1.5TB Bus-Powered Drive
Hi. This is not strictly a MacBook Pro question, but perhaps someone can help. I am looking for a 1.5TB bus-powered drive that I can connect via FireWire 800 to my MacBook Pro. Seagate appears to make one called the FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra–portable drive. Two questions:
1. Has anyone used this drive with a MacBook Pro? Any concerns about the drive being able to pull enough power thru the bus-powered connection?
2. I plan to put my 1.1TB iTunes library on the drive. Has anyone encountered difficultes with iTunes on a FireWire-connected drive?
Thank you!
pomme4moi wrote:
... Has anyone encountered difficultes with iTunes on a FireWire-connected drive?
I moved my iTunes library onto a FW-800 attached drive many months ago. It works great. I will warn you that if you start iTunes without the external drive attached, iTunes won't complain, it will just start using your internal/primary drive as if that was where things were supposed to be. Personally, I would rather it give me an error about not being able to access my library, rather than just silently using it's defaults and letting me think it's using the external drive.
Just so that we don't feel "cheated", my wife runs a similar configuration, but under Windows, and her config does exactly the same thing. She has had times when we lost power during the day and when the power was restored, the external drive did not auto power-on. She returned home and didn't realize this and ran iTunes assuming it was updating her external drive, but it wasn't...
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Bus powered external hard drives and the Powerbook G4 17 inch
Does anyone have a suggestion for a bus powered external hard drive that will work with the Powerbook 17 inch? I had purchased a Simpletech Simpledrive portable USB 100GB bus powered drive and it will not work with my 17 inch. It works with my 15 inch titanium and a G5 but not the 17 inch. Simpletech told me that it isn't getting enough power from the USB ports (I even tried using the adapter to plug it into both ports at the same time).
I am going to return the drive and probably buy a Firewire one instead since you can boot from Firewire but I am wondering if I will have the same problem with Firewire on the 17 inch and HAVE to use an AC adapter.
PowerBook G4 17 inch Mac OS X (10.4.1)This also happens on the PB 15". It is perceived as a problem. If you check via the System Profiler you will likely see that the USB port output is 500mA. Most drives - in a USB or FW case - need 1A to boot. There are some drives that will boot with 500mA. If a 500mA drive is installed in the USB case it should boot off the bus power. If using a ext HD you can only boot the computer from the FW port and not the USB or PCMCIA slot.
The FW port will power the ext HD. I do not recommend daisy chaining unless you use a powered FW hub. I blew 4 FW ports and had to replace the logic board 4 times but Apple Care paid for all the work. The newer FW ports are more robust but it is still a chance if you try to draw too much power.
MJ -
Bus Powered External Firewire (800) Drives and iPod?
I bought a WD Passport drive, and was pretty upset when i found out that the usb ports on my powerbook cannot power the drive. crap. can the firewire 800 port on my powerbook power these drives:
http://www.kanotechnologies.com/products/SF800-40.cfm
http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm#Buy
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I want to buy a small portable external HD (USB2 or Firewire) for my MBP; of course, the bus powered ones have the advantage of being totally portable/free of wires, but I'm wondering if either USB2 or Firewire ports on my MBP would supply enough power? Or would it drain the battery too fast? I plan to at least put the LiveType and Soundtrack files on it and have FCE use it as a scratch disk.
Would a bus powered one do or should I go for one with an adapter?Barbara Daniels1 wrote:
I've looked at the Seagate portable drives again - none of them seem to have an external power source option.
If you read the "3.5-inch External Data Sheet", you will see that they come with a power supply (under Package Contains, on the second page). What they don't seem to have, is a bus power option. It's not mentioned anywhere.
Actually, I've never heard of any bus-powered 3.5" hard drive. I don't think the FireWire bus could power even an economical 3.5" drive, and USB 2.0 (even with double USB connection) is probably way too weak either. AFAIK, every bus-powered drives that exist are 2.5" or smaller (sometimes, a combination of two 2.5" drives can be powered by FireWire). -
How many bus-powered usb external drives per hub?
I'd like to have two bus-powered USB hard drives (to be used as backups with Time Machine) connected to one powered USB hub. Would that work, or would a powered hub be likely to support only one bus-powered external hard disk? (In that case I could get a self-powered hard drive for my second backup drive.)
Thank you.Works for me, I just connected both my WD Passport and Seagate GoFlex to my Belkin Hub.
Hub: Belkin
Product ID: 0x2507
Vendor ID: 0x0424 (SMSC)
Version: 0.00
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Location ID: 0x26200000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
FreeAgent GoFlex:
Product ID: 0x5021
Vendor ID: 0x0bc2 (Seagate LLC)
Version: 1.48
Serial Number: NA03N18Y
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Seagate
Location ID: 0x26270000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100
Capacity: 320.07 GB (320,072,932,864 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk2
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Passport WD:
Product ID: 0x0704
Vendor ID: 0x1058 (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)
Version: 1.05
Serial Number: 5758453830384E4A30333634
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Location ID: 0x26250000 / 3
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
Capacity: 160.04 GB (160,041,885,696 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Likewise it your needing another External Hard Drive, I would recommend spending a little more for a more rugged Desktop drive to use for storage or backup.
Go with an OWC Mercury Elite Pro or a LaCie Little Big Disk and stay away from those cheap-o WD MyBooks. -
Bus powered external Firewire drives
Most portable external drives are now bus powered, many don't even have a power input.
I wonder how many bus powered Firewire driives I can daisy-chain. Where should I place them, at the beginnig, in the middle, or the end of the daisy chain.
I have several powered Firewire drives including my Time Machine Drive.tommmy wrote:
Most portable external drives are now bus powered, many don't even have a power input.
I wonder how many bus powered Firewire driives I can daisy-chain.
Use a powered Firewire/USB hub so there is enough power to power the port powered devices.
What happened is port powered devices are cheaper and many people opt for the lower price than the ones with their own power supplies, so it creates a problem and computer makers had to turn off ports drawing too much power from the comptuer, so people have to run out and get powered hubs. -
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Hi,
I'm looking for an external HD to use with my MacBook, and I'm a bit confused about power. I'd rather avoid lugging around an extra power supply and international adaptor when I'm traveling if it can be avoided.
Does the MacBook's firewire port provide bus power? Is it sufficient to power a 2.5" external HD?
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Current USB bus-powered external drives seem to be feasible because of newer 2.5" drives with reduced power consumption. Still - many drives come with (or they can be bought) cables with two male ends. One end is used for data/power, while the other draws more power from a 2nd powered USB port.
I have no problem getting a 160 GB WD Passport (Black) USB 2.0 drive to work on my iBook 1.42 or my new MacBook. It does take a while to mount in the OS though, although the same goes for Windows.
Message was edited by: ypw -
What's the largest capacity bus-powered external hard drive?
I realize that this isn't a Mac specific question, but I'd really like a recommendation. What's the largest capacity bus-powered (preferably USB) external hard drive available. My new MBP has a 500GB drive so I would need something with probably 640GB or bigger. Problem is I can't find anything over 500GB that's bus-powered. Everything I've found requires an external power supply which is what I'm trying to avoid. If anyone has a recommendation, please share it.
Have a search on the web for USA retailers who supply empty enclosures and drives separately. The enclosure is the physical case and the bits of circuitry and the physical ports. Tell them what you want and ask him what drives and enclosures he has to suit your purpose and if he can fit the two together for you. I have such a supplier but am in UK.
Does it have to be a USB bus? Firewire is better and gives more power. One way I power a 360GB pocket drive is to feed from TWO USB ports on the computer into one input port on the drive(now in the enclosure) you should be able to buy a sort of "Y" shaped cable with two full size flat USB connectors at one end and one single connector at the drive end. The drive end often will be a mini usb port. What you want will depend upon the size of the input into the drive. -
Bus Powered external fw 800 Drive
Hi! I am going sttrongly concidering buying a Lacie 250GB bus-powered Firewire 800 Hard drive. I know it is bus powered but I can not seem to find out how much energy that it uses to spin up. Would my 15" macbook pro be able to support it through the firewire 800 port while on battery? I am going to buy this drive to acompany Aperture 2 so I can have a good, fast drive to store my files on when I am on the road. This hard drive is found at http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10949.
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I need an INEXPENSIVE external bus-powered (FW400) mobile hard drive, 160GB. I want to be able to edit video & have it bootable.
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PowerBook G4, IMac G4 512Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1.5 gHz, 512 Ram, LaCie 250gb, Casio EXZ850
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That's what keeps me from getting one too. The price. I mean, you can even build your own for less.
Go to places like Newegg.com or DealMac.com (where they list daily, all the lowest prices for different Mac-related things) and you can get a good hard drive then buy your own enclosure.
Won't look like the G-Raid mini, but does the job.
Again, I recommend SmartDisk, but your decision is the final one. =)
Message was edited by: Pismo 900
I seem to keep doing this on most of posts... (forgetting the last thought).
Did you try the Western Digital brand ones? They're not bad either. I just don't like the way they look. That odd off-angle enclosure like they were made wrong. They're popular too.
WD Passport Drive 160 GB
By the way, Seagate has them as well. Though their designs are even worse! Plus Maxtor. -
Editing with Bus-powered External Drive
Hello,
I have a MBP and usually edit using a bus-powered USB drive. It works fine, but I'm wondering if I would get a performance increase if I use a bus-powered Firewire drive. I know Firewire is faster, but if the drive is a 2.5-inch 5400 RPM that's powered by the Firewire port, does it matter?
Thanks.Yes, FireWire is indeed faster than USB. FW400 is about 40% faster and FW800 about 70% faster for typical throughput. This will be true regardless of hard drive (assuming the same hard drive in any case.)
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Bus Powered External Hard Drive?
Can anyone recommend a good bus-powered External Hard Drive that I can use with my iMac? I really like Western Digital's MyBooks, but they require mains power and come with a big power brick, which is pretty messy. I want a hard drive that gets it's power through either USB 2.0 or Firewire. And I'd like something that has at least 250GB of storage. Any suggestions?
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As mentioned in an earlier post, 3.5 Hard Drives require to much power in order to be bus powered.
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When I get externals, I buy the drive, and pitch in 50 bucks or so for an external enclosure. It's the CompUSA brand and they work quite well. They are not bus powered, but the Power Brick is limited in size and is relitively small. It's cheaper this way. This can be a challenge to someone who isn't really 'computer-talented.'
I'd go FireWire....It's much faster and won't slow you down while you're trying to access your files and do your work.
OWC if you really want that bus powered laptop drive.
NewEgg if you want to shop for drives, and get them cheaper. Not to mention their fast shipping.
Give it some thought.
-benny -
I have an early 2011 MBP and would like to put a large USB drive on it that's bus powered. My recollection from earlier times was that USB drives required two ports, one for the data and one for the power. Is that still the case, or can current USB 2.0 drives carry data and power the drive on the same port?
Thanks very much.
All the best,
TomTom,
Current drives either get all their power from one usb port or if they require more current then the usb provides, they have their own power supply that plugs into the wall.
Regards,
Captfred -
Hi everyone,
I'm looking for a bus powered FW hard drive for about $150. I'll be using it as my secondary scratch disk while traveling. Any suggestions would be great!
I'm currently using a UBS bus powered Western Digital drive; No problems yet with as a scratch disk, but i don't want to press my luck!
Thanks,
-N.A.
15" MacBook Pro 2.16 Core Duo, 1GB RAM, 256 VRAM Mac OS X (10.4.8)if the drive has its own firewire controller and serial converter built in (some do), then it should work but of course with a lot of latency.
but other drives with a firewire port do not have an onboard controller and rely on "daisy chaining" for the firewire port to be active.
only one way to find out though, aside from reading its packaging materials. -
Can I Use Bus-Powered USB Drive
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