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ok to leave fw cable plugged in?
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
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Offline
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Is it ok to leave just a firewire cable plugged into a port? I'm tired of always having to crawl under my desk to plug in my VST portable HD. Anyone know if any bad juju will come about if I do this?
thanks
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Senior User
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Cleveland, OH, USA
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Offline
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I've done it plenty of times, leaving it unplugged for days while starting up and shutting down the computer. No problems.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: California
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(Last edited by MadMacs; Oct 4, 2002 at 11:29 PM.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Texas
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I've also been leaving one plugged in with not ill effects, but I'm still concerned about long term effects. Is there any difference in electrical properties at the port caused by the extra length of unused cable back there that could cause problems over the long haul? Any electrical engineers out there want to weigh in on this? Actually what I've been considering is hooking up a hub, and leaving the hub plugged in so that I have ready ports on the desktop. Since that seems to be the whole purpose behind hubs, it would have to be OK, right?
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Senior User
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: A mile high, Denver, Colorado, USA
Status:
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For trouble free use, keep your firewire devices unplugged after use. Drag the device icon from the desktop to the trash, and disconnect from firewire port before turning off devices.
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Who are the Brain Police?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: Columbus, Ohio
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i don't see any long term ill effects occurring by leaving a cable plugged in. i mean, if you're thinking of doing this to connect a fw hub, then you have to keep it plugged in. what's the point of having extra fw ports ready to go on a hub, when every time you want to plug something in, you have to plug in the hub first, then plug in the device into the hub?
For trouble free use, keep your firewire devices unplugged after use. Drag the device icon from the desktop to the trash, and disconnect from firewire port before turning off devices.
i can see doing this for external firewire drives, but for a hub? that's ridiculous.
electrically, i believe there's not going to be any problem. it's not like data is being sent over the firewire cable when there is no device present; and there's not going to be any reflected signals caused by the impedance mismatch of the cable end and air/free space. if this were the case, we'd need to have terminators at the free ends of fw cables that are plugged in.
tr
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Senior User
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: A mile high, Denver, Colorado, USA
Status:
Offline
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Actually, I was responding to the original question concerning individual devices such as burners and hard drives. I don't have a hub and have no familiarity with them, I do have a couple of separate hard drives and a CD burner and have experienced trouble free service because I terminate them correctly and leave them off when not in use.
As to Borborygmi's question: keep the cable plugged into your tower. Plug and unplug at the device end.
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Who are the Brain Police?
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