Daisy Chain a Firewire Connection?

[aic]

Can a firewire port be daisy chained like a USB port?

 

[hans007]

yes, my firewire enclosure has 2 ports on it, one for in and one for out. you dont need a repeater, unless your devices dont have 2 ports (camcorders dont tend to)

 

[aic]

My laptop just has one 1394 port and I want to hook a 4 pin firewire cable to my digital camcorder which also has a 4 pin connection. I will be processing my digital camcorder film into Studio DV software. I want a second hard drive to send the movie to. I am thinking about getting a firewire hard drive for this purpose. Since I only have one 1394 port on my laptop, what device do I get to get a second port for my firewire hardrive. Remember, the camcorder takes the existing firewire port.

 

[hans007]

what you want to do is get a 4 pin to 6 pin cable. I actually sell these. Anyways, you take one of those, and hook it to a firewire enclosure with hard disk. then you take the other port on the enclosure (enclosures have 6 pin ports) and get another 4 to 6 cable, and chain to the camera. You have a sony laptop i figure. the difference between normal 6 pin firewire and sony 4 pin i.link firewire, is that the 4 pin ports aren't powered which is what the 2 pins are for.

 

[aic]

OK, I am confused. I had a 4 pin and a 6 pin cable for my old desktop. Studio DV gave you the wire and 1394 PCI card. The 4 pin went into the camcorder and the 6 pin went into the PCI card. Now my Dell laptop (I8000)has just the 4 pin port, the same as my laptop. I am geared to thinking of a USB hub that you plug into one of the computer's USB ports. For instance I have a 7 port USB hub. Now, do we do the firewire port the same way?

 

[hans007]

firewire cables come in 3 types


6 to 6

4 to 4


and 4 to 6


drive enclosures are all 6 pin.

dvcams are all 4 pin


you can get a firewire repeater but they cost a crap load like $90


drive enclosures like the ones at madlogix.com, like i have , have 2 6 pin on back.


you take the 4 pin from your computer, with a 4 to 6 cable. and attach your computer to the drive. then you take the drive's other port, and hook the 6 pin end of another 4 to 6 pin cable to the other port. So you have 2 6 to 4 cables on the drive with the 6 pins into the drive enclosure. and one 4 pin to the computer and the other to the dv cam. You could always get a repeater hub, if you wanna spend the money.


I get my cables from a very big supply of oem studio DV and firewire cable packs. So i know about the cable you are talking about, you are gonna need another one like that so yuou'll have two of them

 

[Pariah]

If you buy a firewire hard drive, it should have two 6pin ports on it, one in, one out. Your DV camera should have a 4 pin port on it, you will want to use a 4pin to 6pin cable to connect your DV camera to the in port on the hard drive, and another 4pin to 6pin cable to connect the hard drive out port to the 4pin laptop port.

 

[aic]

Shazammm, I got it. The firewire hard drive has two ports.

If you guys are still around, what firewire hard drive you like? Maxtor?

 

[Pariah]

Depends on what you are after. Of the major HD manufacturers, Maxtor and WD are your 2 options. If you want speed, Maxtor just released/announced (don't remember which) a 7200RPM family. If speed isn't your main concern, and it shouldn't be if all you're doing is storing video, I would go with WD, as the drive enclosures are quite a bit smaller.

 

[aic]

Another question somewhat related. If I bypassed the firewire hard drive and just got a modular hard drive for my laptop (second hard drive that is removable like the floppy drive) could I transfer data from my laptop to my old desktop computer via the firewire cable (4 pin to my laptop and 6 pin to my firewire pci card on my old desktop)? If I could what command in my laptop operating system (Windows 2000 Pro) would I use to start the transfer? My desktop has windows 98SE.

Would you choose this method over the firewire hard drive? I would get a decent `30 MB hard drive for the modular case.

Thanks.

 

[Pariah]

I don't think there is any firewire networking kit available. If you bought a modular HD for your laptop, you could buy a network card for you PC, and LAN PCcard for your laptop and a crossover cable for about $75.

 

[aic]

Shoot, yeah I meant LAN. I have an etherenet card on my laptop (Xircom) and my desktop (3Com PCI). Would you prefer this storage and transfer over the firewire?

 

[Pariah]

Provided the modular HD doesn't require you to swap out your dvdrom drive or something I would go with the modular drive for convenience. An IBM Travelstar 32GH would be a nice pickup.

 

[theplanb]

Excuse my interrupt..
But.. if those 2 extra pins are for the power supply..and the firewire adapter on his PC has only 4 pin out, then.. doesn't that mean it's not capable of transferring any power through the wire?
I don't know much about the subject.. but just curious 🙂

 

[hans007]

i looked all over the 32gh is insanely expensive. I bought a firewire casing on ebay for $89 + shipping. It has the newest ATA to firewire bridge thus a lot faster than older ones. Then i bought a fujitsu 40 gig hard drive at compgeeks.com for $89. they dont have that anymore, but they do have a 40 gig ibm. Madlogix.com sell sthe same case i have with a 40 gig maxtor installed for $189 with a 6 to 6 cable. Anyways, over the network is kinda slow, but its cheaper.

 

[Pariah]

"But.. if those 2 extra pins are for the power supply..and the firewire adapter on his PC has only 4 pin out, then.. doesn't that mean it's not capable of transferring any power through the wire?"

I don't know what the extra 2 pins are for, but every firewire HD and CDRW I have seen had to be plugged in, so if those 2 pins supply power, they aren't supplying enough to power anything useful.

"i looked all over the 32gh is insanely expensive"

I've seen the 32GH for $380 at reliable online retailers, which isn't cheap, but significantly cheaper than the 48GH I was looking at that runs around $660. Think I'll have to settle for the 32GH if I do decide to upgrade. Though building your own firewire drive will give you better price/capacity, I still prefer upgrading/adding a mobile drive. Firewire drives are not bootable so they won't do much to speed up the dreadfully slow laptop hard drive performance. Running your laptop off a 5400RPM vs a 4200RPM will give you a pretty decent system speed increase which a firewire drive will not provide.

 

[hans007]

there are a lot of things that work on the 6 pin power supplied cables. the external 2.5 " drive cases, can run off the power. non of the 3.5" drive cases will because its too much power.


Personally i have a 10 gig ibm deskstar. An upgrade place said my computer can take a 12.5mm drive, but it really doesnt look like it. The 32 and 48 gigs are 12.5mm drives, and have basically same platter density and access times based on IBM's spec sheets as the 9.5mm 4200rpm drives, but spin 25% faster. I dont know if its worth the money though. ON ebay the 32 and 48 are around $350 and 600respectively. I already have a 40 gig external fujitsu firewire drive. So i dont really need the space, just the speed, but i don tthink i can justify $350+ dollar sfor a 25% faster transfer rate . I was saying the 32 gig is expensive, since you can find a 4200 rpm fujitsu on ebay for $200. and the 20 gig ibm deskstar is only around $100 now


pariah i just looked at your system specs. that is a gross laptop you have. man i drool.. its supposed to be exactly the same as one of the omni book series. i have a HP laptop too, gonna upgrade the cpu soon. figured that is much cheaper than a new drive, only cost me like $35 (after i sell the old one) to upgrade it 100mhz.

 

[aic]

OK, Hans, you prefer a firewire HD setup over a removable modular hard drive set up, right?

I was leaning toward getting a Dell refurbished 32GB HD for 10% off and free shipping and then buying a modular case from them. But the network business has got me concerned. I do not know how to transfer data from the this new modular drive via my ethernet connection (Xircom) to my old desktop (3COM PCI) ethernet. I was told it was easy to do but I never set it up plus I have two different operating systems win 2000 pro on the laptop and win 98se on the desktop.

So if you think I should get the firewire, I should build it myself. If a novice can do it can you provide the parts? There can't be that many.

Or if you think I should buy a ready made firewire HD, which one would you recommend for my Dell I8000?

Thanks.

 

[aic]

^bump

 

[Pariah]

If it doesn't matter that you have to plug the firewire drive in, you'll save yourself some money going with the external drive. Windows networking is quite simple, regardless of which drive you choose, you should learn the basics of windows networking as it will probably come in handy at some point in the future.