FW800/400 bus on Early 2008MBP

[Draeconis]

Am I right in thinking the Firewire 800 and 400 ports are on the same bus?

I'm getting a FireWire 800 drive to use as my Time Machine, and as far as I recall, if I have something on the FireWire 400 port, the FireWire 800 will only run at 400 because of shared bandwidth because the ports run on the same bus? Thing is, the FireWire 400 peripheral is only a sound card, so that wouldn't draw that much bandwidth?

If the 800 port becomes a 400, am I better off getting an eSata ExpressCard adapter? (The drive also has eSata, but I don't currently have an adapter for it for my MBP)

 

[darngooddesign]

Or you could just unplug your FW400 device while you are doing a backup.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I have a wd mybook (fw400), g-tech g-drive q(fw800) and my cinema display hub(400). All are connected to the respective fw port on my penryn mbp. I don't have any noticable slow down on the g-drive, and the system profiler shows each device running "up to" their maximums.

 

[Draeconis]

Time Machine backs up every hour and I run my Speaker system through my FireWire sound card; it's a little impractical to unplug my sound card every hour :/

I'll give it a go when it arrives and post the results