Hardware :: Using Firewire 800 2.5" External Hard Drives?
Sep 6, 2010
Has anyone seen anything indicating that there are any new (higher capacity) drives on the horizon in with a 2.5" external FW800 format?
I'm slightly confused why many of the big brands have stopped at 500GB or 640GB drives in their FW800 models. The G-Drive Mini only goes to 500GB, while the WD Passport Studio stops at 640GB. WD do have 2.5" drives at 1TB, and have dine for months, but they're only available in USB2 models.
Any ideas why they all seem to stop short of their highest capacity drives for the faster interfaces? The only ones i can find with 1TB 2.5" drives are the Seagate GoFlex (which i'm not sure about with the swappable interfaces, i've nearly bought one a couple of times but then changed my mind at the last minute), or a couple of companies i've never heard of before who have drives way above the expected price.
Ideally someone will have seen news from WD or G-Tech or someone indicating that new products are on the way. Otherwise, i may end up having to get the GoFlex.
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Jan 17, 2009
After a fiasco with two firewire hard disks (the courier company lost them), I have to purchase an external firewire HD. Once the insurance company refunds my money (which can take up to 90 days), I still want to get the other 2 disks I ordered. Is there a limit on how many firewire drives I can daisy chain? I was thinking on having all 3 hard drives daisy-chained to my iMac.
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Nov 30, 2008
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little.
Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
System: Mac Pro (early 2008) Mac OS X (10.5.5) 3.2Ghz 8-core - 16GB Ram - 4x1TB SATA - GeForce 8800GT - Dell 30" 3008WFP A02 - Gateway 21" FPD2185W - 3xMyBook external drives
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Feb 21, 2009
Macbook Pro 17" Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz. Following a logic board replacement for a separate issue. I have two external Firewire 800 Hard drives (two separate brands and sizes) which have suddenly started unmounting randomly and giving the 'hardware removal error'. A few seconds after unmounting they mount again, only to unmount a minute later with the error again. It is now doing this in a loop.I have done the following things:
1. rebooted and checked all cable connections
2. I have tried this with the two disks plugged in separately and daisychained.
3. I have tried two separate Firewire 800 cables.
4. running the Disk Utility.
5.installing the system from scratch on a freshly formatted internal disk.
6. reinstalling again with an archive and install.
Everything seems to work fine with a Firewire 400 connection.The only software setting that I changed is to disable the "Put Hard Disks to Sleep when possible" option in the Energy Saver system prefs. Any connection? I have enabled this again and so far (a couple of hours) so good.Should I be looking at a hardware issue
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Apr 16, 2012
My Mac Pro is not mounting any new hard drives for some reason. The one's already connected work fine and remain connected (I have three drives connected via eSATA ports). But I can't connect any drives via Firewire 800 or 400. I've tried differnt leads and different ports but none are connecting. I've tried the drive on a different Mac and it connected fine. But on the machine I need to connect to the drives simply dont mount. Nor do they show up in Disk Utility or Soft RAID. I have restarted and powered down several times but nothing is working.
Running OSX 10.6.8 on a Mac Pro (2008) The hard dirves I'm connecting are Lacie.
Info:
Mac Pro (2008), Mac OS X (10.6.7)
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Nov 11, 2009
is there a USB 2.0 > FW800 adapter that exists?
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Feb 1, 2009
My time machine drive conked out this morning, so I need to get a new drive, and I am planning on either a Western Digital MyBook or an OWC of some sort. (Any thoughts?) So here's what I'd like to do. Once I get the backup running again, I'm interested in running a RAID 1 with two external drives. But the catch is this---I have a late model MacBook, so I've only got two USB 2.0 ports. Here's what I'd like to know. Is it possible to chain things together this way: MacBook <--USB-- First HDD <--FW-- Second HDD That is, connect the first drive to the computer via USB (the only option) and the second to the first HDD via firewire.
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Jan 13, 2010
My MBP has one firewire 800 port and I have one external firewire drive. I want to get another external firewire drive but since I only have one FW port, does that mean I can only use one drive at a time? There are times when I know I will need to transfer files from one external drive to another. Is there a way to daisy chain external firewire drives together? Also, will daisy chain slow down the file copy process or even slow down my computer?
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Jul 3, 2012
Can I attach multiple hard drives to my iMac chained by Firewire or do I need a separate port? I now have multiple Western Digital drives and find that sometimes they don't connect to the iMac so I'm wondering if I need a separate port or if my iMac FW port is faulty.
Info:
iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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May 21, 2010
I have a few macs running Tiger and Leopard and do not have a hard drive that is filled to more than 20GB of the capacity. Looking for external hard drive solutions. I have found a couple of very good drives that only have FW 400 and USB 2.0, one in particular is a older model G-Drive 500GB for $50 that is supposed to be quite reliable. These drives are being blown out due to newer ones have esata and fw 800. Would I see a difference in speed cloning or backing up to a a fw 400 drive even if I get a newer mac that only has fw 800 ports and I use a 400-800 adaptor? The better drives are faster 7200 RM vs the slower 5400 drives, mostly portable that I have been looking at. I have been reading posts that for applications such as mine I would not see a difference. For the most part I use the computers for office related tasks including Word, Excel etc with not much else, although I have some different utility programs. I just want a bootable drive should my hard drive fail. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my drives. My main comp has two drives where the primary is cloned to a secondary, but want a external that I can easily plug into a new mac and clone the hard drive in that Mac to my external drive!
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Sep 9, 2008
I am having trouble saving anything to my external firewire hard drive. This started a few weeks ago. I am able to retrieve use but not modify any file on the drive. I have tried changing permissions but no luck.
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Dec 18, 2008
my friend of mine has a external Seagate 500gb firewire 400 drive. It is used for storing audio for his production studio and so has critical data on it. I was transfering some programs to him and plugged it into my Late 08 macbook pro. Everything went ok. The power cable came slightly loose which cause the lovely 'you failed to eject disc properly' error. It then would not mount on my macbook or his G5 (single 2ghz). We tried three different cables. Tried to see if Disk Utility would see it, nope. His other firewire drive mounts fine on both machines as does mine. The Seagate drive can be heard spinning up when the power is turned on. Seems to be a dead Firewire interface on the drive enclosure itself as nothing will mount when using the drive to daisy chain. I was thinking of opening the enclosure and installing the drive as a standard sata internal to get at the data. Warranty doesn't matter just the data.
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Mar 22, 2009
I am in need of an external hard drive for backups of my new 24" iMac due to arrive on Wednesday March 25. I am moving from the PC works (old Dell) and will need something larger than the old one I have for the long term. I have an old external hard drive case and a 250GB ATA hard drive inside I can use for the time being with the new Mac if I reformat it.
That said, I would like to get a drive that is at least equal to what is in the iMac with is 1 TB. I have read a lot of postings and believe I will get a Western Digital MyBook for Time Machine backups (unless someone has a better alternative). Is there any reason to get the Studio 1 or II (FW 800) over the Essential (USB 2.0) for my purposes - backups only? The price difference is $40-80 for equivalent drive space with connections being the difference.
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May 3, 2009
If I connect my Western Digital 500 GB external hard drive up to a computer using the USB port, then can I daisy chain a firewire camcorder to the hard drive and use it with the computer? Or is that impossible?
I hate the fact that the Macbooks don't have firewire, other then the white one. or the Pros.
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Jul 23, 2009
I just got a new hard drive for my Black macbook 2,1 and no i need a good external hard drive to put my old hard drive. Do you guys have any recommendations, I'd like to get something that has firewire and usb.
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Jul 1, 2012
I have a Firewire 800 external hard drive and need to connect to my new MacBook Air. Where can I get the correct cable?
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Jan 11, 2011
i am very interested in buying a Mac. But I need an external hard drive for my stuff. What are the best 1TB or higher external hard drives for a Mac Book Pro?
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Feb 2, 2009
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup:
Mac OS X 10.5.6
PowerPc G5
Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
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Feb 25, 2009
I often use external hard drives to back up my work. Recently I purchased a 1TB Lacie drive. I took a week to build a lovely new file structure for my work. At the end of this week, I began deleting the old files on other hard drives so as to transfer my new neatly structured work back on. In the midst of this, the brand new hard drive crashed, illiciting only the clicking sound of death.
That hard drive, some of my work (a very small amount but still) and a week's worth of sweat and blood was gone in an instant. The person I took it to to look at it mentioned a power surge as being a possible cause for the crash. Anyway, I returned the lacie and bought a 1T Western Digital Mybook (silver). I then began dumping the old back ups onto this.
A week in and this one is crashed too. No clicking sound of death. It calmly sits on my desk with it's unceasing unblinking blue light and refuses to show up in utilities no matter what I do. So I assume it's a goner also. I'll return it also of course. Is something causing these drives to fail...that exists in my walls? Are there power surges causing my drives to die...? OR is it simply a case of bad luck with my choices of new drives?
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Apr 19, 2010
I was done doing various tasks on the iMac and when I decided to plug in the external hard drive for a Time Machine backup, the drive spun, but was never shown on the desktop.I also tried another external drive and had the same thing happen.
After rebooting (hey, this sounds like Windows!), the drive again showed up on the desktop and Time Machine worked fine.Is an external hard drive not showing up on the desktop a somewhat common issue?
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Jun 29, 2014
I want to get one of those hard disk 'holders' that allows you to plug an internal-type hard disk into the USB or Firewire port of another laptop. I want to know if they need to be specific to the type of hard disk/laptop or if they're more of a one-size-fits-all type of thing. The hard disk is a solid state type that I installed in a mid-2010 model MacBook which has now failed. I want to connect it to a 2005-model PowerBook G4. Can this be done and what do i need to buy to do it?
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Apr 20, 2010
i'm cloning my mac hd (mac book pro, snow leopard) and though i've made successful clones, the sum of the hard drives (mac hd and external hd) don't match. for instance, my mac hd reads at: 233.71 GB, however the cloned external hd reads at: 216.54 GB. can anyone explain this discrepancy? are there certain things that don't go into the clone that are on the mac hd?
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Oct 26, 2010
Having chosen a useful large external hard drive I find it says 'Windows only'. Surely, though the software will not work, all I need to do is format the HD and it will work. The machine is: Seagate FreeAgent 500GB External Hard Drive USB2.0 16MB.
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Oct 29, 2006
I am relatively new to Macs, have been using it for 5-6 months. I already know how to do everything but share folders and drives using my network connection. I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro. I have a 120GB Hard Drive hooked up to the iMac via Firewire. How can I share that Firewire External Hard Drive with my Macbook Pro? What are the steps I have to follow to connect both macs? Is there a way that I could also share my iMac's desktop files with my Macbook Pro? I already have a wi-fi connection between both computers, I just don't know how to share that hard drive between both simultaneously..
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Dec 11, 2008
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
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Feb 26, 2009
What is the best external hard drive with 1TB for the new Macbooks? I heard a rumor the new Macbooks don't have firewire... is that true?
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Jul 25, 2009
I have an external hard drive that I have been using for my Pcs, and when I hook it up to my mac I cannot write to it (although I can read from it). Is it possible to write to this external hard drive?
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Oct 4, 2009
I can't figure out the difference between these two hard drives, they look identical but Amazon says the latter one is the "newer" version, are they the same thing?
Which is the better buy?Also, Is it recommended I get a Mac formatted external drive? Does it do it automatically when I plug it in or is it easier to get a mac formatted drive?
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Mar 3, 2010
I have a fairly new iMac that I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few months ago. It seemed to me that prior to that my external HD worked fine with Time Machine. Since then it is recognized for a short period of time when I connect it, then it disappears. I replaced it with a WD My Book. It worked perfectly for a month and now it has shut down. Has anybody had run into this before? I can't believe that every hard drive fails within a month in the same mysterious way!
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May 10, 2010
I've had a LaCie Porsche Design for the last 6 years with no problems but with the upgrade to a MBP I'm looking to get a new portable hard drive (LaCie or another brand). My old LaCie was FW400 so I'd be looking at FW800 now. Which make and model do you use and are you happy with it's performance?
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