I have just purchased an iMac and in contrast to my 1 year old model, it only has one firewire port (firewire 800, 9 pin). I am connecting my Apogee Duet to it using a firewire 800 to 400 cable (Duet's port takes only 400 (6 pin). I am planning to record to an external drive. I have not purchase that as of yet, but know it has to be 7200 rpm. Would I be better off getting a firewire hub and running both the Duet and the external drive off the iMac's firewire port or should I get a USB external drive?? I do know with some USB hubs some components won't run off the hub. Is that also true with firewire? Someone told me that a USB drive would be fine for music recording Thanks in advance for any advice. Jim Frank

Hi Jim, I would recommend using Firewire 400/800 for a Hard drive over USB 2.0 for audio or video work on a Mac. The reason is that in the real world Firewire gives better sustained performance than USB2 on a Mac. Using a Hub should be fine. You can also 'daisy-chain' it too. This works if you Firewire external HD has a spare FW400/800 port. Connect Mac to HD to Duet. :) Rounik

Thanks Rounik. Using a hub makes sense to me. Now can you tell me where I might get a hub and can you recommend a specific firewire hard drive? The Duet is not set up for daisy-chaining. Jim

Hi Jim, There are many Firewire Hubs. I guess in the US you have many choices, such as Amazon, Apple Stores, Best Buy, any computer store... External Drives: There are many brands. Some people find Lacie drives are very professional and reliable for example, yet I've read others with bad experiences. It's very difficult to give any kind of definite advice. From my personal experience... Drives I've used & My favourites in order (best first): Glyph, G-Tech, Lacie, Maxtor, Western Digital. That doesn't mean to say WD drives are bad, infact it was great value for money, but was noisier than the rest and not as reliable... Hope that helps, Rounik