Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 19, 2016 Members Share Posted December 19, 2016 I have 5 external HDs all with Firewire 800 ports... I`d like to be able to access them all and copy files from one to the other... however, my iMac only has one Firewire 800 port. So I have to constantly shut down one HD, disconnect, connect another HD and start it up, etc... its annoying. I need a workaround... is there such a thing as Firewire hub? If not, any solutions you can think of? Thanks,E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted December 19, 2016 Members Share Posted December 19, 2016 There might be a powered drive cage for RAID configurations that would work for swapping drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 19, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted December 19, 2016 You don't heed a hard drive hub (and as far as I know there really isn't such a thing), you need a Firewire hub. NitroAV has one with 8 ports for $160, about the price of a decent packaged Firewire drive. If the drives were in USB cases, you could do the job with a $15 powered USB hub, and if they were raw drives, you could get a multi-drive enclosure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 21, 2016 Members Share Posted December 21, 2016 Don't know if your Mac is old enough to accept cards, but I added a Firewire card with more I/O when I ran into the same problem years ago.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 23, 2016 Author Members Share Posted December 23, 2016 You don't heed a hard drive hub (and as far as I know there really isn't such a thing)' date=' you need a Firewire hub. NitroAV has one with 8 ports for $160, about the price of a decent packaged Firewire drive. If the drives were in USB cases, you could do the job with a $15 powered USB hub, and if they were raw drives, you could get a multi-drive enclosure. Thanks Mike. That may be the way to go. Just read through the reviews, some good some bad... I may have to bite because right now the current workflow is suffering for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 23, 2016 Author Members Share Posted December 23, 2016 Don't know if your Mac is old enough to accept cards' date=' but I added a Firewire card with more I/O when I ran into the same problem years ago..[/quote'] I`m using an iMac... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 23, 2016 Members Share Posted December 23, 2016 Then it looks like Mike has the solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 24, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted December 24, 2016 Thanks Mike. That [Nitro Firewire hub] may be the way to go. Just read through the reviews, some good some bad... I may have to bite because right now the current workflow is suffering for it. That's typical of reviews. Now that I think of it, it used to be that Firewire drive cases had two ports, specifically for the purpose of daisy-chaining multiple drives. It's a bus, and you can have eight devices on the bus. Your computer counts as one, so you could hook up seven drives. Take another look at your drives and see if they have two ports. I'm not sure if they did this with Firewire 800, but If so, all you need is cables. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 24, 2016 Members Share Posted December 24, 2016 I've daisy-chained external FW hard drives together before and it's worked perfectly fine, although I would prefer a hub. Read this about the order that one daisy-chains the devices in the event that it applies to you: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46231/does-daisy-chaining-firewire-800-and-400-cause-all-devices-to-use-400-speeds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 28, 2016 Author Members Share Posted December 28, 2016 I`ve read that daisy chaining is not ideal. I`m avoiding it. I think the hub is the best way to go right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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