It reads that the Motu and your hdd enclosure are rated IEEE 1394(firewire 400).

But the laptop has a 400 and an 800 port, 800 being backwards compatible.

Put the laptop first in the chain.

You could start with the 800 port on the laptop and chain out from there.

I am not a Mac user.

Hello Space, thanks for your reply.

When you tell to put the laptop first... well, isn't it the same as I have explained above?

I mean:

MOTU -> HDD -> Laptop
HDD -> MOTU -> Laptop

isn't the same as:

Laptop -> MOTU -> HDD
Laptop -> HDD -> MOTU ???

Pablo R.

How are you powering these things in the field?

As you can imagine, with the gear I intend to do the recording there's not much portability (Laptop 15.4" + Interface, etc...) The recording itself (to the purist) could hardly be described as field-recording as I won't be following anybody with a boompole, field-mixer, etc. Instead, the shots will be stationary and I'll have my setup on a table, connected to a battery system. That's pretty much how things are going to be.

Pablo R.

"FireWire cable power is present anytime the AC adaptor is powering the system, including shutdown. The MacBook's six-pin FireWire connector provides unregulated 9 V to 12 V power with a maximum load of 0.75 A.

Output voltage depends on the system's battery charge level. Output voltage may be lower when the battery is not fully charged. "

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/

Maybe this is the issue?

Thanks for your time Space. Hmm, yeah the FW port at the macbook is on unless the system is in sleep or shutdown. But, thats not the problem. My problem is that the motu should stop receiving power from the FW port, from the moment I connect the power supply to it. At least that's what the manual says, that the motu will follow the higher voltage as a power source.

P. Rubio

Not sure about the Ultralite but on the Traveler there is a switch on the side that turns the bus power on or off. If it doesn't automatically switch, maybe there is a manual one somewhere? Then you wouldn't have trouble getting enough power for both the interface and the harddrive.

Hmm yeah, there's the manual & it doens't have a switch for DC power. I ordered a 9-to-6 pin FW cable to try with the motu... If there are still problems I'll get a FW800 HDD.