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Daisy-chain/combine firewire hard drives?

P

Pablo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 8, 2003
204
0
Texas
I'm looking at a Lacie external firewire drive.

Say I fill it up and need more. Rather than selling and putting the cash towards a biger one, could I keep the existing and connect the new one to the existing to combine the disk sizes and effectively have my Powerbook "see" either one drive of the combined sizes, or two drives - but only using a single firewire connection to the Powerbook?
 
Pablo said:
I'm looking at a Lacie external firewire drive.

Say I fill it up and need more. Rather than selling and putting the cash towards a biger one, could I keep the existing and connect the new one to the existing to combine the disk sizes and effectively have my Powerbook "see" either one drive of the combined sizes, or two drives - but only using a single firewire connection to the Powerbook?
Click to expand...

If the external FW HD has 2 FW ports in the back of it then you should be able to plug the 2nd FE HD into the first one and plug the first one into the PowerBook. I did this with my Dual USB iBook using my external FW HD, and my ext FW CD-RW drive and it worked fine. You may have to switch the plugs around to get it to work, but I did get mine to work on my iBook.
 
mklos said:
If the external FW HD has 2 FW ports in the back of it then you should be able to plug the 2nd FE HD into the first one and plug the first one into the PowerBook. I did this with my Dual USB iBook using my external FW HD, and my ext FW CD-RW drive and it worked fine. You may have to switch the plugs around to get it to work, but I did get mine to work on my iBook.
Click to expand...

That connectivity is correct. You will NOT be able to make the two drives act as one bigger drive though. They will be two drives. You COULD reformat the first drive and then set the two up as a striped RAID. I would generally NOT recommend that because 1) you have to erase the first drive-do you have a complete backup of it? 2) A striped drive is faster than a single drive, BUT it is MUCH more vulnerable to complete data loss. Having reliable backup is MUCH more important when using RAIDs.
 
Thanks.

It will probably be a Lacie d2, so I'll check to see how many Firewire ports it has.
 
Pablo said:
Thanks.

It will probably be a Lacie d2, so I'll check to see how many Firewire ports it has.
Click to expand...

I have (2) LaCie D2 drives (80G & 160G) and (1) Maxtor drive all connected in daisy-chain fashion to a single FW port on an iMac and it works fine. The D2's I bought 6-9 moths ago both have 2 FW ports on back.

frank
 
mklos said:
If the external FW HD has 2 FW ports in the back of it then you should be able to plug the 2nd FE HD into the first one and plug the first one into the PowerBook. I did this with my Dual USB iBook using my external FW HD, and my ext FW CD-RW drive and it worked fine. You may have to switch the plugs around to get it to work, but I did get mine to work on my iBook.
Click to expand...

Out of curiousity, can one daisy chain an iPod at the end of this set up? (or even a single ext. HD)
 
Counterfit said:
You could, but you would need to power it in another way.
Click to expand...

There's no draw through the firewire through the drive? In other words, the FW power only goes to the device plugged in directly to the computer/cpu?
 
I have seen a site that went into amazing detail about Firewire, but I can't find it now. But it basically comes down to the Firewire bus not being able to supply enough power for more than device. If something needs to be bus powered or doesn't have an external power source, it has to be the first device in the chain. That doesn't work with the iPod though, as you can plug it in first and have it powered, and plug it into the power adapter and not have it connected to your Mac/PC. A solution would be a Firewire hub, like this one :D
 
Counterfit said:
I have seen a site that went into amazing detail about Firewire, but I can't find it now. But it basically comes down to the Firewire bus not being able to supply enough power for more than one device.
Click to expand...

I thought most external drives had there own power source.
yeah a daisy chain will work.
 
Counterfit said:
You could, but you would need to power it in another way.
Click to expand...

this is not true. the lacie d2 drivews require external power, and this power will charge an ipod linked to the end. i am running a 120 gig d2 right now, and my ipod is currently happily charging while plugged in to nothing other than the d2.
 
You won't have to do any switching around of the ports, Firewire is incredibly easy to use. I daisy chain my D2 80 GB with all kinds of stuff all the time. The bus power is also very good, so you should be able to power an iPod on the end of the chain. The power doesn't stop at the first device. My friend is able to power two LaCie portable drives from his Powerbook.

Enjoy your drive!
 
One thing you have to keep in mind is not all firewire devices are created equal. Some companies do a better job of meeting FW specs than others. If you have a device that barely meets FW specs than it can cause problems if it is part of a chain. For example, a friend of mine has 2 FW HDDs (not sure of the brands) and he has to keep them "chained" in the same order otherwise he will get unreliable play back from the drives (he uses them for video editing).


Lethal
 
Powerbook -> LaCie D2 52x FireWire CD-RW -> LaCie D2 80GB FireWire HDD -> LaCie BlueScan48 FireWire Scanner

that works fine, but as soon as my iPod connects on the last port just forget getting any response from the scanner...

so be carefull ;-)

greetings Jo
 
baby duck monge said:
this is not true. the lacie d2 drivews require external power, and this power will charge an ipod linked to the end. i am running a 120 gig d2 right now, and my ipod is currently happily charging while plugged in to nothing other than the d2.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Great real world info. Since I'd leave the drive and ipod dock plugged in all the time, I'd like to keep the other FW port free.
 
Le Big Mac said:
Thanks. Great real world info. Since I'd leave the drive and ipod dock plugged in all the time, I'd like to keep the other FW port free.
Click to expand...

I always plug my iPod (2g 20Gb) after my two 120Gb ADS units chained from one firewire port, and have had no faults. Sometimes, I add a Umax scanner, and plug the iPod in after this, and it still works fine.

I think a lot depends on the overall stability of your installation, and I try to clean-install new OSes these days....

Nig.
 
Interesting.

If you have the iPod behind the Hard Drive, do you have to unmount each (iPod first ?), or will unmounting the hard drive take the iPod with it?
 
Pablo said:
Interesting.

If you have the iPod behind the Hard Drive, do you have to unmount each (iPod first ?), or will unmounting the hard drive take the iPod with it?
Click to expand...

No - Actually, the h/d units act as pass-through, so the iPod will still work if both drive units are switched off!

Nigel.
 
ntg said:
No - Actually, the h/d units act as pass-through, so the iPod will still work if both drive units are switched off!

Nigel.
Click to expand...

Has this functionality changed in 10.3.3? Since I installed 10.3.3, I find that I have to have everything on in the chain up to the device I want to use and my Belkin hub has become completely useless. :mad:
 
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