firewire ext. hd & daisy chaining

jonnyboyjonnyboy
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
hi all,



thinking about buying a firewire hd soon, and was wondering if i should expect the drive to support daisy chaining. that's the whole point of firewire, yes? currently i have my ipod cable plugged into the firewire port and should i buy an hd, could i reasonably expect it to have a port in the back to connect my ipod cable in series?



obviously we can't speak for ALL drives, but should it be expected?



thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jonnyboy

    hi all,



    thinking about buying a firewire hd soon, and was wondering if i should expect the drive to support daisy chaining. that's the whole point of firewire, yes? currently i have my ipod cable plugged into the firewire port and should i buy an hd, could i reasonably expect it to have a port in the back to connect my ipod cable in series?



    obviously we can't speak for ALL drives, but should it be expected?



    thanks



    it should be, LaCie are extremely good and do have two ports. I have a FireWire HD and LacieD2 and iPod all plugged into one FireWire on my PowerBook G4. It works brilliantly
  • Reply 2 of 6
    chromoschromos Posts: 191member
    In my case, I hold my music collection on my ext HD as I've maxed out my TiBook's capacity, so in order to sync my iPod, that extra Firewire port in the back is a *must*. I have a 160GB Maxtor, btw.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    jonnyboyjonnyboy Posts: 525member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by chromos

    In my case, I hold my music collection on my ext HD as I've maxed out my TiBook's capacity, so in order to sync my iPod, that extra Firewire port in the back is a *must*. I have a 160GB Maxtor, btw.



    i was thinking of doing this. making the external my "media" drive. does it work well through itunes? i assume you have to remember not to open itunes with the drive unplugged? what happens if you forget?
  • Reply 4 of 6
    chromoschromos Posts: 191member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jonnyboy

    i was thinking of doing this. making the external my "media" drive. does it work well through itunes? i assume you have to remember not to open itunes with the drive unplugged? what happens if you forget?



    It actually works pretty well. If you open iTunes without the drive, you'll get little grey exclamation points to the left of the songs it can't find. But as soon as you plug the drive in, you're immediately ready to go, no delays. One thing I haven't experienced, is if you forget to plug the drive in and attempt to rip a cd... will it go local, or complain?
  • Reply 5 of 6
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    I have a LaCie triple interface and an older PowerBook with no Firewire 800. The hard drive has just one FW 400 port but two FW 800 ports. So I had to get a FW800->FW400 converter (~ $10) so I could plug the hard drive into the PowerBook and then my video camera into the hard drive. Why they didn't make FW 800 backward compatible I don't know.



    With that, it works great. And of course if you have a FW 800 port on your Mac you don't even need that.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jonnyboy

    i was thinking of doing this. making the external my "media" drive. does it work well through itunes? i assume you have to remember not to open itunes with the drive unplugged? what happens if you forget?



    I stored my music folder on my ext. Hard drive with my old iMac. You can't open iTunes unless the drive is plugged in if you do this. (I used an alias of the music folder on my Mac). It worked brilliantly. I'm thinking of turning off automatic organisation and putting some msuic in the external. But you wouldn't be able to sync with your iPod unless you were connected to the drive.



    If automatic folders isn't turned on where does imported music go (does it just go to the defual folder?)
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