Daisy Chaining FW External HD

Can I attach an 800 FW drive to the 800 FW port and then daisy chain 3 400 FW drives to it without degrading performance?

Thanks I have been reading contradictory stuff in terms of number of devices that can be daisy chained. I thought as long as they were all plugged in to a power source the number could be fairly high. I am having no problems with three which are currently daisy chained -- even SCSCI gave you 9 daisy chain options (as I recall -- it's been a while).
I am now considering a Time Capsule since that wouldn't require use of a Fire Wire port which would also provide a router which could theoretically be used by my TIVO network.
The first gen 500 gig model is available for $250 -- I can get a 1T for less but if I need a hub for optimum performance, the price differential becomes far less.

Similar Messages

My new iMac will not allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives - what can I do?!

I just purchased the new late 2013 iMac 27" and all is wonderful except it will NOT allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives which is a HUGE problem because I'm a professional photographer & I won't be able to access my images unless I can sort this out. I know I can purchase a new giant hard drive but i'd prefer not to because I have about 12 TB of data which will be expensive & time consuming to transfer & I'd also prefer not to have that much info tied into one device. Ultimately I will need to get a Drive with multiple bays but I'd really like a short term solution that works for the drives I currently have. Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!!

Why can't you daisy chain your drives. If it's because the iMac only has a Thunderbolt port and you have Firewire drivers purchase the Thunderport to Firewire adaptor from Apple: Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter - Apple Store (U.S.)
OT

Camera not recognized unless daisy-chained with external HD

I just bought a LaCie 250GB external FW drive to use as a scatch disk for FCE. Now my camera (Sony DCR-HC30) is not recognized unless I plug it into the LaCie. I borrowed a second camera (Panasonic), swapped the FW cable while the camera and HD were plugged into separate FW ports, and the Panasonic was immediately connected in both iMovie (v4) and FCE. I've tried the suggested fixes (unplug, Garageband, swap ports, new cable...) and the problem remains. I upgraded memory, QT and applied several patches prior to attaching the HD. Any suggestions? Can I live with the daisy chain arrangement or will that cause problems importing to the external HD? (I've not tried to import any video yet). Thanks

Can I live with the daisy chain arrangement or will that cause problems importing to the external HD?
Yes and No, respectively.
(That's what I always did before getting an internal 200GB hard drive in my iMac.)

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

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...

Daisy-Chaining Firewire External Drive Tips Needed here!

H, I have three cases with drives in them I want to connect to my iMac for various duty:
1) fw/400/800/esata/usb case (externally-powered)
2) fw/400/usb case (externally-powered)
3) fw/400/esata/usb case (bus-powered)
My current setup is to chain 1 & 2, and plug that chain into the firewire 800 port on the imac, and 3 is just plugged into one of the USB ports on the back of the iMac.
Is this the best way to do this? I am concerned that by chaining 2 to 1, that I am slowing down the fw800 drive inside 1. Is that true? Well, thx for any tips

I'll agree with *"a brody"* my gut say's 1 to the 800 port, 2 to the 400 port with 3 daisy chained to 2, how ever it might depend on what your using each drive for.
Open your Activity Monitor and select the Disk Activity tab, then by copying the same size file or folder to each drive you should get some idea of the transfer speed to each drive. You can also use this method to check the speed when copying between External HD's. (Note: for testing sustained transfer speeds use at least a 1GB or even better a 10GB file or folder)

Cannot Daisy Chain My External Hard Drives on Macbook Pro Unibody

I have a 2010 Macbook Pro 13.3. I am trying to daisy chain my 2 external hard drive enclosures to my firewire 800 port. The enclosures are manufactured by Vantec, model Nextar 3. Both devices have 2 firewire 400/800 ports and they advertise that they are able to be daisy chained.
My issue is: I hook one to the other and power them both on and nothing seems to happen. I can power one up and the drive will show up on my desktop, but when I power the second drive up, I get the pop up screen saying I have disconnected my device without properly shutting it down, and then the drive is gone. I have tried connecting them several different ways. Im not sure if its the external enclosures, if there is a process I'm supposed to follow, of if the Macbook Pro Unibody does not support daisy chaining firewire 800 devices.
Please, if anybody has had the same experience and has been able to fix it, let me know. I am in need of some serious hard drive spance and am going to return both enclosures if I cannot get them to work.
Thank you.

I'm having the same issue.
I'v also found that I am able to daisy chain other drives throught the vantec drives.
And that, when I get the pop up screen saying I have disconnected my device without properly shutting it down, and the drive is gone. I'm only able to remount the drive after restarting the computer while the drive is conected and powered. It won't apear on other computers untill the reboot sequence is preformed.
Strange,
Let me knwo if you've found a solution.
thanks,
joe

New to daisy chaining my external hard drives need some guidence on this

I have 2; 3.5 inch 7200rpm 1TB hard drives, & bought some external enclosures with firewire ports for them.
what would the steps be to set them up?
some things I cannot seem to get a clear answer for even after Google searches is;
say I have drive A & drive B together, with drive A plugged into the firewire port on my mac & drive B plugged into drive A. If I only need to work with content on drive B, do I have to have drive A running as well? even if I do not need to work with it?
I notice in mac os that devices show up as no names, well if I need to eject my drives how can I tell which is which when they both show up with the same no name? I dont want to accidentally eject the wrong drives in the wrong order.
So to prevent something like this I would like to know if there is a way to get mac os to name each hard drive? say drive A would be called photos & drive B music. Is there a way to get windows to see them with these same names as well as in mac os?
another thing is I have windows xp pro installed through parallels on my mac & would like to work with my daisy chained drives in this as well.
what ever I do I dont want to screw up my drives, I have important data on them.
Message was edited by: Sossity

You can rename the drives to be just about anything you choose. That will help you to make sure that you are disconnecting the correct drive. As for the daisy chaining issue, I have found that even though the enclosures have the ports for this, I tend to see more issues with random disconnects. As near as I can tell, the Firewire port may not be providing sufficient power to drive two 7200 RPM drives at the same time. I personally prefer to use one drive on my FW800 port and a second on my FW400 port. Yes, one of the dries gets a lower bus speed, but for the increase in drive stability, it actually tends to perform slightly better overall since there are fewer drive disconnects under heavy load.
You reference Windows XP and Parallels. Parallels allow you to specify to connect a drive to the Mac OS side, or to the virtual environment running Windows. This is easily managed. If you are referring to Boot Camp, then yes, they will still work, as the Boot Camp drivers you should have installed would have installed drivers for the Firewire port. One other thing to keep in mind is that depending upon how the drives are formatted, you might have read-only access to the drives under one of the two OSes. You can buy/download drivers to give you full read/write access to HFS+ drives under Windows, and similarly for NTFS drives under Mac OS. Also, if you choose to connect the drives to a virtual Windows environment, then they will not be available to your Mac OS unless they are shared from the Windows side.

Daisy Chain Camcorder- External Hard Drive (firewire)- PowerBook?

Will it really cause problems? I'm going to buy a firewire card to avoid any fw bus problems but for now, would it drop frames and cause trouble?
Thanks
Vito

It does for some, not for others. We always preach that you need the card for the additional bus so that we ensure that it will work.
I myself never had a problem daisy chaining camera/deck/computer. Heck, I have even captured to my internal drive without dropping frames, so...guess I am special.
Nah, others can do this, but most cannot, so we preach the conservative way of doing things.
Shane

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 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-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

Is it better to daisy chain an apogee duet and external hdd or...

...setup an audio interface and external hdd to two separate bus ports? I ask because I going to be purchasing gear to set up my first home recording studio and I am torn between the MacBook Pro 15" and 17". The 17" comes with an Express Card slot (which I could use to utilize more bus ports), but is less portable and a little more expensive. The 15" is ideal in size, but lacks two firewire ports and Express Card possibilities. I know firewire is a must for a 7200 rpm external drive, but I have read very negative reviews about USB powered audio interfaces. Is daisy chaining a good idea? Are USB as bad as I've come to understand in terms of clarity and quality? Is the 17" my best option? I am looking at a starter's interface, like an Apogee Duet. The new Apogee One looks intriguing, but again, it is USB.

+1 for daisy-chaining Duet to Glyph. For audio work the 17" is the best option these days. The ExpressCard slot is invaluable for using Universal Audio plugins or powering an additional firewire device above and beyond the audio interface/hard drive, such as the Focusrite Liquid Mix.

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 a thunderbolt external drive & thunderbolt display?

Although you can't daisy chain multiple thunderbolt displays to the new (mid 2011) Air's are you able to connect a thunderbolt display and daisy chain a thunderbolt external hard drive?

1. As stated in the questions and answers section of the link you posted, no.
2. Connect it to the MacBook Pro, start File Sharing from the Sharing pane of System Preferences, and use the Connect to Server command in the Finder's Go menu on the iMac.
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Daisy Chaining FW External HD

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