Firewire 800 + many external drives

Hi there,
I have 3 existing WD external drievs running from my Firewire 800 port. They are currently daisy chained and work fine.
I bought another one today, and starting to feel there might be a problem if I was to plug another drive in of a total 4.
Can someone tell me what is the limit to this and if there is any danger of short circuiting or losing data if I added more drives?
Thanks
C

Hi The Mac Clam,
FireWire can technically support up to 63 devices in a daisy chain but I can't imagine you'd get any sort of reasonable data throughput at that range. With that being said, 4 will absolutely work with the understanding that the more you keep adding on the overall data throughput will being degrade.

Similar Messages

IMac G5 and firewire 800 between external drives?

I have a iMac G5 running 10.4.7 which has two firewire 400 ports.
One FW400 port has a Seagate external drive connected, and an iSight is connected to this drives second FW port.
The second FW400 port has a LaCie 250Gb triple interface drive, which has one USB, one FW400, and two FW800 ports.
I'm looking to add a third firewire drive, a duplicate of the LaCie.
I am wondering (before I buy the new drive) if I can connect the new LaCie drive to my existing LaCie with a FW800 cable and have my iMac recognize it.
I'd rather not buy a firewire hub (if such a thing exists) if I can get all three drives and the iSight to mount simultaneously without it.
iMac G5 17" 1.8 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

It did work - chaining the external drives together via FW800, and then connecting one to the iMac via FW400.

How many external drives per Firewire 800 bus?

I am the proud owner of a new Mac Pro, which comes with only one FW 800 bus. I have 4 1T G-Tech FW drives (2 for video media) that I've daisy-chained, and I know their performance is suffering because of it. I'd like to remedy that.
Question 1: Is it optimal to have only one of these drives running on each bus? Can I get away with two per bus without serious loss of efficiency? Can I assume that 2 per will run better than 4 per?
Question 2: For the price that OWC is selling the Sonnet Tango 800 PCI-E card (about $110), is there another card I should be considering, or is the Tango 800 considered good?
Thanks.
Giraut

giraut wrote:
videocrafter,
not to presume on your time more than i already have -- what a helpful reply you gave. thanks! -- but i just want to make absolutely sure of one thing:
i buy the esata pci-e card you mention from OWC and install it myself (probably pretty easy) and then just plug my G-Tech drives into it, and I'm good to go? No separate esata controller card? I just realized that only two of my four G-Tech drives have the esata connection, so I could plug those two in, leave the other two with my FW 800 connection and save up for a couple more G-Tech drives with the esata connection. And this will make my life better.
Correct?
many, many thanks.
giraut
Hi giraut, your welcome
That is correct, you will not need any additional controller card. You will have to install the driver for the Tempo E4P (make sure you follow the installation instructions) and you'll want to make sure you download the latest driver from Sonnet's website:
http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=338#position_content
and unless you have some application monitoring for new upgrades, I would check at least once a month if not more often for any new future drivers. They are suppose to be coming out with one here soon to support 64 Bit. Even though FCP does not yet support 64 bit if you choose to run other applications in 64 bit you don't want your eSATA controller to cause any problems.
You'll also need One external shielded eSATA data cables with "I-Shape" connectors for each device you connect to the card. So in your case, you'll need 2 right away. Here is the type of cable you need, it just happens to be made by Sonnet, but you can find cheaper ones (just remember, you get what you pay for).
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/TCBSATA11/
There is one bit of insight I would like to give you when swapping any of your internal drives around once you have this card installed. It probably tells you in the owners manual, and I just stopped reading once I got it up and running. However I found out the hard way. The first time that I swapped out one of the "Internal" drives (I swapped out the drive in bay 3 I think it was, makes no difference which bay I'm sure) but I simply shut down my system, unplugged the computer and swapped out the drive. When I started back up, I things didn't' seem right, it wasn't seeing my external drives properly and I got a panic attack (both the computer and me!). Of course my first thought was "YOU'VE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!" So after I took a deep breath, before turning the computer back on, I disconnected my external enclosure, then restarted and everything was find. I then completely shut down, turned on my enclosure and restarted. All was good. I tested my theory again and swapped out another internal drive and all went like clockwork. Here are the exact steps I took. They worked for me, and maybe they will work for someone else, so I'll list them here:
Swapping Internal Drive
1. Eject each external drive from the enclosure and power down the enclosure.
2. Eject and power down the FireWire drive.
3. Power down the computer and swap out drives.
4. With the external enclosures powered off, power up the computer as normal.
5. Accomplish another shut-down.
6. Make sure all of the drives are installed into the enclosure, turn on the power.
7. Power up the computer and keep your fingers crossed.
Personally I've never daisy-chained Firewire drives (although I find it fascinating that Patrick had 19 of them daisy-chained) if I did I would probably only use them for archiving since I capture and edit everything in ProRes 422, but that's another thread. I currently only have one device that I use via firewire 800 which is my external Blu-ray burner. An interesting note here. I initially had my Blu-ray burner connected to my former piece of junk eSata controller card (with the Silicon Image SiI3124 chip and drivers that haven't been updated since before Leopard came out) but for whatever reason, the Tempo E4P wasn't seeing it (Now I'm not sure why, and frankly I didn't take the time to troubleshoot it, so it may be nothing) I just went ahead and connected the burner up as Firewire 800, and connected my 3rd external eSata device (a OWC Mercury Elite Pro USB/Firewire/eSata drive) to port 2 of my Tempo E4P, with my 5 drive bay FirmTek/5PM eSata enclosure connected to port 1 of the E4P (leaving 2 open ports on the E4P).
So, If I were you, for now I would go ahead and daisy-chain those other 2 Firewire drives, unless I needed to use them to capture and edit in anything other than DV, or for archiving only. Otherwise, I would get another 5 bay enclosure and take those 2 SATA drives out of those 2 existing firewire enclosures (Im assuming they are SATA drives inside their enclosure, I would surely think so) and put them in the external eSata enclosure.
One last ti-bit of information that may or may not be useful. When you get an external 5 bay enclosure with the port Multiplier, pay a little extra for a brand that you can trust. Personally, since I already have one, I would stick with the SeriTek SATA5PM (their built like a tank!), or go with a Sonnet, OWC has a new price on their Fusion D500P that's pretty appealing. I would definitely be cautious if wanting to purchase anything for a specific company with the word "Cool" in their name, the only thing that is cool, and it's only cool for them is they get your money and you get .... well you know!
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA5PM/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/FUSD5P00TBR/
Just in case anyone is wondering, I get no compensation in any fashion for any of the items that I have specifically linked to in this post. These items are simply ones that I have carefully done my homework on, and if it can save someone else a little time by helping them with their homework, then that makes me feel good. I'm all for helping others save time, it's the most precious resource we have.
Message was edited by: videocrafter

External Firewire 800 500GB WD drive does not mount

Hi-
Here is the problem.
i) Bought a lacie 500GB d2 drive using firewire 800 to connect to the iMAC but did not work. The port was seeing the drive but disconnecting it every 10 secs thinking that I was unmounting it during operations. I returned back the drive to the apple store since i saw that it had way too many problems.
ii) Replaced the Lacie d2 drive with a WD 500 GB external firewire MyBook Pro but the mac does NOT see or mount the drive at all.
iii) Bought a 23" HD cinema display and extended my dekstop over. I did not connect the additional USB/Firewire plugs to the iMAC as I am plugging in the drive to the iMAC and not the cinema display.
I have tried the following:
-Power off the mac and disconnect the power both on the WD and the MAC
-Check/Uncheck the ports through the preferences menu for firewire
-Repaired permission with the disk utility on the internal hard drive
Any ideas as to why the ports do not recognize/mount at all this drive?

I have read elsewhere that the FW 800 port on the iMac 24 can be a bit tricky. You may want to make sure you have a good connection.
I formatted mine out of the box which is just good practice and because I wanted to make a partition bootable/clone.
Powering on/off wont make a difference.
I don't know what you mean by uncheck/check ports for firewire. There are no such prefs in OSX.
Repairing permissions has nothing to do with hardware.
You only plug the FW 800 plug into the FW 800 port on the iMac. You use the other ports on the drive to plug other drives in on a daisy chain.
Go into drive utility and see if it shows up there for formatting. If not, then you have a bad cable. Try the regular FW 400 port and hook up that way. The 400 and 800 share the same bridge. If that doesn't work, and another drive does, then the FW bus on the drive is dead.

IMac internal HD vs Firewire 800 RAID1 external HD

Please excuse if this has been discussed before.
My setup is a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with 4 GB RAM, 320GB internal and1.5TB external firewire 800 RAID1.
Since the internal drive has faster data transfer speed but the external has faster seek/read/write speed, what should go where?
I use mostly Aperture, Photoshop, browser. System files on the internal with apps on the external?
What's optimal?

Your system is very similar to mine. I have the same size internal HD and use FW 800 drives for storage and backup. I keep my Aperture and iTunes libraries on one of the EHD's. Performance seems great, I also recently upgraded the RAM to 6GB, if your machine will accept 6GB that would help performance too. On my machine (late 2007 24 iMac) Apple doesn't officially support 6GB however it has been known for about 2 years it works fine.

Does FireWire 800 see individual drives in a four bay hard drive enclosure?

I am trying to find a four bay hard drive enclosure with FireWire 800 interface, AND through this one FW800 connection my OS can see the four hard drives individually (similar to USB interface or Port Multiplier on eSATA interface). Anyone knows whether such a product exists? Thanks.

I'm not sure you fully understand how the hardware/software RAID system functions. If you create a mirrored RAID with either then you have redundancy for drive failure. This would be the case for either hardware or software arrays. If you create a striped array with hardware or software then there is no redundancy regardless of which method you use.
An enclosure failure can occur whether you use software or hardware based arrays, so the failure risks are the same. There's no reason to believe that the failure risk of the enclosure would be greater than using software. In fact it's likely that the hardware would be more reliable. As for differences between eSATA and Firewire reliability I'm not sure why your would believe one is more reliable than the other unless you have data that supports such a conclusion.
If you are overly cautious about backups (which is a good thing) then I would look for an enclosure in which you could have two separate striped arrays. Then the two striped arrays are configured into a single mirrored array. That way you have two separate backups - a main one and the mirror. This gives both drive and data redundancy. The main risk is if one drive in each array fails simultaneously. The risk of this would be fairly low I would think. Even this risk can be removed if the box supports other types of arrays than just 0, 1, and 0-1. See the following:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Hard Drive Speed Difference Between FireWire 800 and Internal Drive

Right now I have my entire 1.5 TB Lightroom photo library on an external drive connected to my new Mac Pro via FireWire 800. Will I experience dramatic or even noticeable speed improvements if I move this drive to one of the internal SATA hard drive bays in my Mac Pro?
I would likely buy a new drive and SuperDuper the external to this new drive I put in the Mac Pro.
Thanks,
Matt

SATA II 3Gb is only the controller bus and has almost nothing to do with actual individual drive speed. Confusing the bus interface with hard drive speeds is not a clear way to compare.
Just pull the drive out of the FW case is all you probably need to do. Actual FW800 is less than 80MB/sec and more like 72-75MB/sec - which is as slow as your hdd gets from slow inner tracks.
Other than green, most 1.5TB drives average minimum 75MB/sec to max 115 with average in mid-90s. And the first 1/2 of a drive is where best performance comes from.
The size of the data and media library, amont of free space, all play a role.
I think FW should be left to backups, an alternate boot volume, off line data.
If it was Aperture library, but otherwise SSD is not realistic or viable. Nobody uses RAM disks as they are inefficient.
I still find 10K VelociRaptor ($279 / 600GB) fast, smoother, more responsive, great for system and data drives, even if they are only 135MB/sec, or about what some of your 2TB drives can offer.
QUICK TAKES - A striped pair of Velociraptor 600G 10K HDDs matches the speed of one SSD. For less that the price of one 256G SSD, you can buy two 10K 600G Velociraptor HDDs. If you stripe them (RAID 0), you get the same sustained transfer speed as the SSD. http://www.barefeats.com/quick.html
If you are not already using all the internal drive bays, just nice to have them handy before going external. Also take a look at two other articles on Barefeats:
THINK INSIDE THE BOX: Internal Storage Innovations for the Mac ProOctober 6th, 2010
EXTERNAL STORAGE INNOVATIONS for Mac Pros -- (Added results for ATTO R680 SAS RAID adapter.)

FireWire issues with external drive in Yosemite

I have just upgraded to OS X Yosemite, and I have an annoying problem with my 500GB FireWire external drive (which I use for Time Machine backups).
Basically, after updating the drive won't show up anymore, neither in the Finder nor in the Disk Utility. I also tried the "diskutil list" command in the Terminal, but it is nowhere to be found. Note that the drive does indeed receive power from the port - it spins - and when I look into System Report --> Hardware --> FireWire it does show up there (but I can't mount it). Furthermore, if I use a USB cable to connect the drive everything works fine, so the disk itself seems to be OK.
The funny thing is that if I boot with the drive plugged in the FireWire port the system mounts it normally. But as soon as I eject the drive, I am unable to mount it again (unless I switch to the USB cable, as mentioned above).
Prior to the update, everything worked flawlessly. For now, I backed up my Mac via USB 2.0, but it's very slow and I definitely don't want to resort to this workaround everytime. And it goes without saying that I don't like having issues with my primary backup device in general.
I already did all the usual troubleshooting (rebooting, resetting NVRAM and SMC, ...), but the problem still persists.
Any suggestion?

I had the same issue on a rMBP 13'', brand new 2015 March.
Two thunderbolt adapter connected: one for ethernet, one for firewire Lacie drive.
and...
even after taking the ext. Firewire on the Spotlight exclude list, and also after disabling sleeping hard drives, I always got the issue.
Until I realized that touching the laptop or moving the screen was immediately leading to disconnection.
Then I exchanged the thunderbolt connectors, and now it is stable and does not disconnect again.
??? Maybe one of the ports is more "delicate" than the other?
Big hardware weakness here...

How many external drives can i connect to Pavillion p7-1154

I want to know if I can have two external drives attached to our P7-1154 hp pavillion desktop computer. I do have a spare USB port to make the connection. I already have one WD external Drive attached, which is rated USB3, 2TB Drive. The one I want to add is also a WD drive, a USB2 USB3, meaning it is a USB2, but is compatible with a USB3. It is a 1 TB drive.
When I originnaly attached the current USB3, 2TB drive, I immediately had a new folder come up named MY BOOK (K) and that is where I back up all my data.
I am assuming that when I attach the new, 1 TB drive to the empty USB port I will Immediately get another MY BOOK folder but with a different name, probably MY BOOK (K3) , or something like that.
My real Question I guess, is whether the Computer will recognize this as a different drive and give it a different name, or whether the computer might not be able to accept a second drive.
I do not want to take any chance of confusing the computer in any way, and so that is why I posted this question.
I posted this question in another forum about a month ago and did get one response, but did not get an answer. The responder wanted to know the rating of the two drives and wanted to know why I needed a second external drive. I provided him with the USB and TB ratings, and told him I just wanted the additional security of having our data on two external drives. I had one external drive on a different computer a couple of years ago and I accidentally dropped it, and was not able to recover any of the data. So I want to have two drives on this P7-1154 Pavillion Desktop. I did not hear back from him, so am posting in this forum.
I would appreciate any comments, information, or suggestions.

Hi,
Physically you can attached more than one external hard drive. I do that all the time. Your PC is equipped with multiple USB ports so you shouldn't have an attachment issue. If the application supporting MY BOOK has issues with multiple MY BOOK devices attached to your PC then you need to seek a solution from the MY BOOK manufacturer.
So to answer your question, yes your PC will support multiple USB external storage devices at the same time.
If your real question is, does my PC support multiple MY BOOK external USB devices?, then you should seek advice from the MY BOOK manufacturer.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

How many external drives can i have on Pavillion p7-1154 compter

I have four usb ports on our 1154. one is used for printer, one is used for skype, one is used for a Western Digital 'MY BOOK' external drive, and one is not in use.
Can I use the remaining usb port for another Western Digital External Drive, which also requires a usb port.
I think the answere is 'YES', but before I connect the second one, I thought I would ask, just to be safe.
Thanks for any help, comments, or questions... Wayne

Thanks a lot for the interrupted reply.
The WD external drive I now have attached is a USB3, 2TB drive. The one I want to add is also a WD drive, a USB2 USB3, meaning that it is a USB2 but is compatible with a USB3. It is a 1TB Drive.
The reason I want to add the second drive is basically security. I dropped one external drive several years ago and the data were never recovered. I just want a second backup of all the data on the hard drive.
On the box of the 1TB drive is says that it is compatible with a USB3 Drive, and this may have answered my question. However, I am not sure of this and that is why I am asking the question as to whether or not I can have two external drives on the P7-1154.
When I originnaly attached the current USB3, 2TB drive, I immediately had a new folder come up named MY BOOK (K and that is where I back up all my data.
I am assuming that when I attach the new, 1 TB drive to the empty USB port I will Immediately get another MY BOOK folder but with a different name, probably MY BOOK (K2 , or something like that.
My real Question I guess, is whether the Computer will recognize this as a different drive and give it a different name, or whether the computer might not be able to accept a second drive.
I do not want to take any chance of confusing the computer in any way, and so that is why I posted this question.
Thanks again for the earlier response. Hope your error messages have gone away.
Hopefully this more detailed question will be helpful for you to give me more advice, one way or the other, on whether or not I should add a second external drive.

Firewire 800 2 External Hard Drives, 1 w/800, other w/400

Backstory:
My current External Hard Drive has both USB & Firewire 400. I've just purchased another, larger, that has both 400 & 800. The original I'll call the 400 is set w/Time Machine. I'd like to switch that to the new 1, "800", but still keep the old connected as a secondary back up device for specific items.
All that being said, how do I go about doing this?
With the 400 already installed on my computer, it IS visible on my Desktop as it should be. When I attempted to start the new 1, 800, it does not show.
Due note, I was unaware only 1 firewire item shows at a time. Should I be concerned about my computer, or is this common? Both show properly in my "System Profiler", but ONLY 1 AT A TIME.

Strange. I have seen posts claiming certain Macs don't recognize 2 firewire ports at the same time.
That is nonsense. I have two FireWire drive connected to two separate ports. Please provide a link to such a post.
When I unmounted my 400 (old), then it showed in the profiler, but still not on the desktop.
If the 800 drive's volume does not mount when the other drive is disconnected, there is something wrong with the drive.
Connect the 800 drive by itself (no 400 drive connected). Run Disk Utility. Does the drive show up in the sidebar? If so, is there a volume indented under the drive in the sidebar? If not, you may need to go to the Erase tab (or Partition tab) and format the drive. If there is an existing volume, select it in the sidebar and click the Mount button in the toolbar.
So the first step is getting the 800 drive to be recognized properly by itself.

New Maxtor External Firewire 800 200 GB Drive Install Help

I have noticed lots of posts on this, any suggestions before I plug it in?
Do you recommend for or against the preinstalled software? I know I need to format it, is there a link or for th is someone could point me too?
I am still new to mac so this will be my first addtiion to my G5 Du
Thanks

Not familiar with Maxtor drives, but
You can use Disk Utility to set it up. Mac OS extended journalled is the usual format. DU help covers the basics.
You may want to have at least two volumes/partitions, so that you can clone your working boot drive into one of them, with CCC for instance
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
in case of problems.
It's probably still wise to disconnect the f/w drive while updating OS X.

Mix firewire 800 & 400 hard drives

I am getting a new 21.5". I now have a 20" (firewire 400).
I have a G-RAID2 with 2 800 and one 400 firewire ports. I also have a G-Drive 400 which I use for Time Machine.
On the new iMac, I will connect the G-RAID2 with a 800 cable. But then, should I connect the G-Drive into the 400 port of the G-RAID2, or the 800 port via 6 to 9 pin adapter? Or doesn't it matter?
Thanks...
Rick

Just spent quite a while in the Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro discussion group and the video guru Tom Wolsky (I hope that's the correct last name) has pretty much instilled the fear of the Lord in me with regard to daisy-chaining a Canon HV20 camcorder wiith my external Rocstor FW800 drives.
The safest thing many people say is to connect any Firewire camcorder directly to the computer and not daisy-chain it. Even adamant about removing any other Firewire connections on the same computer using the computers' Firewire ports (Firewire cards okay on Mac Pros) as they share the same Firewire bus. Also strongly recommends turning off Time Machine as well so no interruptions to the time critical importing of video. That means on the iMac, I'll temporarily remove the Firewire hard disks and import to the internal iMac drive. I don't want to risk screwing up the video import or worse, the external hard drives...

Firewire, kernal, Maxtor External Drive

I know this discussion happend a while ago, and is closed, this is the link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3453370&#3453370
The problem is it didn't resolve anything for me, I didn't understand the "chip" answers.
I wrote down what the kernel said - it's about "Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependiencies): com.maxtor.iokit.10FireWireFamily(2.25).... " and it goes on.
Is this telling me to go to the Maxtor site and download the module firewire family? This kernel doesn't happen with usb, but I really prefer the speed with the firewire.
Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
17" PB G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 12" iBook G4, PowerPc G4, 2 iMacs G3, 5 iPods - Computer? Get protection

Just in case there are others out there with this problem, I thought I should post this.
I found a driver download at Seagate, here is the link:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxtorOneTouch_Mac_OS_X_DriverUpdate&vgnextoid=cd6d8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD
It's lengthy so you'll need to copy and paste the url.
Thus far the external is mounted with the firewire, so I hope it continues to work.
17" PB G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 12" iBook G4, PowerPc G4, 2 iMacs G3, 5 iPods - Computer? Get protection

2008 iMac too many external drives

I have a 2008 20" imac and although slow, stil does the job (struggles with iphoto).
My problem is storage, I seem to have a rather fragmented storage solution.
Internal 250gb, 115gb free
External USB 2tb, 350gb free. I have itunes 1.5tb and iphoto 132gb on here.
External usb 3tb which I use as time machine to backup the 2 above.
I also have a 2tb nas (mybooklive live) but with no way to back it up I only have copies on here, such as films to watch and a copy of itunes, just music, for my sonos to access so I can listen without turning on iMac.
This all seems complicated and slow (usb2)
I have looked into replacing my Mac with a Mac mini but internal drives are quite small and you can no longer upgrade and I would still be stuck with my usb2 externals, I have also looked into keeping my Mac and replacing my nas with a synology but the unit plus 2 3tb drives(to provide a backup solution) would be very expensive.
I have resorted to copying movies that are "not important" to a portable 1tb drive and the deleting them from itunes to free up space.
I would love some tips and suggestions please
Many thanks.

you can open up extern hd's and take out the physical hd's and add them to a synology nas if you want
I have 4 hd's in my synology 2 pair of raid1's 1TB and one 512GB and then an external hd connected to the sinology and an ext hd connected to my airport extreme and then 2 ext hd's connected to my imac works fine

Firewire 800 + many external drives

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for