Firewire chaining

[obiwan177]

So I recently got myself a Profire2626, and it is awesome! I have been recording 8 tracks of drums recently, but as I am doing more editing and stuff, and foresee lots of mixing in the near future, I have a question. When I was recording, I had the Profire connected to my computer's Firewire 800 port, and my harddrive can support either USB 2.0 or Firewire 800, but since I had no Firewire ports left, I connected it via USB. This setup worked very well, and I had no issues at all recording 8 tracks of drums at 24 bit and 44.1 khz.

My question is, USB isn't the greatest, and I want to upgrade so my harddrive can be connected through Firewire. Either I can get an ExpressCard34 card that has two Firewire 800 ports on it and use that (~$100), or I could chain it through the Profire ($20-30 for a cable). Is there any noticeable performance loss/issues through chaining the devices? I realize that putting it on a separate port is better, but I would rather not spend the extra money if I don't need to.

Thanks for your help.

[nst7]

I'm on a 3 year old Imac, and I've chained 3 drives plus a 003R off the fw port, successfully. 2 for audio, one streaming BFD2 samples in real time.

[mindnoise]

Get a certified ExpressCard, then you are def. on the Safe Side!

[obiwan177]

Thanks for the replies. I'll probably chain for now, and then upgrade (hopefully soon) to an ExpressCard just to be safe in the future.