External Drives

[applecrisp]

Hey my Imac just died so im forced to use my Peecee how many external drives can I have hooked up via firewire? is there a limit? besides the firewire limit of like 49 or whatever

 

[redhat9]

Wouldn't it just be home many ports as to how many devices you can physically hook up?

 

[The Hound]

I believe that 16 can be daisy-chained, but I don't know what that does to the transfer rate. If they're bus-powered, I wouldn't chain them at all--too much ac draw on the 1394 bus...My opinion, not proven...

USB 2.0 is faster (480 Mbps) than firewire (400)...Welcome to our world.

 

[redhat9]

Isn't there something like Firewire 2? Runs at 800?

 

[JohnWill]

Actually, while the bit rate of USB is indeed faster than Firewire, the reality is that USB connected hard disks normally run around 20mbyte/sec transfer rates and Firewire connected hard disks will normally do around 30mbyte/sec transfer rates. The 800mbit version of Firewire, IEEE-1394B, is found on a few newer Firewire drives, but obviously your system has to also support the new standard.