Firewire and pass-throughs

ginopiazza49ginopiazza49
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I have a Maxtor Firewire drive. I purchased a LaCie drive yesterday. My other Firewire port is taken up by an iSight. Therefore, I plugged the LaCie drive into the back of the Maxtor. The Lacie icon shows up fine on my desktop. However, the red light on the Maxtor stays lit and the Maxtor icon does not show up on my desktop. Am I right that I should get a Firewire hub instead of plugging the LaCie drive into the Maxtor? I read somewhere that Firewire does not have enough power to accept pass-throughs and thus need a hub. Is that true? By the way, I own a PowerMac G4 500 (Sawtooth).

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    imacfanimacfan Posts: 444member
    If both drives are not bus powered, there shouldn't be a problem. But we all know that there can be a big difference between principle and reality...



    David
  • Reply 2 of 5
    the inevitablethe inevitable Posts: 62member
    I have two MacAlly FireWire HD enclosures and one other generic HD enclosure that I have daisy-chained through the pass-through ports. However, on the generic HD enclosure, the pass-though port doesn't work, so I have it at the end of the chain. They all work fine for me, and there's definitely enough power provided by the FireWire port to allow them all to communicate (but they are all powered by their own, separate power adaptors).



    Have you tried connecting your LaCie drive directly to your Mac and then have the Maxtor drive connected to the pass-through port on the LaCie drive? Maybe the Maxtor drive enclosure has a problem with other devices connected to it through the pass-through port?
  • Reply 3 of 5
    trobertstroberts Posts: 702member
    I also have a LaCie DVD drive, an external hard drive, and an iSight daisy chained with no problems. My setup is iBook -> LaCie drive -> FireWire drive -> iSight.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    gwoodpeckergwoodpecker Posts: 367member
    What happens if you connect the Maxtor drive to the first FireWire port and the LaCie drive to the second one and then connect your iSight to either the LaCie or the Maxtor drive?



    Putting harddrives each to a separate bus is also better than daisy-chaining in terms of speed!
  • Reply 5 of 5
    ginopiazza49ginopiazza49 Posts: 218member
    I got things working fine. Thank you for your replies.
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