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mounting daisy chained FW drives

838 views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  pm-r 
#1 ·
For some reason, a couple of my daisy chained FW drives are failing to mount, but mount fine when connected directly to FW port on MBP. I really don't prefer to have to use my external drives in this fashion. Any suggestions as to this mounting dilemma?
 
#2 ·
Are you using FW400 or FW800?
I find the FW800 connector arrangement is crap. The cable connector doesn't lock in and I have had cases where my FW800 drives drop because they loose their physical connection just when I move something on the desk that they are sitting on.

Getting daisy-chained FW drives to come up always seems to be a hit and miss scenario.
I found the most reliable way, for FW800 at least, is to bring them up one at a time - the FW drive connected directly to the Mac first, wait till it fully mounts, then do the next one and so forth.

I also found no consistency how one gets the FW drives to mount - either by having the external powered up and plugging in the FW cable or by plugging in the FW cable first and then powering the external.
USB 2.0 is much better that way, not that I can daisy-chain, but the connection is much more secure than FW800 but of course the transfer speed is not the greatest.
However, if one has to fiddle with the FW800 connection or the connection just drops, that will really slow things down.
 
#4 ·
Ditto on what krs said.

But maybe try connecting each drive to your MBP using each of the FW ports to check that both ports work.

I had one FW drive that would mount, but no other connected daisy-chained drives would. I was due to one of its FW ports not working, but was replaced on warranty.
 
#6 ·
Did you try connecting them using a different FW connection on the external drive(s)?

If so and they all mount and work, then I guess it's back to figuring out the correct powering up order procedure.

I'm glad I've never had such a problem which would drive me crazy.
 
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