Some external drives ship with both 400 and 800 ports, though usually its only 800. Older Macs have FireWire 400, as do older external HDDs. However, it also appears that, if the FW400 device 'talks a lot,' it can still slow down the speed of the FW800 device. Primarily, I use these cables to connect older Macs to a newer Mac used for diagnostics, as Macs can boot in Target Disk Mode via FireWire (or Thunderbolt if made after mid-2011) but not USB. I gather from reading other threads that, if I am to use only the one adapter, I would place the FW800 drive first in the chain, and the FW400 audio input last. Question: what is the optimal setup for these devices? Specifically, will I get full Firewire 800 speeds if I purchase a second Thunderbolt/Firewire adapter and run the external FW800 drive alone on that port?
Macbook 13' Retina late 2012 with Two Thunderbolt ports.
