OS X :: Daisy Chain Hard Drives - Combo Of USB And Firewire
Feb 1, 2009
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.
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Jan 17, 2009
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.
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Jan 13, 2010
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?
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Apr 5, 2012
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?
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Aug 9, 2010
Getting new iMac i7 in the next week or so. Looking to get a couple of hard drives both will be firewire. I will use one HD to store Music, Movies and Photos (I have about 500gigs worth at least) The other HD will be used to back up everything. I will be using it in conjunction with Carbon Copy Cloner so it will be bootable if I have any probs. Do I daisy chain the drives or get a Hub?
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Aug 23, 2010
I'm running two of these enclosures: [URL] each with 2x2TB drives in RAID0 (i.e. 4TB per enclosure). I use one 4TB array for my user files, and the other for TimeMachine. My user array is connected via FW800, my question is - is it more efficient to connect the other (TM) array via USB2 or via daisy chained FW800? The enclosures use the Oxford 934DSb chipset, which is capable of saturating the FW bus, so thats 100MBps. As i understand it very few interfaces are capable of saturating a USB2 bus such that practically speaking even FW400 gives greater real-world throughput than USB2, despite the 60Mbps difference in spec.
Since one is a TM volume, when backing up from the user array to the TM array will the data have to pass through the computer's controller? It definitely will if it's FW800 -> USB2, but will it have to if it's daisy chained FW800? I'm told this might not be the case as some FW controllers support P2P communication but i can't find too much info about it. Even if there is P2P support the OS needs to know the progress of file transfers and so forth so can it do this even if the drives are transferring via P2P or can it only monitor that sort of thing if the data goes through it's controller? Essentially is it up to the OS or the controller to select the optimal route for data? If it's up to the OS does Mac OS support FW P2P? That said, even if the data does have to go to the computer from one array and back through the daisy chain to the other array, is it still practically faster than the USB2 route?
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Dec 2, 2009
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?
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Mar 4, 2009
I'm wondering about drawbacks or benefits of creating a chain of two FireWire drives looped back to one computer. I intend to setup two external 1TB drives as either a single 2TB concatenated RAID array or a striped RAID 0 array to be used as a Time Machine backup volume. All ports and cables are FireWire 400.
The setup in question would be:
Setup 1 (loop)
Mac FireWire Port 1<--->External Drive A FireWire Port 1/External Drive A FireWire Port 2<--->External Drive B FireWire Port 1/External Drive B FireWire Port 2<--->Mac FireWire Port 2......................
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Jul 25, 2010
This is my first post and I'm after a little help if possible. Have a new i7 Macbook Pro and Im wanting to know if what I am thinking is possible. I have a WD FW800 HD which i have put video and music on, I then have an iomega USB HD which I use for time machine back ups. Can I daisy chain the FW and USB together and if so which way round would it be. In my naieve mind I am thinking the following- Macbook Pro connected to FW HD and then USB (Time Machine HD) connected into the FW HD
MacbookPro+FW+USB
Have I got the wrong end of the stick. Essentially I'm asking the USB HD to back up the MBP and the content on the FW HD.
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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...
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Apr 6, 2010
I am new to this 'Daisy Chain" thing. I have a WD Studio 500GB right now connected through USB to be a wireless drive through my Airport Extreme. Thing is, I am running out os space and am wondering if it is possible to daisy chain a second drive to my WD to increase the size. I know how it is possible to daisy chain through FireWire 800, but can I daisy chain to my WD that is connected to my airport through USB?
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Mar 2, 2012
Can I use two mac pro's with one monitor, keyboard & mouse? The two different machines have two different operating systems (Snow Leopard / Lion). One machine is brand new and the other is 5 or 6 years old.I want to use both machines in tandem so that I can leave something to render while I work on something else.
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Final Cut Pro X, C4D, CS5
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Jul 16, 2010
I currently have an external hard drive that has 2 FW400 ports that I use for Time Machine. I want to get at least 2 more external hard drives; one for storage of photos/videos and the other for another backup drive that I can rotate offsite with my current one. My internal hard drive is full and all of my USB ports are in use (however I do have a USB hub). I also have a Mini-DV camcorder that requires a FW400 port.
So, I'm trying to figure out what type of external hard drives I want to build/buy. I'm a little confused about daisy chaining firewire devices and hope someone can offer some clarification.
1. Can you daisy chain with a device that has only 1 of each type of FW port; 1 FW400 and 1 FW800? Or, does the device need to have 2 of the same type of port; 2 FW400's or 2 FW800's?..............
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Mar 25, 2012
I would like to know if there is a way to daisy chain 3 (three) thunderbolt displays to a 15" MacBook Pro, maybe if the laptop is in clamp-shell mode?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Apr 16, 2012
My Mac Pro is not mounting any new hard drives for some reason. The one's already connected work fine and remain connected (I have three drives connected via eSATA ports). But I can't connect any drives via Firewire 800 or 400. I've tried differnt leads and different ports but none are connecting. I've tried the drive on a different Mac and it connected fine. But on the machine I need to connect to the drives simply dont mount. Nor do they show up in Disk Utility or Soft RAID. I have restarted and powered down several times but nothing is working.
Running OSX 10.6.8 on a Mac Pro (2008) The hard dirves I'm connecting are Lacie.
Info:
Mac Pro (2008), Mac OS X (10.6.7)
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Nov 11, 2009
is there a USB 2.0 > FW800 adapter that exists?
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Sep 6, 2010
Has anyone seen anything indicating that there are any new (higher capacity) drives on the horizon in with a 2.5" external FW800 format?
I'm slightly confused why many of the big brands have stopped at 500GB or 640GB drives in their FW800 models. The G-Drive Mini only goes to 500GB, while the WD Passport Studio stops at 640GB. WD do have 2.5" drives at 1TB, and have dine for months, but they're only available in USB2 models.
Any ideas why they all seem to stop short of their highest capacity drives for the faster interfaces? The only ones i can find with 1TB 2.5" drives are the Seagate GoFlex (which i'm not sure about with the swappable interfaces, i've nearly bought one a couple of times but then changed my mind at the last minute), or a couple of companies i've never heard of before who have drives way above the expected price.
Ideally someone will have seen news from WD or G-Tech or someone indicating that new products are on the way. Otherwise, i may end up having to get the GoFlex.
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Nov 30, 2008
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little.
Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
System: Mac Pro (early 2008) Mac OS X (10.5.5) 3.2Ghz 8-core - 16GB Ram - 4x1TB SATA - GeForce 8800GT - Dell 30" 3008WFP A02 - Gateway 21" FPD2185W - 3xMyBook external drives
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Feb 21, 2009
Macbook Pro 17" Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz. Following a logic board replacement for a separate issue. I have two external Firewire 800 Hard drives (two separate brands and sizes) which have suddenly started unmounting randomly and giving the 'hardware removal error'. A few seconds after unmounting they mount again, only to unmount a minute later with the error again. It is now doing this in a loop.I have done the following things:
1. rebooted and checked all cable connections
2. I have tried this with the two disks plugged in separately and daisychained.
3. I have tried two separate Firewire 800 cables.
4. running the Disk Utility.
5.installing the system from scratch on a freshly formatted internal disk.
6. reinstalling again with an archive and install.
Everything seems to work fine with a Firewire 400 connection.The only software setting that I changed is to disable the "Put Hard Disks to Sleep when possible" option in the Energy Saver system prefs. Any connection? I have enabled this again and so far (a couple of hours) so good.Should I be looking at a hardware issue
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Jul 3, 2012
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.
Info:
iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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Jun 14, 2010
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.
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May 7, 2012
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.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Aug 27, 2009
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".
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Jul 4, 2012
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.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Feb 25, 2009
If I decided to end up going for a Mac Pro with pure speed, I would want to fill it with 4 SAS drives. I've heard that SAS drives are completely unrivaled in speed (15,000 rpm ), but does this really correlate to high speeds? Is Apple's RAID card the best solution for SAS drives? I would likely use RAID 5 setup for striping benefits as well as data redundancy.
Now, I'm a bit of a storage junkie, and SAS drives won't be a viable storage solution for everything I have already (and even more in the future), so external storage would be a must. I have a drobo already, and it is a much cheaper solution than getting something like an Xserve RAID, and firewire 800 is plenty fast for streaming video, even to multiple sources.
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Nov 20, 2009
As the G-Drives feature two firewire ports, does anyone know if it's possible to use the 2nd one as an input device (as if it were a mini-hub for your Mac)?
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Nov 22, 2008
I really don't want a USB flash drive. USB sucks eggs simply because FireWire can do so much more (TDM, transfer speeds, etc.) OCZ was going to make a FireWire flash drive; heck, they had a FireWire 800 version built! Does anyone know of any FireWire flash drives? 800 is certainly preferable, since 400 is currently dead.
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May 20, 2009
Does anyone have experience with how well USB drives work when connected to firewire drives. I have a LaCie drive that has a USB port. I am wondering how well it would connect to a USB external drive?
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Sep 13, 2009
I'm looking at the specs page for the MacBook Pro and it reads this...
Your MacBook Pro comes standard with a 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive. Choose a hard drive with a faster speed for greater performance. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that offers enhanced durability.
Basically suggesting that the HDD option has a performance advantage over the SSD, but is this the case? I always thought SSDs could read & write quicker because they use solid-state flash memory as opposed to hard disks.
I want to go with the 256GB SSD but I want to know how it ranks in speed.
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Jun 28, 2012
what's the difference between client combo and server combo? Also, what would happen if I install both?
Info:
Logic Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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