Which Firewire cable do I need?

[icedbullet]

Hey all

I have an old WD My Book Pro II external HDD and a Macbook Pro 15" 2010 with what I think is a firewire 800 port on it.

I'm very unfamiliar with firewire ports and cables, I do however know that they are faster then USB. On the back of my WD My Book Pro II I have an S400 port and two S800 ports alongside the ubiquitous USB port. I want to connect the external HDD to my 2010 Macbook Pro in the best possible way to allow for maximum speed when backing up via Time Machine.

Can anyone tell me which firewire I would need and why there are 2 identical firewire S800 ports on the back of my external HDD?

(P.S. I read somewhere there are 2 S800 ports to allow for daisy chaining of drives....whatever that means )

 

[Berserker]

You read correct - daisy chaining = connecting one device in to the back of another.

For example, you could have WD My Book > WD My Book > MacBook and the MacBook would be able to use both WD drives. However, my own past experience has shown firewire daisy chaining not to be particularly reliable (e.g. if you turn off the middle WD, you'll lose the other one too).

Looks like the MacBook Pro has a standard Firewire 800 port, so Firewire 800 - Firewire 800 cable and you're done.

 

[icedbullet]

Thanks for replying Berserker. Yes daisy chaining does sound dodgy, its not something I'm interested in doing tbh.

So it's firewire 800-800, does the number of pins matter? It looks like I need a 4 pin to 4 pin connector, is that right?

 

[iraiguana]

Firewire 800 only has one standard. If you get end up with a firewire 400 cable, it will still end up being quicker sustained transfer than USB 2 and below (USB 3 should be able to beat firewire 800).