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)

Similar Messages

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

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

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!

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

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.

Daisy Chaining Firewire HDs

I now have a Lacie D2 1TB hooked up to my sole Firewire 800 input, If I get another identical Lacie, would it be OK to use the 1st one for Timemachine as I do now, and hook another to it for data? As of now I have the Lacie patitioned into 3 parts....500 Gig for TM, 150 for a SuperDuper backup and 250 for other data...Another possibility is to use the USB output of the HD instead, but wouldn't it be slower? All opinions are welcome

To address an earlier comment you made. You can not hook up a drive to your Mac with Firewire then daisy chain other drives off that drive's USB ports. There isn't a Firewire to USB bridge in there. You are either using Firewire or you are using USB. Which ever one you are NOT using is a dead bus on the drive.
As to moving your iTunes to the external...
Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
If you are just testing, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location.
Cheers,
Patrick

NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card (34)

After some foot dragging by FireWire direct, today I finally received the NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card ordered almost a month ago.
First Impressions: Unimpressive at best.
According to the FireWire direct rep, it is supposed to work using the Mac OS built in drivers and require no additional driver....
Upon first insertion, my MacBook Pro promptly went into a kernel panic.
NOT a good introductory performance!
Upon restart, I did get the thing to work, "sort of".
First, it requires AC power even with a 2.5" external drive meant for bus power. Bummer, but so be it. However, less acceptable: it is VERY fussy about sequence, reminding me of evil SCSI voodoo rituals from the past century. Seems it only likes to work once- if I remove the card, it requires a reboot to recognize anything attached to it subsequently.
Functionality is intermittent. Sometimes I can mount and unmount a drive several times in a row, sometimes just once before it fails to recognize the drive and requires another reboot. One drive it took a long time to recognize but eventually it did- only to freeze up rock solid soon thereafter requiring an uncomfortable long push on the power button to shut down- nothing else worked. That drive was a known to be working Lacie, the first a known to be working WiebeTech and both are totally reliable on my G5 and previously completely reliable on the MacBook Pro using the integrated FireWire 400 port.
Unscientific results so far show a modest speed increase transferring a few large files, nothing like double the FireWire 800 speed hoped for. In any case if it ain't reliable it ain't gettin' used. Hoping for a driver solution in 10.4.7? (Wishful thinking)
No one likes a fussy device, much less one doomed to corrupting directories with that kind of behavior. I'm disappointed with Apple for omitting the FireWire 800 port on the 15 inch model and leaving us with this cheesy "solution".
I am not a big fan of dongles, or things like Express cards which are just asking for trouble by introducing intermediary third party connectivity issues exactly like these...
Oh yeh, and the little metal door on the Express Card slot tends to hang open and not snap closed- just to add insult to the whole process.

Well, after two days of use I have a bit of data regarding the NitroAV (and Apple's implementation of ExpressCard/34).
First some general observations: like bigwheel, there are a few too many rough edges to be fully pleased. After inserting the card, a menu bar icon appears next to the Airport icon. On mouse over, the drop down shows "Unknown Vendor" and "Firewire Controller" are greyed out, while the 3rd "Power off Card" is selectable but does NOT power down the card. Looks like I have to shut down the MBP, then eject the Nitro card.
I also can confirm intermittent unmounting and remounting. My latest experiment is to leave the drive mounted and then have it wake up after sleep. So far it's worked once, but will post if it continues to find my FW 800 drive over time.
One major design flaw of the ExpressCard implementation - to engage the card you push in until it clicks, while to disengage the card you merely push in a second time. But how are you supposed to ATTACH FW800 cables?? I find I have to try to hold the ExpressCard firmly so it doesn't go in while fumbling with the FW800 connector. WAY too fussy...
OK, here's some actual test data, involving transfers of 1,000 MB of files (147 Canon RAW files, approx 7 MB each).
I used three hard drives for various transfers -
1. Internal stock 100 GB - 5400 rpm (TOSHIBA MK1032GSX)
2. FW 800 / 400 500 GB - 7200 rpm (Seagate 3500841A in OWC Mercury Elite case)
3. FW 800 / 400 250 GB - La Cie 7200 rpm drive
All test are transfer of 1 GB of files from HD to HD-
Test 1: Internal to FW 400 - 68 seconds
Test 2: Internal to FW 800 - 65 seconds
Test 3: MBP built in FW 400 daisy-chained - 54 seconds
Test 4: Nitro FW 800 daisy chained - 43 seconds
Test 5: Nitro FW 800 port A to Nitro FW 800 port B - 43 seconds
Test 6: MBP built in FW 400 to Nitro FW 800 - 35 seconds
So it looks like there is some speed increase, but I was surprised that mixing the FW 400 and FW 800 ports gave the fastest transfer speeds! The Nitro card is dependent on Apple's implementation of buses, and this seems to be the winning combo. Not that intuitive that shifting one of the FW 800 devices down to FW 400 will speed things up, but that's what my simple test seemed to imply.
I didn't test read times only, but it would seem that these should speed up (and hopefully speed up my primary application of Aperture).
MBP 2.0, 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Mixing FireWire 400 with FireWire 800

How do I connect FireWire 400 Peripherals and FireWire 800 Peripherals to the single FireWire 800 port and preserve the FireWire 800 speed to the computer for the Firewire 800 Peripherals? (Obviously, the 400 speed peripherals cona only send and receive at 400 speed.)
My guess is that connecting the FireWire 800 peripherals to the computer and adding the 400 peripherals at the end of the 800 daisy chain may work. However, recalling the mixing things in other contexts (USB 1.x vs. 2.x and WiFi 802.11g vs. 802.11n) drags every device down to the slowest speed. Will that happen on a FireWire 800 and 400 daisy chain?
Anyone know of a FireWire 800 hub?

jnsail wrote:
How do I connect FireWire 400 Peripherals and FireWire 800 Peripherals to the single FireWire 800 port and preserve the FireWire 800 speed to the computer for the Firewire 800 Peripherals?
You cannot. If devices of different speeds are daisy-chained, the speed of the entire chain will drop to the speed of the slowest device, in this case FW400. A hub won't help.
The workaround is to get an ExpressCard FireWire adapter, and connect one set of devices to that, and the other set to the MBP's FW800 port.

Hub Firewire 800/400

I was surprised to find out that my new Imac (3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) has only one Firewire port (FW 800). I have one Lacie external HD which has FW 800 and 400 through which I can chain other external FW 400 HD. My problem is that I can't chain my camera or a DV recorder, neither my external DVD burner. What do you think I could do : maybe buy a Firewire Hub, but does a FW 800+400 Hub exist ?
My DVD burner is FW 400 6pin/6pin
My DV recorder is FW 400 6pin/6pin
Thanks for answering

FireWire 800 hubs are currently expensive. If that FireWire 800 drive has a FireWire 400 daisy-chain port, perhaps you can get a less expensive FireWire 400 hub and connect it to that daisy-chain port. That would give the FireWire 800 device the benefit of a direct connection, and since your other FireWire devices are currently 400, you can connect them to that hub with no 9-pin to 6-pin adapter needed.
Just an idea... Here's an example of a FireWire 400 hub
[Belkin FireWire 6-Port Hub|http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-FireWire-6-Port-Hub-F5U526-APL/dp/B0006BHCEK/r ef=sr11?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1244117766&sr=8-1]
Be sure to get one that is self-powered (has its own power adapter).

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

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 ...

Firewire 800 Daisy Chaining

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