Firewire chaining

[badda]

Hi all.
I was hoping some1 with more experience than me may be able to shed a little light here
I want to but a new macbook however they only have 1 firewire port. the slower macbook internal hard drive speed means that for recording, its better to use an external 7200rpm firewire drive as many of u know. My interface is also firewire which means in order to record, i need to chain the 2 together. I havnt found many bad reports on the net about chaining, is it as easy as that? can i just go from my macbook to the interface to the hard drive? hare there any regular firewire daisy chainers of drives and interfaces?

secondly I visited the fxpansion website to see what i would need to do with my BFD software (as it is not drum sample based and creates the samples in realtime). they recommend streaming the sound from an external firewire hard drive, however they say not from a chain, which leaves me wondering why not and also how am i going to do it? and there doesnt seem to be much light about it on the net?
Any feedback will be appreciated.
Thanks

[JrummerJ]

Recommended or not, that is exactly what I do with my M-Audio firewire 410 and WD Mybook drive. No problems so far....

J

[badda]

Thanks jrummerj
yes well i dont have many options so i guess thats what ill have to do and hope for the best.
or else i can get a hub, but im not sure theres much advantage a hub over chaining besides being unable to break the chain (as there isnt 1). thats about it? does any1 know if hub is better than chaining? i dont want to get a usb hard drive and my interface is firewire already. so theres my 1 port gone already.
its kinda stupid... I mean my interface has 2 firewire ports on it, and in the user guide it says how great this is as it can be chained to other firewire devices such as ... .. "hard drives"!. great i thought. I think if fxpansion are going to say not to do this with their software, on their site they could at least give a reason why not. do they know something? and if so, let people know. i mean i paid for the software. I hope im not having 2 turds thrown at me from both sides. I hate that. i thought firewire was designed with chaining in mind. anyway, what do i know... thanx for ur reply anyway

[maxpidge]

why chain when you can get a belkin firewire card for the left side slot, you can even use a firewire 800 card and hard drive, i do and my system wont slow down even recording direct into protools, its amazing!

[badda]

hi max. thanx for the info. so this would be better than getting a hub? i mean, id get more firewire ports without splitting the bandwidth of 1, is that correct? If u could give me a little more info on what ur saying id sure appreciate it. im not even sure what the left side slot is.

[maxpidge]

i re-read your post, missed that its macbook, not macbook pro, sorry your going to have to chain them together but will still work fine.

[badda]

Ok thanx max.
but now im thinking. I knew i was gonna need an external hard drive at 7200 but now im thinking maybe i could get one of the new hitachi or seagate momentus 2.5" internal drives that run at 7200 for my macbook. this would free up my only firewire port. or do u think thats unneccessary?
my interface is an m audio nrv10. with this mixer i can take upto 8 live inputs from the mixer/ interface, route to my mac, process, and back to the mixer again for hands on control if desired.
Now if im chaining, and recording. this means that the signal must travel from....
NRV - hard drive - macbook - hard drive
and as we all know, the faster the better. what do u think? Internal or external hd?
I hope i havnt confused any1. just myself i hope.

[badda]

Ok thanx max.
but now im thinking. I knew i was gonna need an external hard drive at 7200 but now im thinking maybe i could get one of the new hitachi or seagate momentus 2.5" internal drives that run at 7200 for my macbook. this would free up my only firewire port. or do u think thats unneccessary?
my interface is an m audio nrv10. with this mixer i can take upto 8 live inputs from the mixer/ interface, route to my mac, process, and back to the mixer again for hands on control if desired.
Now if im chaining, and recording. this means that the signal must travel from....
NRV - hard drive - macbook - hard drive
and as we all know, the faster the better. what do u think? Internal or external hd?
I hope i havnt confused any1. just myself i hope.

[maxpidge]

wont work my man u need an external, or seperate hard drive for pt to work properly. so your only real option is to daisy chain, dont worry it will work.

[badda]

Ok. thanx again.