How to Connect Multiple External Hard Drives

With external hard drives you can store a lot of data which will not fit on your main hard drive or data that needs to be portable. You can connect an external hard drive, fill it with data and then connect the same hard drive to a second computer and access the data. You can even connect multiple USB or firewire storage devices through a daisy chain.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Plug the hard drives directly into your computer if you have enough ports. The simplest way to connect multiple hard drives to your computer is to connect them to the USB or firewire ports on your computer.

2. Connect the external storage devices through a daisy chain if you run out of USB or firewire ports. With this method you will only need 1 USB port or 1 firewire port available.

3. Get a hard drive with a port. Most USB or firewire hard drives come with a USB or firewire port built in. This port allows you to connect a secondary external storage device directly to the external hard drive.

4. Hook up the first hard drive. Plug the hard drive with the USB or firewire port to your computer.

5. Attach the second hard drive device to the first hard drive. Using a USB or firewire cable, plug the hard drive into the port on the first hard drive.

6. Boot your computer and check to make sure the hard drive is connected properly. Go to the My Computer icon on your computer, double click it and look for icons representing both your external hard drives. Hard drives connected through a daisy chain should show up right away.

7. Use your external hard drives. The hard drives connected through the daisy chain can be used like any other USB or firewire hard drives.

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on 4/25/2008 This article seems to only apply to Firewire. I have never seen a USB device, that will allow you to “daisy chain.” The daisy chain only applies to firewire. This methodology in this articles is correct for firewire, but not for USB (I am only interested in USB).

I would guess that this article was a Mac user trying to give general information for connecting an external drive to a Mac, I belive that firewire is more common on a Mac.