> On 6 Jul 2006, at 06:05, james page wrote: > > > Wait a minute. Are you saying that if you have a > > device plugged into the computer's FW 800 prot and a > > different device plugged into the computer's FW400 > > port that they both are reduced to FW400? Gareth Jones <yahoolist@...> wrote: > My understanding is that the 2 ports are on the same buss (not 2 > separate Firewire busses) > > Whether 400 devices slow down 800 devices - I don't know > The 'about your mac' window is very ambiguous about this, it states 'upto 800' with FW400 & 800 devices, but from experience my MIO (fw400) decreases maximum disk usage to my Lacie (fw800) by more than the difference between 400 and 800 in practical terms. It sped things up MASSIVELY getting a PCMCIA card (on my 15" 1.5 PB) and was able to double track counts. I added another 800 drive to the PCMCIA card for samples. This did decrease track counts, but not by much and was a lot faster than having samples either on my audio or internal drive. All in all if you need to get the most from data i/o and you're on a PB (or MBP, the 15 has only the 400 port, don't know if the architecture is different on the 17, but I doubt it!) then get a card to run your drives from (either FW or SATA) it is a lot faster than ANY other option. Mike