Firewire Daisychain on iMacs

[emeraldringer]

I’ve been using a Drobo 2nd gen with my wife's 2007 iMac. The iMac has two Firewire ports:

- an 800 port connected to my Drobo (which is used for data)
- a 400 port connected to an old 500 GB Ext HD (used as a scratch drive for Final Cut Pro)

This has worked fine for my purposes. I’m considering moving up to a new 27" i7 iMac. However, I believe the new iMac only has one 800 FW port.

My question is: if I daisychain my scratch disk through the Drobo FW ports (the Drobo has 2 FW 800 ports) via a 400 to 800 adapter, will I get the same kind of performance I need for Final Cut Pro?

 

[Hellhammer]

Yes unless both disks are accessed at the same time when the port in iMac will be the bottleneck

 

[emeraldringer]

Yes unless both disks are accessed at the same time when the port in iMac will be the bottleneck

Thanks for the info. That's good to know. I'm getting a 400/800 adapter this week so I should be able to try it on the old iMac before I pull the trigger on the new one.