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aitchmal0ne's picture
220 pencils

STUPID question

aitchmal0ne (220 pencils) | Tue, 2010-08-24 17:22
Member's Forum

can i have more than one external hard drive connected to my mac?

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Leaky Penny's picture
2616 pencils
Leaky Penny | Tue, 2010-08-24 18:17

Stupid answer: yes. As long as you have free usb ports.

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wgzn's picture
1712 pencils
wgzn | Tue, 2010-08-24 19:27

you can daisy-chain multiple usb, firewire400 or firewire800 drives off of one port.
provided of course that each drive has multiple ports

Ivan's picture
Ivan | Tue, 2010-08-24 19:50

There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers. (Not referring to the 2 above) ;)

monkey1979's picture
684 pencils
monkey1979 | Wed, 2010-08-25 23:44

oh my... have you tried???

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William's picture
188 pencils
William | Sun, 2010-08-29 19:33

If possible you should always try and use Firewire drives rather than USB. You get much faster transfer speeds.

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wgzn's picture
1712 pencils
wgzn | Mon, 2010-08-30 17:26

thats not specifically true. USB1 yes. but USB2 is slightly faster than firewire400. but firewire800 is faster than all of them. USB2 really shines at burst transfer. like when youre moving a lot of little files. but both flavors of firewire are better for sustained transfer (like audio, video or really huge photoshop files)

and again, (provided your drive has multiple ports) you can theoretically daisy-chain as many drives as you want off of one port. but the signal will degrade dependent upon the total number of drives and max cable run. which as i recall for usb is like 16 feet or so...

i think ive had as many as 5 drives on a single usb or firewire port without noticeable issue

im primarily a video guy and in the video world. speed is EVERYTHING. and in many cases data transfer and drive speed has as much or more to do with performance than ram or processor spec. so if performance matters to you, get the fastest drive and the fastest connection type you can.

William's picture
188 pencils
William | Wed, 2010-09-01 11:24

For moving any data of size Firewire 400 is faster than USB2. If you try some tests yourself you will see. USB is fine for keyboards, mice etc.

There are other problems with USB. If you use a mix of USB1 & USB2 devices in a USB the overall performance will drop. You need to get a special with with 'Multiple TT's. The only one I know of is the Belkin Tetra Hub. (http://amzn.to/9rTMJ6)

When you use USB it actually slows down your computer. USB activity requires the CPU to be involved. If you are using a lot of CPU and I/O bound activities you will see an impact. Firewire does not have this problem. This is partly why they tend to be more expensive. The firewire controller has to be smart enough to move the data around on it's own.

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Mintsauce's picture
1004 pencils
Mintsauce | Tue, 2010-08-31 20:45

Whatever you do - don't use the Belkin Network USB hub. Nice idea, but it's just flaky.

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