Using firewire hub with digi002rack

[tonedef]

Is it possible to use a belkin firewire hub to connect a digi002 rack and some ex hd's or does the digi002 rack have to be connected directly to the computer's built in firewire slot?

[albee1952]

Neither. Firewire hubs are not supported or approved(but feel free to try one and report your results). The proper way to hook it all up is to cable from the firewire port of the computer to the recording drive and daisy chain to the 002(a good reason to buy drives with dual FW400 ports). The reason to have the 002(or 003) at the end of the line is; if the interface loses power or gets switched off, it won't affect any data that might be writing at that moment. If you put the drive at the end and lose the interface, the data may get corrupted and you could lose some or all of your session(depending on what files get trashed). As for multiple drives, I suppose you can daisy chain several devices but I bet performance will suffer. If you are using an external drive for samples, it may be just as well to run them from the system drive. If you have a desktop machine, installing more internal drives is cheap and nets the best performance(I run 5 internal drives in my rig).

[tonedef]

Thanks for the advice albee

[tonedef]

I'm using a lacie with 2 400 ports and 1 800 port. What would be the best way to route to the rack?

Let me be more specific. Im using a miko, which only has 1 firewire 400 port. Can I connect the hd (which has 2 fw 800 and 1 fw 400) to the miko, then to daisy chain that hd to another hd via fw800, then fw 400 from that drive to the digi002 rack?

[albee1952]

What is the port on the computer?(FW400 or FW800). Once FW400 is used anywhere in the chain, you will be operating at the 400 speed(which should be fine for Pro Tools). If you have FW800 on the computer, then I would go FW800 cable to the miko, then FW400 cable to the Lacie and FW400 cable to the 002. If the computer has FW400, it may get weird and I would think about dumping the miko and getting another drive with dual FW400 ports. I'm not a huge Lacie fan(but I keep 2 for backups) and prefer the OWC Mercury Elite(which are available with dual FW400 ports). What is your computer? Can you add another firewire port with a PCI card?