Daisy Chain USB To FireWire?

Hi all.
I'm not really sure where to post this, so any suggestions about a better place would be great. Anyway, here's my question.

I do a lot of work with photos, and they take up a lot of hard drive space, so what I'm planning to do is this: I'll buy a big external hard drive with lots of connections (1 USB, 2 FireWire 800, 1 FireWire 400). I'll also buy a smaller external hard drive with much less in the way of connections (1 USB only). The big drive will act as my main storage drive, with all the files for each image included on it. The smaller drive will act as the bakcup drive, with the top 20% or so of my best photos in only a compressed format on it. I want the smaller (backup) drive to be as cheap as possible, as I don't have much of a budget at all. Here are the two drive selections I've made: big drive:

LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple
Small drive:

WD Elements
Desktop

So, here's the question: I know that you can daisy chain FireWire drives that have more than one port together, like this:
A cable from FireWire port on Drive A to FireWire port on Drive B, then a cable from another FireWire port on Drive B to the FireWire port on computer. I know this works (right?).

But I don't want to have to spend more money on Drive A (the backup drive) so that it has a FireWire port. Since Drive B (the main drive) has a USB port, I thought I would run a USB cable from Drive A to Drive B like this:

*Setup 1*:A cable from the USB port on Drive A to the USB port on Drive B, then a cable from the FireWire 400 port on Drive B to the FireWire 400 port on the computer.

Will setup 2 work? Will the data from Drive A make the crossover from USB to FireWire? If not, I suppose I could also use this setup:

*Setup 2:* A cable from the USB port on Drive A to one of the FireWire 800 ports on Drive B, then a cable from the FireWire 400 port on Drive B to the FireWire 400 port on my computer. Will this work better? Do USB to FireWire 800 adapters really work?

So, basically, all I really need to know is whether or not Setup 1 will work, and if it doesn't, whether or not Setup 2 will. Also, if anyone has any info/reviews/stories about the two drives I've selected, I'd love to hear that as well.

Thanks so much in advance for any help I get. Sorry about the long post; I hope it made sense.

Thanks again.
Nate