Running low on storage on my 24 inch MAC (2009) and I've been using my WD 2TB external. How do I daisy chain a second external to free up my MAC?
1444637
this hard drive allows you to do it. i have daisy chained it to a lacie external drive. it is easy to do. the wd comes with 2 firewire cords and 2 ports. the first cord goes into one of the wd's ports and then into your laptop's firewire port. the second one goes from the second firewire port in the wd into the firewire port of your other drive. then they both will show up on your desktop. to eject them, just drag both icons to the trash and unplug. i always remove them before i start my powerbook. soometimes the powerbook gets confused and doesn't know which hard drive to recognize for start up. easier to plug them in after i have booted up my mac. hope this helps. this hard drive allows you to do it. i have daisy chained it to a lacie external drive. it is easy to do. the wd comes with 2 firewire cords and 2 ports. the first cord goes into one of the wd's ports and then into your laptop's firewire port. the second one goes from the second firewire port in the wd into the firewire port of your other drive. then they both will show up on your desktop. to eject them, just drag both icons to the trash and unplug. i always remove them before i start my powerbook. soometimes the powerbook gets confused and doesn't know which hard drive to recognize for... » Read More this hard drive allows you to do it. i have daisy chained it to a lacie external drive. it is easy to do. the wd comes with 2 firewire cords and 2 ports. the first cord goes into one of the wd's ports and then into your laptop's firewire port. the second one goes from the second firewire port in the wd into the firewire port of your other drive. then they both will show up on your desktop. to eject them, just drag both icons to the trash and unplug. i always remove them before i start my powerbook. soometimes the powerbook gets confused and doesn't know which hard drive to recognize for start up. easier to plug them in after i have booted up my mac. hope this helps. « Show Less
1444638
this hard drive allows you to do it. i have daisy chained it to a lacie external drive. it is easy to do. the wd comes with 2 firewire cords and 2 ports. the first cord goes into one of the wd's ports and then into your laptop's firewire port. the second one goes from the second firewire port in the wd into the firewire port of your other drive. then they both will show up on your desktop. to eject them, just drag both icons to the trash and unplug. i always remove them before i start my powerbook. soometimes the powerbook gets confused and doesn't know which hard drive to recognize for start up. easier to plug them in after i have booted up my mac. hope this helps.
1444639
Firewire is a daisy-chained protocol. These drives have 2 ports, so you just attach a cable between the two and to the Firewire port on your Mac and you're all set. I have 2 of these devices set up this way with my 17" Mac Book Pro and it works great. Note that if you daisy chain a LOT of Firewire devices together you can get performance problems since signals pass through each device. But for a couple disk drives this should not be a problem.
1444640
OH no problem... just connect one of the other provided cords to the 2nd port on WD drive 1 to either port on the 2nd drive. It automatically shows up on your desktop as a second WD icon. Works great.
532978
Hi to the best of my knowledge an experience on a Windows platform it shows as 2 separate drives. On the Mac os it shows as 1 drive.
1913912
@Tony I believe you could. You'd have to create two partitions on the drive, one formatted in HFS+ (for Mac) and the other in NTFS (for Windows). I have never done any such thing but it might be worth a try. Of course, as these drives have come so far down in price, why not just buy two, one for Mac and the other for Windows?
455335
Yes you absolutely can. i have 2- 4tb seagate go flex drives sitting on these and daisy chained together into a thunderbolt port on a iMac. they can also be used in the same mannor on usb 2.0/3.0 they work great
704152
No, I don't think you can. These drives are usually either for a Mac or PC and not interchangeable. I don't know of any that you could use for the purpose you want. Have you looked into something like Carbonite? There are others like this out there. This is a remote program to store your files and then you can get them from anywhere. You could look into this. It takes quite a while to save your files initially but then works in the background after that. Congrats for switching to a Mac. There is a learning curve but I'm sure, in the end, you will be glad you did!
1116563
I'm really only using them (I have several) on a Mac but I think they are interchangeable between platforms. It is a great drive. It is my "go to" whenever I need an external drive.
2188618
I am currently using a 2 TB WD My Book for Mac on OSX 10.9.1. It works flawlessly and am very happy with it. I set it up when I was still using Lion. Then upgraded to Mavericks and had no problem.
111625
On my computers (Macbook Air and iMac) this loads as a drive and I can backup or do anything else I can do regularly with any other type of drive with this unit, up to its capacity of 128GB. Note, though, that my experience is under MacOSX and not Windows. My sense is that it should work the same way with Windows but i have not tested it. Good luck.
329167
As I understand it, port-multiplier on this unit refers to the fact that they can be daisy chained using the e-sata port to other NAS units. You will probably connect the unit to your computer or router through the USB port, which work perfectly. Even if you don't have enough existing USB ports you can cheaply buy and external USB hub. I have the 2 Bay unit and have it configured as RAID 1. I am very happy with the unit and have had no problems. I am not sure if you are using PC or Mac but on my Mac it took less than 5 minutes to configure the unit and have it ready to use. I would recommend using "red" drives. I bought WD red 2 Terr drives from Ebay. Everything works great. I hope this answers your question and helps. Harry Riley
577669
Hi Shiki, This is very helpful. Is it easy to partition the drive? I just ordered this so I don't have the drive yet, but when it comes I'd like to back up both my Mac and PC... Do you know where to find information on how to partition? Thank you!
1815471
You can't daisy chain these drives since they only have one usb port. Both must be connected to your computer at the same time in order to transfer data from one another
2125948
If you take a look at the 4th picture, you'll understand what I mean when I say there's only one USB 2.0/3.0 slot. Further, that slot is a kind of odd shape that does not take regular USB cables. The My Book Studio comes bundled with a USB 2.0/3.0 to USB (regular sized) cable. So it's fine for connecting to your mac, but will not be able to hook up to another My Book Studio. That's not to mention that the My Book Studio only has 1 USB 2.0/3.0 bay, meaning that you won't be able to connect anything directly and will have to use a hub. Even when using a hub, it is dependent on software to determine if backups can be done automatically across 2 external hard drives. Else I think the more fundamental question is why one would want to daisy chain external hard drives vis-a-vis having them in parallel arrangement?
904713
I've only used it as a standalone hard drive copy device, but I believe you can use it as an external hard drive unit too. I'm using Mac OSX
1407694
To add to that answer, yes, which is how I set mine up. I have 4 3TB Drives from an older MacPro and just popped them in and was good to go!
2125947
I'm not sure. I haven't opened up the casing or tried anything like daisy-chaining. However, you likely could, and if not you can always backup 2 separately. Again, as far as a daisy chain, I don't know.
1983613
My recommendation would be to get the Windows version and leave it as a single NTFS partition. Just load the included utility on your Mac so that it will read/write to an NTFS disc and use the single large partition for both platforms. Makes it easy to share files cross-platform that way.
1280900
I have an iMac 24 (2008) and iMac27 (2011) ... and am trying to initialize this drive on either, and the systems only seem to see 1.8TB - not 4TB. The website that they direct you to is very cagey on this - the drives say there is not problem, but there is an asterisk that says you may only be able to access 2tb of the drive. I'm wondering if you ever got this working. I am trying to install the drive in a box on the Firewire 400 and 800 channels though ... not sure if the SATA interface would be any better. This is kind of nonsense ... one would think they not want to sell these drives to people who cannot use them and have to return them for a refund ... but? Did you get your drive installed? By the way I just wonder what the people who respond to this that have no idea are trying to accomplish by that? Kind of silly wasting everyone's and their own time?