FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

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30 points

FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

Hello everyone, I have three firewire drives. Two 2TB 3.5" drives and one 2.5" 1TB drive. All three are connected to my MacBook Pro 13" via the one firewire port in a daisy chain. I usually always have the 3.5" disk connected. When I add the portable drive to the daisy chain, it crashes the desktop drive, and I get the "do not disconnect drives without ejecting" message. Is this normal? I am thinking of purchasing the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter, only to avoid the crashes of the other drives in the Daisy chain.

My Mac is an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro i5 2.3GHz with 16GB RAM.

Thank you for your help in advance

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Apr 10, 2013 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 10, 2013 1:28 PM in response to moritzhberg

You have to be carefull with Power Supply. The 3.5" should have their own PS, how is the 2.5" ?

I have a lot of discs running toghether, each with its own power supply.

You may also try to use a FW 800 Hub - I use one from Lindy

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Answer 2

moritzhberg Author

Level 1

30 points

Apr 10, 2013 1:58 PM in response to WALTER-MILANO-ITALY

The 3.5" both have their own power supply. The 2.5" is powered via the FW connection.

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Answer 3

Apr 11, 2013 12:50 PM in response to moritzhberg

I had a similar problem. I whould suggest you to also use a power supply with the 2.5" too.

The FW of MBP should be able to power the 2.5" but is a mixed situation it is difficoult to understand how it works. Some power supply of the discs give les power than it is claimed. And the 2.5" discs may have a range of power consumption. Imagine I had even a completely different situation with the FW800 Hub: I had problem to connect 3 Discs with power supply connected to the Hub and to each disc. At the end I discovered everithing worked with the Hub not powered.

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Answer 4

moritzhberg Author

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30 points

Apr 11, 2013 2:28 PM in response to WALTER-MILANO-ITALY

Thanks for your reply. The problem is that the 2.5" disk cannot be connected to a power supply (it's a WD My Passport Studio). I was thinking of getting the thunderbolt to firewire adapter. Should I get it, or is it a waste of money?

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Answer 5

Apr 15, 2013 12:47 PM in response to moritzhberg

Sorry for my late answer.

The disc has 2 FW800 and 1 USB2.

If you buy a TB to FW800 you should give to the disc more power from the TB port.

If you connect the disc with USB you could use a special cable with 2 plugs on one side and one smal USB plug on the other. This cable is designed to give to one disc the pover grom 2 USB ports but one of the 2 can also be connected to an USB power supply, so ytou will give to the disc more power.... of copurse with USB you have a lower speed.

If you have Thunderbolt you should try to use TB discs. I know they are expensive but there is a trick which I like to use... have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa3BXmQVpc

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Answer 6

moritzhberg Author

Level 1

30 points

May 9, 2013 12:32 AM in response to WALTER-MILANO-ITALY

That idea is absolutely brilliant! I might look into it (once my drives go out of warranty). Is there a risk to using the hard dries without an enclosure? Oh yeah, what would be the max speed which I could reach with this setup, as we are talking about a 7200rpm drive, so wouldn't that be a bottleneck?

What do you mean by "you should give the disk more power from the TB port?

Anyway, I think I'm gonna hold off on the TB to FW & consider the Seagate solution.

Thanks

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Answer 7

May 9, 2013 5:51 AM in response to moritzhberg

I never had problems with the Seagate GoFlex and standard HDD, very stable. the use of the HDD without a cover should give no problem (at least I had not). The Sata connection could be a problem ? It was designed for very few connections, but the original GoFlex system uses it to connect the external HDD.

I had some troubles with the GoFlex and SSD (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5017220?answerId=21957933022#21957933022). Strange but SSD may freeze or stop an heavy copy job without an external power. Only the power from TB is not enought.

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