Chaining Multiple Firewire Devices Question.

[Astral Fridge Magnet]

Maybe this has already been asked before, however I have done a search and found nothing.
On my Windows laptop I have one firewire port which I use for my external harddisk where all my samples and sound libraries reside. I have been reading about some very interesting firewire audio interfaces, so would like to know if chaining multiple devices really does work. Would it effect the performance of say both devices that are chained together? So for example would it slow down my external HD or increaese latency on an audio interface that is connected and would it increase CPU usage?


Thanks