Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Daisy Chaining External Hard Drives

T

torma616

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2009
6
0
Hi all. I was wondering if you could help me with daisy chaining. I have a GDrive 2TB and a Maxtor OneTouch 750GB model, and I'd like to daisy chain them to my Macbook Pro. Is it possible to daisy chain two different brands of hard drives together? If so, what are the necessary steps?

I want to connect it like so Macbook Pro (firewire 800)> GDrive 2TB (Firewire 800/400)> Maxtor 750GB.

Thank you. Any help is appreciated.
 
Works fine. Brand doesn't matter. If you're mixing FW800 and FW400, put the FW800 at the head of the chain to get full speed from the FW800 devices (connect closest to Mac).
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Hook it up exactly as you said.

Connect a Cable from MacBook to GDrive and a cable from GDrive to Maxtor.
 
I'm doing that, but only the GDrive is showing up on my desktop. Is there any specific FS that the drives have to be (I'm just assuming that they have to be the same).
 
They don't need to be the same file system.

Run Disk Utility and see if the physical drive shows up. If it does, but its partitions don't mount, try doing a Repair Disk.

Sometimes, there is an "in" and "out" port - try swapping the ports. If there's still an issue, try swapping which drive is first (assuming you're using FW800 on the dual ported one). Sometimes, cycling power can also help - for instance, once connected, cycle the power on the Maxtor (wait for a few seconds while off, before switching back on). Technically, none of this should matter, but in the real world, I've seen otherwise.
 
Last edited:
I still can't seem to get it to work. I've tried repairing the disk, but nothing seems to get my computer to recognise the Maxtor. Are there any specific settings that I must use for it to work?
 
So, it shows up in Disk Utility. That means the FW connectivity is at least working. What does it show for partitions? It should have something like "Maxtor......", then below and indented would be the name of any partitions on it.

Has the drive been used before, i.e. by itself - not in a chain?
 
gr8tfly said:
So, it shows up in Disk Utility. That means the FW connectivity is at least working. What does it show for partitions? It should have something like "Maxtor......", then below and indented would be the name of any partitions on it.

Has the drive been used before, i.e. by itself - not in a chain?
Click to expand...

The Maxtor has been used before, the G Drive is brand new. Both drives show up in disk utility and are usable if they're plugged in, they're just not showing up in the daisy chain configuration. Basically, if I bought a firewire hub, they'd both work, but I'm trying to avoid the extra hardware.
 
torma616 said:
The Maxtor has been used before, the G Drive is brand new. Both drives show up in disk utility and are usable if they're plugged in, they're just not showing up in the daisy chain configuration. Basically, if I bought a firewire hub, they'd both work, but I'm trying to avoid the extra hardware.
Click to expand...

You should not need a hub. G Drive pass-through should work. Have you contacted G Drive tech support? Perhaps it is a known issue, or a hardware problem...

Josh
 
torma616 said:
The Maxtor has been used before, the G Drive is brand new. Both drives show up in disk utility and are usable if they're plugged in, they're just not showing up in the daisy chain configuration. Basically, if I bought a firewire hub, they'd both work, but I'm trying to avoid the extra hardware.
Click to expand...

Have you tried putting the Maxtor first in the chain? Or does it not have dual FW800 ports?

I agree with spidey3 - you should not need a hub. I have 5 FW800 drives, plus a FW400 burner, all on my MBP's single FW800 port. They are all different brands (4 are home built - 2 of those the same, 1 Seagate Desktop Mac, and a home built FW400 burner). What I mean by "home built" is buying separate bare drives and cases.
 
gr8tfly said:
Have you tried putting the Maxtor first in the chain? Or does it not have dual FW800 ports?
Click to expand...

The Maxtor has no FW800 ports, it only has 2 FW400 ports. I have it connected to the GDrive via a FW400/FW800 cable.

I'm going to try calling GDrive support about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back