FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

Hello everyone, I have three firewire drives. Two 2TB 3.5" drives and one 2.5" 1TB drive. All three are connected to my MacBook Pro 13" via the one firewire port in a daisy chain. I usually always have the 3.5" disk connected. When I add the portable drive to the daisy chain, it crashes the desktop drive, and I get the "do not disconnect drives without ejecting" message. Is this normal? I am thinking of purchasing the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter, only to avoid the crashes of the other drives in the Daisy chain.
My Mac is an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro i5 2.3GHz with 16GB RAM.
Thank you for your help in advance

Sorry for my late answer.
The disc has 2 FW800 and 1 USB2.
If you buy a TB to FW800 you should give to the disc more power from the TB port.
If you connect the disc with USB you could use a special cable with 2 plugs on one side and one smal USB plug on the other. This cable is designed to give to one disc the pover grom 2 USB ports but one of the 2 can also be connected to an USB power supply, so ytou will give to the disc more power.... of copurse with USB you have a lower speed.
If you have Thunderbolt you should try to use TB discs. I know they are expensive but there is a trick which I like to use... have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa3BXmQVpc

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Disk was not ejected properly FIREWIRE 800 daisy chain

Hi.
I need HELP!!!
I have an Imac 27in with firewire800 and USB2.
I have 3 GDrive HDD (self-powered) plugged in a daisy chain (Firewire800). The first one (1TB) in the computer, and the two others (2X 2TB), mounted in RAID 1 (mirror), plugged in series in the first one.
3 disks ON.
Then at some point, erratically, the message DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY... MAY DAMMAGE... appears and the RAID DIsks go offline. If I open Disk Utility I can see that the RAID is FAILED. One time it corrupt one of the disk and I was unable to rebuild the RAID from disk utility. I even thought that one of the disk was the problem and bought a new one! Same problem happened. I had to retrieve my data with DISK WARRIOR.
So new disk, same way to connect them, new cables and the same problem happen.
It seem that at least one time, it happened when one of the disk (maybe the first one on the chain, the one not mounted into RAID) went out of idling or went to idle.
Sometime if i do shut down the Imac and all the disk and reopen all, and the disks data is ok. Sometimes I have to do a rebuild on the RAID 1, one of the disk being corrupted. wich is a very long procedure.
I read a lot of threads about that, didn't found any good answers about the problem.
It is a BIG problem, my raid 1 disks are scratch disks for video editing with valuable data on them!!!
Would a Firewire HUB could be the solution?
Is there a known problem about daisy chain with firewire800?
Does it have something to do with the fact that my second and third disks in the chain are mounted as raid 1?
PLEASE I AM DESEPERATED ABOUT THAT and I spent a lot of money for new disks and DiskWarrior for nothing!!!!
Thanks
Richard

Mns579 thank you for trying to help...
I did tonite some tests with two disks (no RAID) on a daisy chain. Ejecting one or the other in different order without shutting their power off... And no problem occured. The only time I had this alert about having ejected not properly a disk is when I shutted down the power from the first disk in the chain. Then the message popped up for the second disk still on.
But so far, no problem like the ones I had. So now it seems that there is some kind of problem with the RAID 1 setup.
In fact, when i do eject the RAID, the two disks seems to stop spinning or at least reduce normally their speed BUT they don't park their heads! Like if the processus is not complete.
Still trying to figure out what is the problem! RAID 1 was for me a very nice option to duplicate easily my video scratch disk and my photos backup bank.
Richard

Firewire 800 Daisy Chaining

Hello, I need to purchase an external firewire 800 hard drive for recording from Logic Express. (I was looking at the LaCie D2 hard drives and have heard of some problems with reliability).
However there is only one fw 800 port on my powerbook and this is being used by an audio interface (M-Audio Firewire 400).
Can anyone tell me if connecting both these devices to the one port on my powerbook will work reliably. Also, will an appropriate throughput be maintained while a. recording audio through the audio interface and b.simultaneously saving to the external hard disk....on the same firewire bus.
Many thanks for any suggestions!
PS I've got 1 Gig of RAM, perhaps this is not enough.

Hi
I have a similar set-up to you.I have just bought a MY Book Pro 250GB external drive for my 24" Intel for audio and samples.It seems fine so far and has USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 and 800.
Does your laptop not have both 400 and 800?
I am also running an M-Audio Firewire Audiophile from the 400 port (drive on the 800) and although both ports are actually on the same bus,it seems to be ok.I had the same concerns as you regarding this.
I guess its just a case of trying it out and if its no good putting the drive on USB 2.0 or using a digital sound out from the computer (if it has one).
And yes,you could get by with 1GB of RAM,but if your arrangements grow 2GB is always a good idea.And cheap at the moment.But not from Apple!
Cheers
Duncan
iMac 24" 2GB/ Black Macbook/ G4 MDD 1.42 Dual. Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Connecting 2 Firewire Drives daisy chained on a MacBook Pro Retina: 1rst FW8-Dr is ejected by OSX 10.8.2 as soon as I power up the 2nd FW-800 Dr.

OSX 10.8.2 seems to eject a FW-800 Drive to any attempt to connect in daisy chain a second.
- Connecting one single Firewire-800 drive (G drive) seems to work fine (connection through a Thunderbolt-FW800 adapter)
- As soon as I try to connect a second FW-800 G drive in daisy chain, when I turn the power on to the second: Mountain Lion ejects to first with the message "improperly ejected" and both drives are not visible. I do not use separate power supply for the FW-Drives.
- The same thing happens with for the second drive instead of a true FW-800, it is an SSD 128 GB mounted on an enclosure with a FW-800 interface.

Hi Mate,
I've got a non-retina MBP i5, and it's not behaving like that, so no way should yours be. Can't hear it at all until it really comes under load. But even then it's relatively quiet. Quite concerning that it's happening to you with nothing loaded up.
Something is obviously taking up cpu power just by having the audio engine running, have you checked OSX Activity monitor and checked where your processor(s) are being used?
Also, check your audio options and make sure the audio buffer isn't set ridiculously low.
Agree that Apple expansion options are expansive - However, at least they're working on getting the software reduced, Logic X being an example of that.

Firewire 800 & Firewire 400: Daisy Chain or Not?

I've recently added a LaCie FW 800 to my system. Does it make any difference if I daisy chain my FW 400 drives with the FW 800 as opposed to leaving them plugged into the FW 400 port (on the front of the G5) and just plugging in the FW 800 all by itself.
Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks. BTW, after my purchase (doh!) I did a little research and read that FW 800 doesn't have the performance is should on G5s. And it's something Apple never really bothered dealing with. I believe I read that on Barefeats. Oh well, I needed more storage space anyway. For DV projects where it's simpler just to dump oodles of media onto a drive and there may be revisions or versions in the future, with the falling cost of external FW drives I've decided you might as well just put the cost of buying one in the production budget and stick the drive on the shelf when you're done. No messing around with consolidating media. Ok, it's a lazy workflow but I don't have an assistant.
Jeff

Has anyone been able to use an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire to daisy chain a dozen or more FireWire drives?

Ever since I realized that I was not able to connect my FireWire daisy chain to my brand new Retina MBP there has been problems. Four months down the road, I am still unable to use my FireWire drives and have experienced terrible problems whenever I connect my FireWire daisy chain to this new Mac.
I have bought two of these adaptors from Apple now and both do the same thing. The daisy chain has been working perfectly for years with my older MBP and still does! There are no problems until I connect to the new Mac.
I have 15 various hard drives in NewerTech and DatOptics enclosures for over 22 TB. When connected to the new Mac, I would have multiple apps just hang, sometimes just Apple apps, sometimes 3rd party. I will not be able to force quit them and they will keep relauching as you can watch them in the Force Quit window. The Finder will hang and there is no relaunching it. I am having to do a force shutdown twice an hour which leaves no time for work!
After four months of this, now I am being told that Apple will buy back my Mac at full price. But I have basically lost the good part of four month’s worth of work because of constantly fighting the new Mac. This is cost me all my savings and I am about to lose a client. It certainly seems that releasing Thunderbolt1 was a huge, huge mistake.
Does anyone know of any large Fire Wire daisy chain working with Thunderbolt?
TIA,
R

Yes, my first post is all about how darn iffy the adaptors are and I have two of them to return now.
I question your answer because I am betting that four drives that are in one enclosure NOT all RAIDed together as one drive, but as four separate drives that those four drive will count as four devices. The daisy chain that I had going had eight drives in TWO quad boxes, four drives in TWO dual drives and another drive in a single enclosure. A total of five “devices” if you will, but also a total of 13 drives that were usually in this daisy chain.
Both of the Apple branded Thunderbolt to FireWire adaptors chocked BIG TIME on this and it works no problem on my older MBP. You basically can not use a new Mac when you are connected to a daisy chain like this!
Just checked the Apple website and indeed, I can get a new MBP with FireWire 800, just not with the Retina display! I wish that I would have known this five months ago before this all started!

Fw800 daisy chain problems - crashing MBP

I just had two massive crashes on a 6-month old MCP with new external FW800 drives daisy-chained. The first crash happened when I tried to hook and "old" (5 years) FW400 hard drive within the daisy-chain of newer FW800 hard drives. The second happened when all 3 of my new (8-months old) FW800 drives were connected: one of the drives just spun its wheels and never showed any data. After shutdown / reboot it's ok - but there are 1.3TB of info on it.
Questions: How many FW800 drives can you daisy-chain out of the one FW800 bus on a MacBook Pro?
Or is it a length of cable issue? Or is hooking up the older FW400 into the chain the problem?
I researched online and found multiple posts that said you can daisy-chain Sixty-Three hard drives. This sounds impossible and unbelievable given what I have just experience with THREE hard drives.

The problem is that this could be tough to troubleshoot if it is a power supply, as the offending drive will attempt to pull the juice it needs to keep running from the FireWire bus.

Thunderbolt daisy chain problem with display

Hi to everybody,
being a proud new user of a thunderbolt audio interface Apollo Quad since a couple of days i am struggling to set it up without trouble for my secondary display in my Thunderbolt daisy chain...
My setup and connections
MBP Late 2011 17" 16GB RAM running Mavericks and UAD SW 7.11, 1 Thunderbolt port
Promise Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt RAID drive
Apple TB display
Second 26" display connected via DVI/Mini display port adapter
Erverything worked like a charm prior to inserting the TB audio interface with a Thunderbolt 2 Card into the TB daisy chain. Order of TB connections: MPB -> Apple TB display -> TB Audio interface -> Ext. display via DVI to TB connector.
Since putting the audio interface (Apollo) in the TB chain Apollo itself, TB display and Pegasus RAID run fine - but the last display behind Apollo only shows "invalid mode" blinking on the display. I tried changing the order of the devices, no change.
Has anyone an idea what to do?? - I have not exceeded the max number of TB devices (6) allowed to run in sequence. I read here in the forum that an ext display behind Apollo should work and has proven to do so. It has the new option card for TB2 inserted... Does the left/right port matter, which is connected to the display?
Thanks in advance for any help to get that sorted out!! The last option would be to go remove the TB card and run the Apollo per firewire as I need the second screen.. not the most convincing solution for me though.
Regards
Uli

Hi Ilya,
I am curious why it only happens for one particular Process Chain. Normally displaying a log has nothing to do with the client settings of SCC4 and/or system settings of SE06. My only guess is that it might be created in this system directly and that the system wants to modify anything here.
I am quite sure that the system is "closed" and it's not a Development system, e.g. a Production System. Please confirm.
Anyway, I have one suggestion and that is to check the Object Changeability in the Transport Connection. Go to t/code RSA1, choose the Transport Connection view and click on the push button Object Changeability.
Here you can see a list of Object Types like RSPT (Process Chain Starter), RSPV (Process Variants), PSPC (Process Chain). If it is set to "Not Changeable", I suggest to change that in e.g. "Everything Changeable".
Please try that with the above mentioned Object Types for Process Chain related Object Types and see if you are able to display the log w/o the pop-up.
You can also refer to SAP Note 337950 - Queries (including objects) cannot be edited for more information.
Thanks,
Sander

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 external drive problems

I recently upgraded from a MacBook Pro 17" early 2011 to a MacBook Pro Retina 15" (early 2013). I have a Drobo and two Seagate 4TB external drives, all connected via Firewire 800. So, I added a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter and, it seemed, life was good.
I keep my large iTunes Movie and TV show collection on the Drobo. Since transitioning to the new MacBook, I have had a number of issue with watching movies on my Apple TV 3. Randomly, and periodically, the movie appears to be corrupted - the audio track skips/loops and the image is horrible macroblocked, as if the file is damaged. When I check the movies on the Drobo, opening it with Quicktime on the MBP, it plays just fine at the same spot it appeared damaged on the Apple TV 3.
A second symptom is this: I can no longer re-encode video with Handbrake with the source and target files on the Drobo - it gets some portion of the way through and it just stops, leaving the video partially encoded; again, at random locations/offsets into the video and not the same spot twice.
My initial thought is that connection to the Drobo is dropping out and coming back, on its own, but long enough to cause the above problems.
Is anyone else seeing this issue or something related when using the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter with large drives?
Thanks, in advance.

Update: I exchanged the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and the issue persists. I have a Drobo that I used with my previous system, a PowerMac G5, and never had any issues like this.
It does not matter what software I use. But at some point video playback will suddenly become garbled. If I start the video from the beginning, sometimes the garbled video will start sooner but never later. A restart temporarily resolves the issue. If I copy the file to the local hard drive the video will play back garbled. This is indeed a very strange issue. The issue behaves like a bandwidth bottleneck.
I was having this issue prior to upgrading to Mavericks.
Fred K
iMac (Late 2012), 3.4 GHz i7, GTX 680MX, Fusion Drive, 24 GB RAM, Drobo (Firewire via Thunderbolt)

PCI Firewire / Hub Firewire or Daisy chain Which one will be a good idea

I'm starting to run outta room for firewire
so i decided to buy a PCI firewire card
so now i wanna know if its smart to plug my drives in there so as my isight or just stay with daisy chain or buy firewire hub ?
thanks in advance
any quick answers are appreciated
stash

The Firewire PCI card i got has like a power connection port on it
I was wondering if i needed to connect it to anything or it gets enough power from the motherboard
I mean they didn't supply the cable to connect it to the power supply
and the G5 doesn't have any extra cable lying inside there to connect to it
and so far all hard drives including the isight is running smooth
Just wanna know before something happen
stash

The FireWire 003 Daisy Chain Auto Eject

I'm not sure what to blame here. I was using Cubase with a Digidesign 003 interface. The 003 is daisy chained after a Seagate FW800 drive. When I quit Cubase (which switches back to the internal MBP soundcard), the Seagate drive dismounted with a "device removal" warning. This is a bad thing.
This has happened before (possibly will every time I quit Cubase). Any idea what is causing it?

In FW daisy chain situations it is not uncommon to find that powering down one device will affect others, I'm afraid innergalactic.
I'd be inclined to try using a powered Firewire hub to see if that resolves the issue.
Cheers
Rod

Firewire 800 front port problem

I'm using an RME Fireface 800 audio interface, which is a Firewire 800 device. When I hook it up to the front FW800 port on my Mac Pro, it is periodically disconnecting while in use (using Logic, Final Cut Pro, etc.). To be clear, I don't mean that the cable is physically disconnecting, but rather that the interface disappears from the operating system while still attached and powered up.
When I use the rear FW800 port I'm not having this problem, at all.
Can anyone think of an explanation other than perhaps my front FW 800 port is screwed up? Has anyone else had this issue?
Thanks...

Hi John,
Yep, exactly the same problem I had with my Mac Pro's front FW800 connection and the FF800. The problem in the end turned out to be because I had my SSL Duende mini plugged into the rear FW400 port. Have you got any other firewire devices plugged in? The FF800 really dislikes sharing a bus with anything else, which is why I went out and bought a PCIe FW400 card and now all my devices have their own bus and all works just as you'd expect. Hope that helps, cheers.

MacBook Firewire limitation - Daisy chaining Firewire

Hello all. Long time lurker, first time poster. I purchased a MacBook, Canon ZR800 and a LaCie drive in hopes of playing around with some basic video editing. I didn't take into consideration the single firewire port on the MacBook. Currently I have the Canon ZR800 hooked up to one of the FireWire 400 ports on the LaCie drive and the LaCie drive connected to the Mac via the Firewire 800 port on the drive. This setup is not working as the Mac doesn't see the camera at all.
I realize that silly to route the video through the LaCie only to send it back but I'm not clear on what my options are.
I'd prefer not to capture directly to the system drive. I've read that the firewire hubs are junk and I know that USB doesn't have the bandwidth. Is my only option capturing directly to the Mac then moving it to the LaCie for editing?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am going to commit a heresy and tell you to connect your LaCie to your MacBook with the USB 2.0 socket!
It is quite possible to capture and edit using USB 2.0 with no problems.
Give it a try and see how well it works for you - you will probably be pleasantly surprised. Obviously you will plug your camera directly into the Mac.
I wouldn't advise anyone to go out and buy a USB 2.0 HD, but if you already have one there is no harm in testing it out.
Some people, depending on their equipment and editing circumstances, do have problems. If you have any, you can always return to FW.
Ian.

Firewire Daisy Chaining Problem

I plug in a FW external harddrive into my MBP and it shows up fine. Then i add a device (i have tried this with another HD and a soundcard) onto the HD, and the MBP unmounts the 1st device with the unplugged error. If i have both devices plugged into each other before pluggin into the MBP, nothing shows up. I have tried this with 2 different external drives (1 self powered and the other buss powered) and get the same results on both. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO GET RID OF THE EXTRA FIREWIRE PORT

There would appear to be a bug with Firewire devices that has been persistent throughout 10.5 with multiple Firewire devices attached if they are of a specific firmware. I've even tried to use a Firewire hub with no conclusion in sight. And the company that I bought the devices from claims there is no firmware update, and usually is a company that is quite reliable in terms of Firewire. Plugging them in the two Firewire ports of my iMac Intel Core2Duo White model hasn't made a difference.
WHY DID THEY HAVE TO GET RID OF THE EXTRA FIREWIRE PORT
Using all uppercase won't get anyone's attention any quicker. If anything, it makes it appear as though you are shouting and attempting to be rude.
Apple has feedback pages here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
This is a user to user forum, and while Apple does read the forum, AppleCare and the feedback forums appear to get more attention for actual feedback. Resetting the Firewire port, resetting the power manager, or resetting the PRAM can sometimes improve matters as my FAQ* indicates:
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Firewire daisy-chain trouble with Leopard. Will a hub help?

I cannot get reliable daisy-chaining of my external Firewire drives under Leopard. A Firewire drive directly attached to computer will work, but subsequent daisy-chains to this drive will not mount more than half the time. I ended up getting corruption of 2 drives: there appears to sometimes be Spotlight crashes/Finder crashes, and Disk Utility repair failure after a mount fails.
I have nine FW drives, and I like to keep bootable clones of all 3 of my Macs with the current system and a couple of generations back. Being able to attach only one drive to my 12" G4 Powerbook 1.5GHz makes cloning difficult (I can only clone the internal drive using my Powerbook). If I get a Firewire hub, will my FW connection then be reliable? There seems to be a problem in Leopard as I don't get daisy-chain problems using the same drives under Tiger. The drive activity lights don't even flash when the daisy-chained drive mounts fail under Leopard, so it appears that Leopard is making no attempt to mount the drives. Why would this be? Yet sometimes daisy-chain drives have mounted just fine.
Makes/models I have tried: Smartdisk Firelite (were sold by Apple), Maxtor OneTouch III, Seagate FreeAgent Pro, and Iomega Black series. I tried various cables.
Does anyone know what the difference is, from a hardware standpoint, between daisy-chain vs. using a Firewire hub. Would there be an inherent difference using a hub?
Are the "hubs" with Mac Mini footprints actually true hubs or are they daisy-chains? How about FW drives with built-in FW "hubs": are THEY actually a true hub or a daisy-chain in disguise? (Sorry if these questions seem stupid.) Recommendations for a hub?

Sorry just noticed I've probably posted this under the wrong forum header

FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

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