FW800 Daisy-chaining question / FW800 Hubs

[occamsrazor]

I think I know the answer to this, but was hoping someone could confirm. I know you can daisy-chain various Firewire 800 devices, but do the middle devices need to be powered on for the end ones to work?

For example:

Mac Mini > FW800 > Hard Disk 1 > FW800 > Hard Disk 2

If HD2 is switched ON, but HD1 is switched off, will HD2 still mount on the Mac Mini?

If not, I guess the alternative is to buy a FW800 hub, but they're expensive and was hoping to avoid, unless someone can recommend a good one at reasonable price. I already have a FW400 hub, but that would ruin the speed benefits of FW800.

Thanks.....

[dmmcintyre3]

That has worked on FW 400 for me, I don't have a FW 800 drive though. I even did it
drive 1 --> drive 2 --> dvd burner
and the dvd burner worked fine when d1 and d2 were off.

[Transporteur]

I'd say that depends it on the devices you've got.

I've got two Iomega Ultramaxx drives daisy-chained on one FW800 port on my Pro and the second drive does not power up unless the first one is switched on.

So my recommendation:
Buy your drives, test if they run independently, if not, buy a hub.

[maestrokev]

Generally no, the devices in between must be powered on. I've had 4 different model OWC FW devices and none pass power. My Maxtor external hard drives pass power.

[jeffzoom91]

I have two seagate FW800 drives, the first being a 3.5'' 1tb drive, and the second (plugged into the first) being a fw800 2.5' drive. These drives don't have physical switches, but if not accessed for a while, the larger drive's lights will go dark and it will sleep, and I can still access the smaller drive without waking the larger drive...