Hardware :: Can External Hard Drives Be Daisy Chained Through USB
Dec 28, 2010
I have two hard drive enclosures: a Macally G-S350SUA, which has Firewire, eSATA, and USB 2.0; and an older Ximeta enclosure which is only USB, which I haven't been using. I have been using the Macally recently but I want to set up a second external hard drive so that I can use the Macally for data. Is it possible to daisy chain two external hard drives through USB, or only through Firewire? The USB plugs on both enclosures are Type B female, so I suppose I'd need a B/B USB cable, which I don't have, so I haven't tried it yet...
I have two external drives daisy-chained to my iMac for Time Machine,Superduper bootable back-up and a further Superduper back-up of my old Snow Leopard drive. Since upgrading from 10.7.3 to 10.7.4 I get an irritating message each time I awake the computer from sleep that another computer is using my network and the computer name has to be changed. Changing the name as advised in Sharing of System Preferences does not solve the problem. Only disconnecting the external drives makes the warning go away but this is self defeating since I then cannot use Time Machine and/or Superduper.
Does anyone have any experience daisy-chaining FW 800 drives on a MBP? I've got one right now, but am thinking of adding another but I don't want to use an AC adapter if I don't need to. Will the MBP give enough juice to run 2 daisy-chained FW 800 drives (2.5")? I've got the late 08 unibody 15".
I am looking into all sorts of backup options. Thinking of getting a Lacie 2big 2TB RAID1 (effectively 1TB) firewire external HDD for backup needs. I am not concerned about speed as it is meant for archival purposes only.
Almost ordered one when I found another way to do it is daisy chaining 2 separate 1TB Lacie firewire HDD in RAID1 configuration using Mac disk utility. The advantage being 1> Lacie 2big 2TB HDDs are notorious for being noisy but the Lacie 1TB HDDs are fanless hence super quiet. 2> having two separate DDs+enclosures gives me two independently failing systems for the non-HDD hardware; meaning for the 2big 2TB RAID1 disk if the power supply or the built-in RAID controller card fails then I will have to buy another similar setup to access my data.
My question is in the second senario of daisy chaining 2 X 1TB HDDs in RAID1; If one drive goes kaput will I be still able to mount the healthy drive and retrive my data simply by connecting it to the mac thru firewire? Or, do I need to mirror my data back to a new 1TB before getting access to my data?
Obviously I haven't had the chance to use any RAID setup before, so comments are welcome, or if anyone is using such a setup what could be the other drawbacks that I am not thinking of.
After a fiasco with two firewire hard disks (the courier company lost them), I have to purchase an external firewire HD. Once the insurance company refunds my money (which can take up to 90 days), I still want to get the other 2 disks I ordered. Is there a limit on how many firewire drives I can daisy chain? I was thinking on having all 3 hard drives daisy-chained to my iMac.
Bought the new iMac. I have one La Cie 1-TB external HD from previous Mac that I want to hook up to this new one, plus I want to daisy chain a La Cie 160g HD to that one. What driver do I need, and how do I hook them all up?
Can I attach multiple hard drives to my iMac chained by Firewire or do I need a separate port? I now have multiple Western Digital drives and find that sometimes they don't connect to the iMac so I'm wondering if I need a separate port or if my iMac FW port is faulty.
Has anyone successfully connected multiple 3TB LaCie d2 Quadra drives using daily chained Firewire 800 to a 2011-model 27" iMac? Has anyone else had process lockups when connecting multiple 3TB LaCie d2 Quadra drives using daisy chained Firewire 800? How was this problem resolved?New 27" iMac (2,7GHz i5, 2TB internal disk, 8GB RAM, OS Lion 10.7.3)). I connected two LaCie 3TB d2 Quadra external drives, daisy chained to a single Firewire 800 port. (Yes, I performed LaCie's software update to the d2 Quadras.) The finder locks up every day or two; Aperture locks up every few days. the iMac sometimes doesn't go to sleep as specified in the power saver settings. Emptying a few GB from the trash can take DAYS. Copying a 60 GB Aperture library within the internal hard drive can take many hours. Forcing a Quit of Finder or Aperture doesn't allow them to be correctly restarted. The iMac will not shut down from the menu. It must be powered off by holding power button for 6-10 seconds. VMWare Fusion 4 and MS Office 2010 are the only non-Apple software on this computer.
My time machine drive conked out this morning, so I need to get a new drive, and I am planning on either a Western Digital MyBook or an OWC of some sort. (Any thoughts?) So here's what I'd like to do. Once I get the backup running again, I'm interested in running a RAID 1 with two external drives. But the catch is this---I have a late model MacBook, so I've only got two USB 2.0 ports. Here's what I'd like to know. Is it possible to chain things together this way: MacBook <--USB-- First HDD <--FW-- Second HDD That is, connect the first drive to the computer via USB (the only option) and the second to the first HDD via firewire.
My MBP has one firewire 800 port and I have one external firewire drive. I want to get another external firewire drive but since I only have one FW port, does that mean I can only use one drive at a time? There are times when I know I will need to transfer files from one external drive to another. Is there a way to daisy chain external firewire drives together? Also, will daisy chain slow down the file copy process or even slow down my computer?
I have a real quick question about daisy chaining some firewire drives. I'm looking at buying an OWC Mercury for my macmini. I'm going to connect it via FW800. Can I then daisy chain a FW400 device to the OWC? The drive has 2 FW800 ports but only 1 FW400 so can this be done?
i am very interested in buying a Mac. But I need an external hard drive for my stuff. What are the best 1TB or higher external hard drives for a Mac Book Pro?
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup: Mac OS X 10.5.6 PowerPc G5 Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
I often use external hard drives to back up my work. Recently I purchased a 1TB Lacie drive. I took a week to build a lovely new file structure for my work. At the end of this week, I began deleting the old files on other hard drives so as to transfer my new neatly structured work back on. In the midst of this, the brand new hard drive crashed, illiciting only the clicking sound of death.
That hard drive, some of my work (a very small amount but still) and a week's worth of sweat and blood was gone in an instant. The person I took it to to look at it mentioned a power surge as being a possible cause for the crash. Anyway, I returned the lacie and bought a 1T Western Digital Mybook (silver). I then began dumping the old back ups onto this.
A week in and this one is crashed too. No clicking sound of death. It calmly sits on my desk with it's unceasing unblinking blue light and refuses to show up in utilities no matter what I do. So I assume it's a goner also. I'll return it also of course. Is something causing these drives to fail...that exists in my walls? Are there power surges causing my drives to die...? OR is it simply a case of bad luck with my choices of new drives?
I was done doing various tasks on the iMac and when I decided to plug in the external hard drive for a Time Machine backup, the drive spun, but was never shown on the desktop.I also tried another external drive and had the same thing happen.
After rebooting (hey, this sounds like Windows!), the drive again showed up on the desktop and Time Machine worked fine.Is an external hard drive not showing up on the desktop a somewhat common issue?
i'm cloning my mac hd (mac book pro, snow leopard) and though i've made successful clones, the sum of the hard drives (mac hd and external hd) don't match. for instance, my mac hd reads at: 233.71 GB, however the cloned external hd reads at: 216.54 GB. can anyone explain this discrepancy? are there certain things that don't go into the clone that are on the mac hd?
Having chosen a useful large external hard drive I find it says 'Windows only'. Surely, though the software will not work, all I need to do is format the HD and it will work. The machine is: Seagate FreeAgent 500GB External Hard Drive USB2.0 16MB.
I am relatively new to Macs, have been using it for 5-6 months. I already know how to do everything but share folders and drives using my network connection. I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro. I have a 120GB Hard Drive hooked up to the iMac via Firewire. How can I share that Firewire External Hard Drive with my Macbook Pro? What are the steps I have to follow to connect both macs? Is there a way that I could also share my iMac's desktop files with my Macbook Pro? I already have a wi-fi connection between both computers, I just don't know how to share that hard drive between both simultaneously..
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
I have an external hard drive that I have been using for my Pcs, and when I hook it up to my mac I cannot write to it (although I can read from it). Is it possible to write to this external hard drive?
I can't figure out the difference between these two hard drives, they look identical but Amazon says the latter one is the "newer" version, are they the same thing?
Which is the better buy?Also, Is it recommended I get a Mac formatted external drive? Does it do it automatically when I plug it in or is it easier to get a mac formatted drive?
I have a fairly new iMac that I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few months ago. It seemed to me that prior to that my external HD worked fine with Time Machine. Since then it is recognized for a short period of time when I connect it, then it disappears. I replaced it with a WD My Book. It worked perfectly for a month and now it has shut down. Has anybody had run into this before? I can't believe that every hard drive fails within a month in the same mysterious way!
I've had a LaCie Porsche Design for the last 6 years with no problems but with the upgrade to a MBP I'm looking to get a new portable hard drive (LaCie or another brand). My old LaCie was FW400 so I'd be looking at FW800 now. Which make and model do you use and are you happy with it's performance?
My external hard drive has been corrupted and the error message is telling me to reformat it. However, through all the research I have done to find out how, everything I've found has told me to use Disk Utility to just erase everything on the disk to do this. When I try to do this, it tells me that I can't erase anything because the disk cannot be unnmounted. What should I do?
I just got a brand new Mac Book Pro. I wanted to get an external harddrive for it. I have a gift card to HP and wanted to buy one from them? Does anyone know if they are compatable? If not, anyone have any suggestions for a HD that is good, but not terribly expensive? I want one that is at least 250 GB.
So I just installed a larger hard drive in my macbook pro. As OSX was installing I decided to read reviews online (bought it in the store when I got the MBP). They're all really bad about using the drive in a MBP - [URL]. I'm installing the application software now and the hd is spining a lot and vibrating the case and making a lot more noise. I've read a few Seagate reviews and they're not much better for that size.
I want to install a huge hard drive because this is going to be my main computer for at least 8 months while I'm working away from home. Normally I have a desktop w/ a huge hard drive so I don't care what's on my laptop. Anyway, based on these reviews and how the drive has been feeling in the case, I think I might re-evaluate putting a larger drive in, and instead go with an external. I can fit all my photos and music on a 250, but I couldn't fit everything I store on my desktop on a 250.
So my first question is, is there a good, reliable 500gb or larger 5400rpm replacement hard drive for the mbp, that a lot of people like? And then the main question: I have a lot of large video files on my Windows box that are over 4gb, which is the FAT32 limit. When I transferred them from my old computer I had to rar them to smaller files and then un-rar them. This is quite annoying. If I'm gonna have an external drive, I'd like one that can be used on both windows and mac and support 4gb+ files..................
Can Mac's be started up from external USB2 drives or is external startup limited to firewire only? I have several machines, IMac (all four flavors) Mac Book and Pro. I want to use Time Machine as the back to all of these devices but I hesitate because of this possible restriction.
What's the best way to mirror two external hard drives connected to two separate computers on a network? Can this be done with the built in file sharing capablities of Lion or do I need to use a utility such as Forklift?
Just bought new version of Final Cut and it will not recognize the external hard drive that I plug into my usb or the extra hard drive that I had installed into my laptop to do video work on for more space.
