MacBookPro: chaining FW800 drives

[G.R. Baumann]

Hi,

trying to setup a rig for on the road use, I am looking for some advise from people who have more experience with MacBookPro. I have a 2008 2.66Ghz dual core , 4Gig Ram with internal 7,200 rpm 200 Gig drive.

Common sense dictates not to record audio onto the same drive where OSX resides. Now, I do have a 1TB external Lacie, to this I could attach another WD 500 Gig portable FW800 drive.

My samples and AU's reside on the 1TB Lacie, and my idea was to record from Logic onto the chained 500Gig drive. What I do not know is whether attaching 2 FW800 drives to the same port may cause problems!

I also bought a pci express fw800 card but this seems to have problems with drives, I can attach a Sandisc Card reader (compact flash fro photography) without problems, only harddrives seem not to work on the 2 port pci express, which sucks! (I might need to give that back.

The Lacie also has a eSATA port, now I wonder, would it be an idea to get a pci express eSATA card to be able to attach the lacie to that , and use the fw800 for recording?

What is your experience?

Thanks!

Georg

[Planet]

hey Georg,

i will do exactly the same as you will. An on the road setup up. I had plant to buy a macbook pro with 3,06 Ghz and 8 GB ram and 500GB 7.200. But as it looks that at the first quarter of 2010 there will be an new macbook pro come. So i will wait a little bit longer.
At first i will try that i run everything on one HD caus the problem is that the fast external drives are all selfpowerd and that´s a problem. so i need an external powersupply for the external HD and that is a little bit bad. So my first try is to get that everything run on one HD after that i will see how it works:D

Chris

[mosso]

I'm using this setup with my MBP and have had no problem with it thus far (about a year). I don't tend to use more than 9-10 stereo audio tracks at any one time though.

My samples drive (a G-Tech) is directly connected to the FW port and the audio drive (a Seagate in an Icy Dock enclosure) is daisy chained from that.

HTH,

M

[G.R. Baumann]

Hi Christian and Martin,

I think to record on the HD where OSX resides is a no go area, at least according to the cracks over at the logic fora. I would try to avoid using that drive. Yeah, it is regrettable that the 2008 macbookPro's can not digest more than 4 Gig Ram, sadly.

Good to know that daisy chaining is unproblematic, thanks Martin. Best Georg

[Cyril Blanc]

>  also bought a pci express fw800

?? on a Macbook ?????

For chaining :

This depends of the number of instrument/tracks

It is wise to spread FW device on different bus !

You can add a PCMCIA card with either eSata (the best solution) or another FW port