this year santa brought me a brand spankin' new LaCie 500GB external hard drive. It has both USB2 and Firewire ports. Which one should i use? will one be noticeably faster or is there more benefits of using one over the other?
View 5 RepliesI just got the external harddrive "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB 3.0 1TB" with a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Upgrade Kabel FireWire 800. I have neither a USB 3.0, nor a Firewire 800 on my white macbook (2008). I already know, that it's possible to use USB 3.0 with an USB 2.0 port, but I would like to use it with the firewire to spare the USB port for other devices. My question: Is there an adapter or cable to use the Seagate Firewire 800 with my Firewire 400 port? I don't know, where and what to look for.
Info:
MacBook (13-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Is firewire worth the extra money? For the price of a 1 Tb firewire drive, you can buy a 2 Tb USB drive for the same money.
View 23 Replies View RelatedAlright, just bought a 1tb WD my book for 17" macbook pro. didn't look too closely and realized when I got home that it's usb2.0 and not firewire. Is this a problem? Does anyone actually run files (say, music or videos) off their HD (and seamlessly, at that?)? I imagine if I only use it for back up, I'd get away with usb, but if I wanted to do the former?
View 7 Replies View RelatedCan I boot to an .iso on a firewire drive? I've been having trouble with my disc drive lately, so this is how I'm trying to work around it
View 1 Replies View RelatedAnyone have a recommendation? I wish they still sold the Seagate one.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am looking for an eSata, Firewire 800, USB external enclosure that has removable trays for two or more hard drives. Specifically I am trying to find one that has the similar apperance of the Mac Pro, aluminum case and such.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI've been on the fence about getting an external hard drive to back up my system via Time Machine and am thinking about finally biting the bullet and getting one.
Here are the specs I'm looking for:
At least 500GB of space (my iMac's internal HDD is 250GB)
Firewire 400 or 800
A manufacturer's warranty of more than 1 year
I've been looking for some time but it seems most external hard drives have gone the way of USB 2.0 (of which I'm using all the USB 2.0 ports on my iMac and don't want to have to bother with a USB hub).
The only one that I have really found to fit my situation is the Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 500GB USB 2.0/Firewire 800. However, that is priced pretty high - I'm looking to spend no more than $100.
I am open to purchasing an internal HDD then putting it in an enclosure but have no knowledge of what I would need to look for.
I was wondering if firewire is faster then usb for external hard drives. As I mentioned in another post I have a bunch of mac g4s. I want to make use out of but sata cards are very expensive if they're Mac compatible. What I was thinking is that since I can get a firewire sata adapter for $20 if not less it would be about the same cost as a good sata card and would be allot more likely to be compatible. I could just drill a few holes in a pci placeholder so I can run some cables through it to have the drives internal without compromising the case.
If I needed to I could swap the drives in between PC's allot easier then with a sata card. Because it would be far too expensive to get one for each system. My main concern is what the speed of firewire is since I've never used it before. If it's better then usb then it would probably be pretty feasable. I'm not going to be using them for any intensive software but I think it would be nice to have a good r/w speed.
I have some iMacs (running 10.5.6) each with an external direct-connect FireWire hard drive. About every ten minutes, these drives will spin up for a minute or two, then spin down again.
Background: The drives are set as Time Machine backup volumes on their respective iMacs. I assume the frequent accesses I observer are not related to Time Machine (because the accesses are much more frequent than the hourly backup schedule). The drives are not remote-mounted anywhere.
With an external HD that has both firewire and usb 2.0, is it possible to use both at the same time? Can you plug firewire into your MBP and USB into another computer or router? Just wondering if there are any downsides to this. I would hate to be sucked into a black hole by plugging in both at the same time!
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm planning on buying an external firewire 2.5 disk, and i am wondering if there is any real difference between firewire 400 and 800 if the disk is 5400 rpm speed. The reason i am asking is i cant find the passport studio with firewire 800 anywhere here where i live, only the firewire 400 version.
View 3 Replies View Relatedi am looking to buy a external HD that don't run on AC and use firewire 800. i know LaCie have one, is there any other one that does? hit me up with a link or something or branding and model.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI am on Snow Leopard btw. I have a 1 TB external HD that I'm using with Firewire 400 and I've noticed that it seems to slow down my computer. Like for instance I'll boot up my computer and it will take forever for it to start up. Then, as soon as I turn off my drive it boots up immediately. Or I'll use Spotlight and then basically it gets stuck with a spinning beach ball and as soon as I turn off the drive everything is fast again.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI need to extend my iMAC HD. I do not think I can open it and upgrade the HD inside. What I am think about is getting a Firewire 800 external HD. Does there a HD so I can connect it to MAC. it will fall sleep or turn off when Mac is power off and when MAC is power on(Firewire has power) then the HD will wake up auto.
View 8 Replies View Relatedim looking for an external enclosure that provides a firewire option for my macbook pro. The reason i am doing this is because my macbook will randomly eject my usb powered one for no reason. I have been reading that firewire does not have this problem. Im only looking for an enclosure as I replaced my stock 320gb hardrive with a 64gb ssd for my main drive. Preferably something in the 30$ range because im a poor college student . Anybody know of a good enclosure to go with?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI was wondering if theres an external similar to the Mypassport that runs firewire 400 or 800?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI recently bought a VANTEC NexStar 3 NST-360FBSU-BK. In the exclosure, I have a SATA drive capable of 3.0Gb/second. It's attached to my Late 2009 Mac Mini via FireWire 800. Based upon my understanding and in this situation, the FireWire should be the bottleneck. Therefore, I should be enjoying bandwidth somewhere shy of 800Mb/second. nfortunately, I'm not getting any where near that speed. I can transfer a 726MB file in 18.6 seconds. According to my math, that's ~5808Mb/18.6 seconds = ~312 Mb/second. This is not even FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speed.For completeness sake, I also just upgraded from 2GB of ram to 4GB (both PC8500) but nothing seems negatively affected (in fact the computer is much, much more snappy!).
View 7 Replies View RelatedEver since I traveled across the pond to Ireland my 2 TB HDD hasn't shown up as a drive. I stuck it in my checked bag and made sure to wrap it in clothes pretty well.
This wasn't an issue until my Macbook Pro's HDD died 2 weeks ago and I lost all my data. The external is where I backed up everything. Is there any software to see if the external HDD is still functional? It spins up and doesn't make any odd noises...
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!
View 2 Replies View RelatedI've been using my external burner for sometime now connecting to my G4 with the firewire. When I connected recently by firewire the computer does recognize or mount on the desktop like usual. When I tried the USB connection the burner is recognized and mounts fine. I repaired premissions and repaired the disk from the install disk I also reset the Pram
View 6 Replies View Relatedwhen i restart and hold down 'T'...a firewire symbol shows on the screen.. my external HD only uses this USB cord/connection
i'm using a new MacBook Pro.
After one of the security updates to OSX 10.3 my OWC Neptune firewire external harddrive quit showing up on the desktop and I can't find a way to access it.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI 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.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a lacie firewire external hardrive. It's not showing on my mac when I plug in the firewire cable. When I put the usb cable in it shows right up. Now, when i connect the firewire cable to a friend's mac it shows right up.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am having a heck of a time trying to get either a brand new Lacie d2 Quadra OR a G-Tech G-Drive (both 2TB desktop models) to work on my iMac via the Firewire port. Mac is running 10.7.3, 2.8ghz Intel Core Duo.
Both drives are brand new out of the box.
When I connected them using Firewire they look like they mount, but they are unusable. They won't unmount if I try to reformat. Get error messages if I try to reformat, verify or disk repair. Messages say something about not being able to read some information. Keep in mind there's nothing on the drives. I have tried getting them to work with Time Machine with no luck. A few times it would backup for several hours only to give an error message and crash. Something is clearly wrong when I use Firewire.
But when I connect using USB? Voila! No problems at all. Repair, formatting, storage, etc. all work fine.
What the heck is it with Firewire? I am dealing with slow transfer speeds for now, but I'd really like to have them connected via Firewire and off my USB ports.
I have zapped the PRAM and permission module to no avail. Not sure what else can be done.
I am going to buy a new 17" MacBook Pro soon and I've been doing research on how to customize it when I get it. I want to install my own SLC SSD as the internal drive because it's cheaper and has a longer life expectancy. Because of the limited capacity of SSDs these days, I am also going to be getting an external HDD to keep all my data that would not benefit greatly from SSD speeds, as well as for backups of everything on the internal SSD.
I wanted this external HDD to meet three criteria:1TB capacity7200rpm speed2.5" size, so that I can use it without needing to plug it into a power socket There aren't many options to choose from that meet those requirements. In fact, I only found one candidate, the “Seagate Constellation.2”. It looks like a good set of specs and Seagate is a reputable hard disk maker I've read, so I'm just about ready to buy one. My only point of concern is whether it can be powered and operated solely over FireWire, or if I would have to use a power adapter.
So my question is, can the 17" MBP (Late 2011) supply enough watts/volts/amps over FireWire 800 in order to power this Seagate disk? (Sorry for rambling too much) I have looked at the spec sheet and read up on IEEE 1394, i.e. FireWire, and I wasn't able to come up with a definitive answer, and I'm not even confident about how these electronics operate (specifically if the watt/volt/ampere requirements have to be met precisely or if they can go over or under a little, or a lot). I hope someone helps me out here.
Now here are the relevant specs, from the ST91000640NS product page: 12V start max current0.85A5V start max current0.51AAverage idle power2.95WAverage operating power5.43W According to Wikipedia's article on IEEE 1394, FireWire can supply a maximum of 45W and 30V. Apple's FireWire Ports Specifications article says: Input voltage range8 to 33 VInput power0.3 WOutput voltage range12 V to 30 V (varies by product)Output powerminimum of 7 W per port The disk will be put in an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini enclosure, by the way.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
Have late 2006 iMac 24'' and I can't boot from external FireWire drive. If I connect the same external drive via usb2 I can boot from it but it is slower than FireWire800 would be. The external drive is in i-tec 3.5 External Case.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), iMac 24'' late 2006 intel DualCore2
I'm having trouble seeing an external firewire drive on the desktop.I've tried restarting with it on and then off, and turning it on after the boot is complete.I've reset the PRAM, still without success.The drive has a USB port which I tried, but when I connect via USB it still doesn't show up.If I leave the drive on whille connected via USB the computer does not boot, the screen remains a blank white.Outside of trying another firewire cable, are there any suggestions available that I can try?
View 6 Replies View RelatedMy external firewired hard drive is 250 GB. There is at this time approximately 189 GB remaining unused free space. How can i create a special partition of approximately 20 GB ? Can Disk Utility do that or do i require a commercial version ? And if Disk Utility can do that how is that done ?
View 9 Replies View Related