Dan South Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Let's say that I have a file on an external Firewire hard drive, and I would like to copy it to a second Firewire hard drive. Each FW drive has two FW connectors, so I can daisy chain them as follows. Mac ---cable1--- FWdriveA ---cable2--- FWdriveB Here's the question. If I copy a file from FWdriveA to FWdriveB, is the file transferred over cable2 only, i.e. directly between drives? Or does the file have to be transferred over cable1 back to the Mac, then on both cable1 (again) and cable2 on the way to the target drive, FWdriveB? In other words, does the data have to pass through the CPU, or can it move directly (efficiently) between FW devices? The Black Knight always triumphs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdlestat Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Unless there's a controller on-board each of the the drives themselves, the data would likely have to route through the Mac.... It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. --Aristotle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 Originally posted by mdlestat: Unless there's a controller on-board each of the the drives themselves, the data would likely have to route through the Mac.... word Músico, Productor, Ingeniero, Tecnólogo Senior Product Manager, América Latina y Caribe - PreSonus at Fender Musical Instruments Company Instagram: guslozada Facebook: Lozada - Música y Tecnología www.guslozada.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
where02190 Posted June 6, 2005 Share Posted June 6, 2005 The data routes through the mac. Hope this is helpful. NP Recording Studios Analog approach to digital recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan South Posted June 7, 2005 Author Share Posted June 7, 2005 So, if what you guys are saying is true, performace would be better by hooking each FW drive to its own FW port on the Mac, correct? Graphically... FWdriveA ---cable1--- Mac ---cable2--- FWdriveB is more efficient than daisy chaining, because in the daisy chain data has to double back along one of the cables. Is that accurate? The Black Knight always triumphs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
where02190 Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 Given it takes fractions of microseconds for data to travel through the FW cable, I doubt it makes any difference UNLESS the comuter had 2 separate FW busses. Hope this is helpful. NP Recording Studios Analog approach to digital recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaptain Karl Posted June 7, 2005 Share Posted June 7, 2005 Originally posted by Dan South: So, if what you guys are saying is true, performace would be better by hooking each FW drive to its own FW port on the Mac, correct? Not necessarily. They both could be on the same bus therefore no differrence in performance. For expample the G5 has two FW400 ports, one front/one back, both using the same bus. There is also a FW800 port on the G5 which is on a seperate bus. One could then use a 800/400 cable and utilize the seperate busses. A slight performance gain. "When I look at the smiles on all the children's faces,,...I just know they're about to jab me with something." -Homer J. Simpson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.