Using Firewire

[Bigbord]

With the iMac only having one Firewire port, are you able to connect two or more external hardrives to a Firewire splitter? If so, will each drive show up separately? Does it reduce the speed? Which Firewire splitter is recommended?

 

[spinnerlys]

As most Firewire enclosures have two Firewire ports, you can connect one HDD to the iMac, and connect another HDD to the first HDD via Firewire, then you can connect a third to the second and so on. It is called daisy chaining.

 

[Mr Kram]

yup, i currently have 3 HD's chained.

 

[Zelnaga]

So theres no reduced speeds at all then? If I want to transfer data from the iMac to the end of the daisy chained HDD?

 

[rkaufmann87]

So theres no reduced speeds at all then? If I want to transfer data from the iMac to the end of the daisy chained HDD?

Nope, I also have 3 FW 800 drives daisy chained together. This has worked reliably for 3 years. I use one drive for music and photo storage, a second for Time Machine and the final is a bootable clone using SuperDuper.

 

[aggri1]

I started up my G4 PowerMac in Target Disk Mode, hooked it up with Firewire to the iMac (FW400 to 800 cable), and had at the time an external Firewire hard disk plugged into the G4. Both the volumes inside the G4 and the external hard disk showed up on the iMac's desktop; furthermore, the iPod, which was plugged into the external hard disk at the end of the chain also showed up fully functional.

Yay firewire. Cheers, A.

 

[mjsmke]

There will be a speed loss if you are reading/writing from/to all 3 drives at the same time. The fastest speed for all drives will be determined by the FW lead from your iMac to first HDD. For example your probably using FW800 (800Mb/s) so if your accessing all 3 drives at the same time your speed will be up to 800Mb/s combined not per drive.

You can still access one drive at a time to the full speed of 800Mb/s no matter how many in the chain.