precisions!

I believe you may do that provided the iMac is at the end of the chain, so the external drive must be able to pass through the port. But Apple's information on chaining is in relation to their standalone displays which must terminate the chain. So I am assuming that may also apply in your case even though the iMac isn't a standalone display.
It may be much simpler to use an USB external drive.

Daisy chain lacie drives?

hi,
how do i daisy chain my lacie ex drives because i dont have many usb ports available at all.
vheers
Message was edited by: macbookair

Here at Combat Films and Research we have been working on a project over the last 10 months and it has been growing steadily.
We are shooting HD and the files are obviously quite large. We now have the project spread over 5, 1TB Lacie hard drives. Furthermore, they are of two different versions. Two have the concave blue button and no powers witch on the back. The other three have the convex blue button and a power switch on the back.
When we have more than one drive hooked up the write speed drops from 44MB/s to 15MB/s (ish). Regardless if we hook on the the front bus and the other to the rear or any other way to combine them.
Does anyone have any answers for this or even better, solutions to the problem?
best wishes,

Daisy Chain Firewire Drives

I have a FW 800 drive connected to my Mac Mini.
I am trying to daisy chain a FW 400 drive to the FW 800 drive but the 400 drive won't mount.
I have a cable that allows me to plug the FW400 directly into the FW 800 port on the computer and it mounts fine when I do that.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

On many drives, the two FW ports are interchangeable, but that may not be the case with your drive if it actually has "IN" and "OUT" labels.
The next test I would try is connecting only the FW-800 drive to the computer, using the "OUT" port. If it fails, you won't know whether you have an intentional asymmetry or a defective port, but if it works, then you can try adding the FW-400 drive dasiychained to the "IN" port.

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.

Macbookpro: daisy-chaining hard drives

I'm new to this site so please bear with me.
I have recently bought a macbookpro 2.8ghz with a 500gb (5400rpm) hard drive and 4Gb ram.
I work with Logic Pro 8 and use more samples than audio for making music.
I am wondering what is the best setup for producing music (with the equipment available). This is what I intend to do:
Internal Hard Drive: use for PROGRAMS (OS, Logic etc).
External Hard Drive 1 (FW800 320gb GDrive - 7200rpm): use for SAMPLES
External Hard Drive 2 (FW400 300gb Western Digital - rpm?) : use for AUDIO (project folders) . . . BUT DAISY CHAINING THESE TWO DRIVES:
fw400WD>fw800Gdrive>MBP
Does anyone know if this will work?
Thanks in advance

Yes, this can work, but you must be sure your first device through-puts bus power if you don't want to use and external DC-adaptor for the second one. And also remember 4 pin FW400 does not give you bus power (if applicable).

Daisy-chaining LACIE drives

Hi folks,
Hope someone can help here. I have a LACIE drive which is my main drive for editing on FCP. It is nearly full up so I bought another to daisy-chain together to increase the overall storage capacity.
I've linked the two together through Firewire800 and then attached one drive to my mac, but instead of one drive coming up it sees two individual drives.
It was my impression doing this would mean I would see one drive on my system but with the storage capacity of both.
Can anyone help with this? It's my first experience doing this sort of thing and am a bit of a novice...
Thanks

but instead of one drive coming up it sees two individual drives.
That's exactly what is supposed to happen.
The signal from drive 2 is just being passed through drive 1.
If you want to make one great big drive out of several, you need to make them into a Concatenated RAID set.
Disk Utility's Help file has this to say, be sure to pay particular attention to the last sentence:
+"About concatenated RAID sets+
+You can create a single, large volume from several smaller disks by creating a concatenated RAID set, which is also called Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD) or spanning. The concatenated RAID set acts as one large volume with the combined capacity of all the smaller disks. You can increase the size of a concatenated RAID set after it's been created by dragging more disks to it using Disk Utility.+
+A concatenated RAID set is helpful if you have a file, such as a database, that's larger than any of your disks. It’s also useful if you need to create a mirrored or striped RAID set with one large disk and two smaller disks.+
+If all the disks in the RAID set are about the same size, consider using a striped RAID set. A striped RAID set lets you access your data quicker.+
+Be sure to back up your data frequently. If any one of the drives is damaged, you will lose the data that’s on all the drives."+
If you simply want to add another Scratch Disk to FCP, use the System Preferences > Scratch Disk menu and click on one of the free "Set" buttons. When the current drive is full, FCP will just start using the next one in the list.

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.

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

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.

Daisy-chaining FW drives

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