MacBook Unibody: will not detect fw drive through USB?

[California]

I have the 2.4 al macbook.

I have a MacAlly hard drive enclosure with both usb and firewire.

I have a hard drive plugged into the enclosure with firewire and the MacAlly plugged into the Macbook through usb.

How come the firewire slaved drive into the enclosure does not show up on my MacBook?

In other words, the hard drive in the enclosure does show up, but the one that is plugged into the enclosure does NOT show up on the MacBook?

Just because the MacBook does not have firewire port, this means that it will not recognize firewire slaved drives through USB?

This is completely inconvenient.

 

[shawnpringle]

Well simply put, you cannot "daisy chain" USB drives.
For example, if you had a FW drive, you could do this:

FW Drive 1-------FW----------FW Drive 2--------FW-----------Macbook
But you could not do this:
FW Drive 1-------FW----------FW/USB Drive 2---------USB-----------Macbook

I hope that makes sense, the --------- are the cords.
Only the FW/USB drive 2 will be recognized.

 

[akm3]

No it won't work, sorry.

If you have Firewire only drives, you are out of luck on the new Macbook. Drives that also have USB can be plugged into a powered USB hub, and then into your Macbook and that will work. But as said above, you can't go from firewire to usb into the macbook