How many hard drives can be daisy chained together using FireWire 800?
In principle you can chain 62 FireWire 800 hard drives to a computer that has FireWire 800. This is possible because IEEE 1394b does not use the “gap” timing from IEEE 1394-1995 and IEEE 1394a, so a pure 1394b bus does not have a limit on the hop count. Instead, the only limit is the 63 node maximum: 62 drives plus one host. In practice, achieving 62 chained drives will depend on several conditions: 1. There must be no FireWire 400 (or slower) devices connected. Connecting such a device will force the old-style “gap” timing, which will limit the chain length to about 16 devices. It’s OK if some drives or the host has empty FireWire 400 sockets, as long as they are not connected. 2. There must be enough power for all of the drives. Most or all of the drives will need their own AC power connection, instead of using power from FireWire. 3. The host computer software might not be able to support 62 simultaneous drives. 4. The FireWire bus must not contain any “hidden” nodes. For example, t
