Friends...

I am working on a Mac Dual Core 3Gig with FCP 5.1.4. I have four Firewire 400-250gig drives that contain 5 years worth of sound effects, music, QT movies, graphics etc. Considering these are aging drives, I want to transfer the media to a new drive. (or drives) In terms of access speed as well as avoiding frame dropping, would it be better to transfer to a single 1Terabite Firewire 800 drive or four 250gig Firewire 800 drives in a daisy chain. (Or hub) ?

And in a related question: Is the Firewire 400 versus 800 merely a function of the drive case and firewire interface? In other words.... if I remove the actual Hitachi 7500 rpm drive from the Firewire 400 case and install it into a Firewire 800 case....will it in fact become a Firewire 800 drive? (And will I still be able to access the media?)

Thank you in advance for your advice.

Ron

a single 800 drive is WAY faster and more reliable than 400. - ESPECIALLY FOUR OF THEM daisy chained. daisy chaining has no noticeable impact on speed. and if it did, i imagine it would only be negative.

and yes, fw400, fw800 as well as esata, usb etc, is strictly an interface. as long as the drives in the cases are the same technology you can switch them out all day long

With FW400 / 800, the more you chain the less performance you get. G-Raids are notorious for that. Especially if you're reading and writing to both at the same time (Capturing video to one while streaming from the other). I have heard that Caldigit has licked that problem with their FirewireVR units.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thank you for your advice...

Ron