# of Firewire Devices on one chain?? Performance?

[randrohe]

I currently have a Motu Ultralite, 8 Pre, and a m-audio Ozonic daisy chained in that order. they are into the strange looking fireport port, the slower one,I believe (ozonic last )This is into a g4 powerbook 1.67 1 gig ram. I have 2 external drives into the small square firewire port. the faster port, if i'm correct. I have pcmcia slot available and was wondering if there is any thing i could be doing to get better performance out my setup. I am considering buying another 8 pre or possibly a behringer ada8000 to bring into the 8 pre adat. So i guess my question is, Drum Rolllllll. How much can the firewire chain handle? I think i understand that on the g4 powerbook that if you plug something into the slower port (funny shaped??), that it drags the other port's performance down as they share the same bus. So this would be bad, as Live reads directly from the hard drive, correct?
would the pcmcia slot have adavantages?? or possibly a usb 2 unit??
I record bands and i need the extra channels for drums. thanx for any thoughts. Rand

[BinaryB]

I have always tried to keep away from chaining firewire devices if i am concerned about performance. I have chained a couple of firewire drives when i am using them to access the drives for backups or things that dont require realtime performance.

[drhiggens]

I just copy pasted this in here, this is what I have always been told about firewire I use shake at work and have 3 firewire Tb drives hooked up and seem to have no latency issues with then and I have my audio devise hooked up to my laptop to running ableton at home that have a 500gb external that has all my music file on it and I have yet to run into any problems. Hope this helps.

How many FireWire drives should you daisy chain together? The FireWire spec says 63. Sigh... I don't recommend that number. I have a few clients with 6-12 FireWire drives talking to a G-4. However, G-5s seem to have a problem when they talk to more than 4 FireWire drives. In my opinion, if you need that much storage, you are much better off with a RAID than a collection of FireWire drives. I would not recommend more than a dozen or so drives to be attached to any system.

[randrohe]

thank you for your responses. So much to learn.. have a good one, Rand

[DanielHoerr]

I'm curious about my setup as well...

Here's what I'm werkin with...

MacBook Pro - 1 Firewire 400, 1 Firewire 800, 2 USB 2.0 ports

WD 500 GB My Book Premium - 1 USB 2.0, 2 Firewire 400

Presonus Firebox - 2 Firewire 400, 2 MIDI

Korg microKONTROL - 1 USB 2.0, 1 MIDI

What would be the ideal routing here? Simple, I'm sure, but give a n00b a break.

Currently I have the Korg via MIDI to the Firebox to the Mac via FW 400, and the WD HD to the Mac via USB.

Would there be an advantage to Firewire chaining the WD HD from the Firebox, or using the other USB slot for the Korg rather than MIDI?

Grassy-ass!