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  3. Firewire chain

  • Firewire chain

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    I bought a Maxtor "One Touch" 750 Gb Firewire hard disk to make room for the Pro Edition, and now I have two external Firewire HD: my old 250 Gb Lacie (with Ivory, VI chamber strings, VI SE, etc) and the new Maxtor, either with a FW 800 port.

    Sorry for a couple of stupid questions: what if I connect in chain the two devices throguht the FW 800 port? I know they will share bandwidth; but does this mean that they will transfer data at 400 Mbit/sec even when not operating simultaneously?

    i.e., Maxtor (working) + Lacie (idle) = 400 Mbit/sec Maxtor?

    [*-)]:

    Thank you.
  • N
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    Yes, there's only one FW port on Macs even though there may be many holes to plug into. As soon as you connect even one FW400 device, that's the speed of the bus.

    The good news is that you still won't run out of bandwidth at 44.1/48kHz unless you also have a FW audio interface connected.
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    I'm using a MacBook Pro with two FW ports: 400 and 800.

    The audio interface (an M-Audio, good card, horrible drivers) is connected to the FW 400, the HD chain to the FW 800.

    Do I have 400 or 800 Mbit data transfer on the HD chain?

    [*-)]

    Thank you,
    Roberto
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC
    so there is actually another device in the game ... would make sense to present the whole picture before asking a question about it ...

    first we had to know, if the macbook pro still has a single or already a dual controller (does system information give any hints also on the model?)
    second we have to find out if this controller (if single) can manage speed on both ports seperately.
    third we need to find out if the controller on the maxtor (which is basically a firwire hub) *transposes* between 800 (to the macbook) and 400 (to the second harddisk) or if it slows down the speed of the whole chain down to 400 (it's higly probably it could work in *transpose* mode)

    so far too many variables ... christian
    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
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    @cm said:

    so there is actually another device in the game ... would make sense to present the whole picture before asking a question about it ...


    Let's forget about it, christian.
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    @Nick Batzdorf said:

    Yes, there's only one FW port on Macs even though there may be many holes to plug into. As soon as you connect even one FW400 device, that's the speed of the bus.


    I will try a (Daisy) chain, Nick, connecting the fastest device to the Mac first:

    MacBook Pro FW 800 port <-> FW 800 Maxtor <-> FW 800 LaCie <-> FW 400 M-Audio interface.

    Let's see what happens...

    [:)]
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    @Coqui said:

    Let's see what happens


    It works, but with discontinuous audio output in VI SE.

    Back to the old config.
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    I'm almost certain that there's still only one FW chain, cm. It's possible that's changed on the newer Mac Pros, but I'd very, very surprised to see that on a MacBook - especially since I haven't read in any of the write-ups that it has changed.

    Therefore I'm sticking with my story. [:)]

    You have 800 transfer until you plug a 400 device into any port in your Mac, at which point the bus slows to 400. If you have problems, buy a FireWire or better yet eSATA card for the laptop's slot and connect your hard drives to that.
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    @Nick Batzdorf said:

    You have 800 transfer until you plug a 400 device into any port in your Mac, at which point the bus slows to 400. If you have problems, buy a FireWire or better yet eSATA card for the laptop's slot and connect your hard drives to that.


    Until two months ago I had a Black MacBook with a FW400 port only, and I bought a MacBook Pro C2D because the 400 Mbits bottleneck wildly cut voices in Ivory reducing that magnificent piano to 16 chocking voices (when using the pedal) and a persistent "Slow Disk" flashing alert.

    As I connected the external LaCie (now chained to the Maxtor) to the FW800, and the M-Audio interface to the FW400, everything ran fine: Ivory now goes flawlessly at 64 voices, and samples (VSL samples too) load in half time. I then connected the M-Audio directly to the FW400 Mac port (previously it was connected to the Apple Cinema FW hub) and everything seems ok (at least I hope).

    I could be wrong, but the experience suggests the FW800 port runs at 800 Mbit even if you connect a slower device to the FW400 port.

    [H]