Copy one disk to three others?

On Feb 5, 2007, at 4:07 PM, Andreas Steinmann wrote:

> Is there any solution to copy one harddisk to three others
> simultaniously?
>
> All four disks are firewire disks and I want to make three (B,C,D)
> identical copies from disk A.
>
> Can I connect disk A to B and B to C and C to D with firewire cables
> - or do I need different firewire (raid)cards (ports) on my mac for
> every disk?

You can do what you are asking, but it may not go as smoothly or as
quickly as you might suppose. Having 4 disks share the same firewire
port will seriously slow down the copying process as each one tries
to read and write data simultaneously. Also, this all has to be
mediated by the mother board and operating system and will be treated
as separate system processes. I would suggest that you copy them
one at a time (from experience). Otherwise it is likely that your
system will appear with a spinning beach ball and be unusable during
the process anyway.

Regards,

Howard

Andreas Steinmann wrote:
> Is there any solution to copy one harddisk to three others simultaniously?
>
> All four disks are firewire disks and I want to make three (B,C,D)
> identical copies from disk A.
>
> Can I connect disk A to B and B to C and C to D with firewire cables
> - or do I need different firewire (raid)cards (ports) on my mac for
> every disk?
>
> All the best from Copenhagen,
> Andreas

This is best done one disk at a time. Or use SoftRaid ($140US) to set
them all up as a mirror but then again more hassle than it's worth and
without knowing the end game desired, may not work.

Best is if you have 2 computers, Copy A to B first, then A to C and B to
D using two computers.