8-Port FireWire 800/1394b Professional Hub/Repeater

A very useful piece of equipment, you can connect up to 7 FW800 devices, self-powered or using the AC adapter, with the 8th port for your computer.This is the second model I've bought, the first was also through amazon last year.I use a number of Western Digital RAIDs and other model FW800 drives with a pair of Mac Pros, as data storage ( 4~5 for each model), and for Time Machine back-up; and they do not like to be daisy-chained more than 2 together, sometimes failing to mount or dropping off the Finder. With this, I can connect them all in a sort of star configuration, so that they each connect to their MacPro via this hub only. They are now consistently and reliably connected.The device itself is well-constructed, small, easily located, or bolted to AV racks. It also frees up the second FW port on the back of the Mac Pro for other uses, such as audio or video interfaces. No drivers or software necessary, it really is connect and use.

I recommended this to a friend a while back for his growing nest of drives. I kept noticing he never had any issues with his drives but I sure was having problems in my home studio. So I finally got one myself and wished I had done it sooner. It works perfect. It came on time. Has a solid feel. I've used it for the last couple of months with no problems and no more weirdness with a ratty next of daisy-chained firewire drives suddenly not working. I purchased a second one for the tape backup room where I'm always moving drives in and out to archive data.

Expensive, but solid. Works great. This hub has improved F/W performance to all my components. Just pricey, but you get what you pay for.

We bought this because our editing iMac has only 1 Firewire port and we need to have 3-4 drives connected at the same time. Worked ok for about a month, then three recently purchased G-Tech 4TB drives started having problems. Called tech support and learned your drives can have issues when connected through a splitter. Once we cabled them one at a time straight to the computer, the problems went away. I like the product and the product seems to work fine, but the drives don't function as intended when run through the splitter configuration. Waaaaaa!

I ordered the Nitro AV based upon the testimonials, but it was one of the poorest pieces of equipment I ever bought. I was using it with my 2012 iMAC. It stopped working after only a few weeks of use. I returned it to the manufacturer for repair. After it was returned to me it stopped working again within three weeks.On my other iMacs I am using a Moshi and an 800 Unibrain ( I bought both bought from Amazon) and both have given me faithful service for well over a year so far without any problems. I wish I had not been taken in by the advertisement for the NitroAV. It was more expensive than the other two hubs and of very poor quality.

I have the version of this that has USB ports as well. They charge ok, but for some reason, I always get a message that my USB device doesnt have enough power whenever I plug in a flash drive or an iOS device. I have it plugged into teh wall outlet as well. I LOVE the FW 800 ports...but the USB ports suck. I wish I would have seen this model instead.

This hub works, but there is a large delay between the time you hook up the drive and the time it shows up on your desktop. I tend to leave all my drives and card readers hooked up, but when I have to reconnect a drive, or especially when I want to read a camera card through the hub it can be painfully slow waiting for it to show up.

Given the way that certain computer hardware manufacturers continue to make it more and more difficult for mid-level professionals to get work done by reducing the number of high-speed ports (USB 3.0? You must be kidding ... Thunderbolt? Uhm, sure, but where are the peripherals?), the use of things such as this will continue to be necessary.Fortunately, this is a pretty solid little piece of gear and I've had it in use continuously for a significant length of time and it just quietly sits there on the desk, doing its job brilliantly.