Working with multiple external drives on MBP
 

I'm starting a new project which is bigger than anything I've worked on before. The end result will be a 1.5 hour DVD and HD download. I live/work on the road and edit with a 17" MacBook Pro with a 1TB Lacie rugged external drive. That drive is already getting close to full and I'm only a quarter of the way with filming. Since I'm restricted to working on a laptop how will I work with multiple drives if I only have one firewire port? Will I be forced to use USB drives?

I film with a Panasonic GH2 at 720 60p and log and transfer to Apple ProRes.

Thanks for any help!
Alex

You can daisy chain Firewire drives -- I have three attached to a single port as a matter of course. If you have a drive that is FW400 make sure it comes 'later' than the FW800 drives -- I believe the system will slow downstream of a slower connection. I can state though that my chain of FW800 drives maintain their full speed even when my slower FW400 drive is attached to the end of the chain ... I can't test my advice as the FW400 drive is the one drive I have without a second port, so it is always the end of the chain.

Cheers,
GB

I have been using the NexStar 3 HDD enclosures. They provide USB2, eSATA and Firewire 800/400 connections. When a HDD fills up, I swap in a new one. I have had now problems with daisy chaining Firewire drives.
For eSATA I have a Sonnet Expresscard dual port eSATA card for my 17-inch MBP.

I found this Nitro AV 8 port Firewire 800 hub that eliminates the need to daisy chain. It's $150 but might be worth it to maintain speed to all your drives.

Going through a hub is really the same as daisy chaining. All of the drives are sharing the same amount of bandwidth in the MBP's single FW port.

I use one of these. It has multiple interfaces and is safe when formatted correctly.
OWC Mercury Pro Qx2 4-Bay RAID 0/1/5/10 eSATA, FireWire 400/800, USB2 Desktop Removable Bay Storage Solution - up to 12.0TB

Good Luck!

Dave

While you are correct about the speed as there is only one bus you do have a different point of failure for the connection so I like the Nitro AV hub for hooking up more than 3 drives. Also some drives don't loop the 800 port so a hub can help you if you have multiple drives like the Lacie Ruggeds.

An expresscard with two firewire ports will give you a total of three ports.

And an express card with esata ports and the above unit I mentioned will fly compared to firewire.

Good Luck!

Dave