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.

Similar Messages

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

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

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.

Firewire Daisy Chaining With 400(6pin) and 800(9pin)

I am purchasing the new 17"MBP and it is my first Mac in about 4 years(so glad to get back to Mac because of my work)
Anyway, I want to daisy chain two of my HDDs but I have one 9pin cable for my desktop HDD and one 6pin for my portable HDD. Will this still work fine, or should I just buy another 9pin?
They are both Lacie HDDs and both have 9pin and 6pin.
Also, I have been out of the loop for a while, how many HDDs can you hook up together through firewire without problems. Could you technically hook more up through Firewire 800(saying that all drives are hooked up through 800)
Thanks for the help!

Please see this posting... it was targeted for another topic, but I am sure this response also applies here!
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8922899#8922899
Cheers!
—tonza

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

Firewire daisy chain

G4 in OS 9.2 with FW400.
External HDs with FW400/800.
Obviously I must connect to the G4 with FW400, but can I daisy chain the second HD using FW800 (only one FW400 port on them)?
I suspect not but thought I would check.
Michael
G4 733 512 MB Mac OS 9.2.x

Hi, Michael -
You may be able to do that, if you can locate appropriate adapter cables. However, it may work better to use a firewire hub in order to get additional ports, so that you don't have to experiment with using a FW800 port to connect to a FW400 port.
On the other hand, since your G4 has two FW400 ports (some models have 3 - the third is inside the box), if you have only two firewire devices you can connect each to its own port on the Mac, using only the FW400 ports on the drives.
One of the restrictions on FW400 (and maybe with FW800) is that only the first two devices on each bus can draw power from the firewire bus. I've found that it's in my best interest to invest in external power supplies for each device, as well as an additional power/surge strip to plug them into. Doing so reduces the burden on the Mac's power supply. It may be that some firewire hubs offer supplemental extenal power for the devices connected to them.

Firewire daisy chaining .

Hi guys i just bought a focusrite sapphire and it rocks . I have a lacie firewire drive. can i daisy chain the drive with the additional port on the focusrite .
cheers

Yes.

Motu firewire daisy chain with logic?

Actually 2 questions:
1. I have a motu 896 HD and a 828. I try to connect these with the firewire ports with no success. aggregate devices? Does not work for me...suggestions?
2. My 896 has main out 1-2 and analog 1-8. In logic the main out occupies 1-2 and analog 1-2 goes to 3-4 and som on... I have a mixing console and it would be much less confusing if the outs from the motu is the same in logic...suggestions?

I have used the same 2 devices as well as an 896HD with an Ultralite, as an aggregate device with no problems. Do this:
Plug the 896HD into your mac with firewire. Plug into the 828 from the 896.
Go to the MOTU device setup, and set the Clock of the 896 to Internal, and the 828 to sync to the 896.
Go to Audio Midi Setup, make new aggregate device, select both units, 896 first then 828 second.
Open logic and select the Aggregate device in the Core Audio Driver preference.
Then you SHOULD with any luck have both units working in logic, it should give you LOADS of inputs in the inputs section of the mixer. You can rename the inputs by either. Going to the Mixer>Options>IO Labels, and selecting "User Name" and inputting what you want it to be called. Or go to the MOTU device setup app, and change the input names there, then in Logic Select "Driver Name" instead.
Hope this helps, it is possible so don't panic.

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!

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...

Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor does not work when daisy chaining firewire devices

Hi,
I just purchased the Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor for my new late 2012 iMac.
It works when connecting a single firewire device, but when I daisy chain another drive, the first drive disconnects and nothing mounts.
I am trying a Hitachi G-Raid and a couple of WD My Studio II hard drives. They all work when connected directly to the adaptor, but not when more than one drive if daisy chained with firewire.
Has anyone got firewire daisy-chaining working with a thunderbolt adaptor? (just to clarify I am not refering to thunderbolt daisy chaining, as the adaptor is an end-of-chain thunderbolt device).
Thanks

Yikes, that's sad to hear.
I can't test it, no TB here, but are all these drives self AC powered, ie. no bus powered drives?

How many FW devices can you daisy chain?

Have a new iMac w/ one FW800 port. Need to daisy chain eight FW800 hard drives, two FW400 hard drives, and one FW400 DigiDesign Digi002 ProTools mixing board. I was planning on daisy chaining all the FW800 drives then coming out of the last of those with a FW800 to FW400 cable into the first FW400 drive, daisy chaining to the 2nd FW400 drive, then daisy chain from it into the FW400 ProTools mixing board. I know that's a lot of chaining but at the moment those are the devices I have to work with. I have A LOT of video and audio information I need to retain. Seems to me that I read somewhere about a maximum length a firewire daisy chain could be but haven't found any more reference to it when I just looked. All of the devices have their own power supplies so I don't believe they will be drawing much, if any power from the chain. Anybody know of any problems with this setup?

Thanks for the info.
I've tried several scenarios and combinations what I've found is that I can put all the FW800 drives in a daisy chain then put the 1st FW400 drive in and lastly the Digi002 mixing board (which is FW400). When I try to add to this any more drives I get unpredictable results. I have therefore bough another 2TB external drive and hooked it up through USB 2.0 and copied many files to it from the older FW400 drives as well as the only FW800 drive that ever game me headaches. It should be noted that it is a Western Digital My Book drive. It seems like it would be a great drive having FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 connections. In practice, however, I have had LOTS of problems both on my Macs and PCs I tried using it on. I recommend strongly that you avoid using any MY Book drives. I'm having better luck with practically any other manufacturer, including what I would normally consider no names like SimpleTech and Buffalo. Those drives seem much more stable.

Daisy chaining firewire problems

Hello. So i'm working on a project where the client has 15 4TB firewire drives filled with footage. I've been working with all of them daisy chained together. As you can probably guess, this is causing some issues. Some days I can come in and work for hours and have no crashes. some days, like today, it's hard to even get all 15 drives to mount without the firewire bus crashing and all of the drives unmounting. It's been getting shorter and shorter between crashing episdoes.
They have 7 Lacies, 6 WD's and 2 G-techs. I'm wondering if anyone knows a) if there's an optimal order to put these drives in based on manufacturer, b) if a firewire hub would be any help in this situation, c) any other solutions that wouldn't cost much that could help to make it run more smoothly.
This happens whether it's on a Mac Pro tower (latest Snow Leopard update) or on my MBP 17" (10.5.8)
Anybody done work with lots of drives daisy chained or know any other ways to work with this stuff? thank you...

ApptrGy wrote:
Same Problem. Just got the newest imac i7 from the previous years model, and now my FW 800 drives dont daisy chain, and kick each other off. Worked with the previous model no problem. Major pain not being able to have all the drives mount up together. Any solutions yet with this FW problem?
It's not the same problem and it's not a Firewire issue. You have too much data and too many signals for a single FW bus to handle which is why we recommend editing on the big Macs for anything beyond DV-size codecs. You cannot add an additional FW bus to the iMac.
bogiesan

Final Cut Express problem w/ Daisy-chained Firewire

I have recently encountered an issue with attempting to capture video from a DV camera daisy-chained through drive on a 24" iMac.
I have two drives attached to my 24" iMac - a La Cie d2 Extreme by FW800 and a generic FW400 drive. I would like to run my camera daisy-chained from either drive (so the drives themselves are plugged directly into the iMac). However, when I do this it tells me there is no video (all the VTR functions work though). If I unplug the FW400 disk from the iMac, daisy chain it off the FW800 drive, and attach the camera directly to the FW400 port, it captures nicely.
Funny thing is that iMovie will capture daisy-chained without a problem.
Any fix for this? If this is expected behavior (it shouldn't be -- even my old Linux box didn't have this issue), will I experience similar problems if I get a FW hub? If this is not expected behavior, is there a fix?
I have another problem in that sometimes FCE stops tracking the timecode. What happens is that at some point, FCE stops capture and jogs the video saying it can't find the time code -- then it gives up and tells me it can't capture because there's no video. I can't even rewind and capture the chunk of tape I captured earlier. I have to quite FCE and try again.
Again, iMovie doesn't have this problem (though, if I understand correctly, it doesn't deal with the timecodes like FCE does). Any fix for this one?

I was just a bit confused with the capture bug. The same camera has been used dasiy-chained off the same physical drives under Windows and Linux without a problem -- not even a single dropped frame. iMovie can capture in the daisy-chained configuration, only FCE (3.5.1) has a problem (finds camera, VTR works, says there's no video).
The TC issue has nothing to do with the timecode on the tape -- that's fine and without any gaps at all. If you try to capture the same tape, the error will occur at a different spot each time. Further, if you rewind the tape a little and restart FCE and start the capture again, it will capture right through the part where it had a problem and go for a random amount of time before it hits another error. It's absolutely necessasry to restart FCE, because after it encounter's the timecode error once, FCE cannot capture any mode video (even from where it's captured before), though the VTR functions still work.
I've been playing around a bit, and it appears that FCE only has timecode errors when capturing to external hard disks. If you shutdown the external disks and set the capture scratch to the internal HD it works fine.
If you use any application other than FCE to capture from DV, the daisy-chain configuration works. Only FCE has an issue with this configuration.
I don't think it has anything to do with the camera, either. It's not only an approved camera, but I've borrowed a couple of others of different brands and noted the same problems.

Firewire Daisy Chaining Problem

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