[X4U] firewire hub

[Jan Melichar]

On 23 Jun 2006, at 01:22, Philip J Robar wrote:

>
> On Feb 9, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Randy B.Singer wrote:
>
>> And, by the way, I wouldn't put two FireWire hard drives on the same
>> chain or attach them to a FireWire hub, I would instead purchase a
>> multi-port FireWire PCI card.
>
> I second Randy's recommendation of not sharing FireWire (or  USB)  
> bandwidth between simultaneously operating high-speed devices, but  
> want to add a cautionary note. Multiple ports on a FireWire (or  
> USB) PCI card do not guarantee or even imply that each port has  
> it's own unshared bandwidth. I would recommend that unless you can  
> find documentation to the contrary that you assume that all ports  
> on a card will share the same bandwidth.
>
> (Sorry for the late follow up. I found Randy's response while doing  
> some clean up.)
>
> Phil
>

These are surely puzzling comments for those of us who are using  
firewire drives in a chain as no doubt many of used similarly linked  
SCSI drives.

Mine sometimes develop a life of their own (much as SCSI drives used  
to) and there seems to be no logical way to restore previous order.  
So every few months when one or other drives does not mount I spend a  
irritating hour or so pulling cable out and replacing them in a  
different order only to go through the same procedure a few months  
later.

I assumed that as with SCSI this was just part of life and was only  
the other day wondering if a firewire hub would solve this  
irritation. `Until now I assumed that daisy chaining was normal and  
proper practice but if not could someone please give me/us the  
lowdown on this as my hard drives are multiplying!

Jan