Bus-powered external enclosure, too many choices.

Hi, I'm shopping for an external enclosure for my Macbook's Sata drive as I just ordered a 7200 Hitachi drive as a replacement, I would like the enclosure to be bus-powered, firewire is a good option but not necessary.
I noticed there are a few on eBay with those characteristics, are they any good. Checked the ones on Newegg (even though they don't ship to Canada), and they are a little more expensive. There is also one that seems nice on OWC but it's pretty expensive at 80$.
Not sure if I can trust the ones on eBay, what are you guys using/usggesting ?
Francis.

Hi
I did exactly the same thing a couple of months ago so that I could save money with the white macbook versus the black. I bought a 120GB drive for my iBook and switched it with the shipped one when the machine arrived from the Apple Store. Result = I get a better specified machine than was available on line (and in white) and a removable 60GB drive with bus power, firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0.
To get to the point buy one of these:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=736770&tstart=30
works a dream, is neat and compact, comes with useful short wires, can be powered if necessary, and looks cool.
I searched for a long time and the OWC enclosure was easily the best for me, even to import to the UK (i.e need to add on a few pounds sterling for customs - still way cheaper and better than alternatives).
David
macbook, PM G4s & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Does using two bus powered external devices MacBook Pro 13" put too much strain on the power supply?

Will daisy chaining two bus powered external devices put too much strain on my 2011 MacBook Pro 13" power supply? Specifically I would like use ProTools with a LaCie bus powered hard disc and a Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro which is also bus powered with firewire.

Hi rrlavigne,
The biggest difference between the two machines in maximum RAM capacity. The white MacBook is limited to 4GB, whereas the MacBook Pro will support 8GB of RAM. While the cost of RAM is prohibitory right now (to go to 8GB), to have that flexibility in the future will very much be worth it... especially considering you intend to install Logic.
Other than that, I think in terms of "raw performance" the machines are very equally matched. You're paying for the unibody design, backlight keyboard, SD card and new battery technology for that $200 premium (in addition to the slight CPU bump).

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 drive for MacBook

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?
Is USB a better option if I want a bus powered HD? Are there any clear advantages to one or the other?

For the longest time, FireWire was the only practical solution to bus-powered hard drives. FireWire provides a heck of a lot of power (typically 7 to 8W) while USB by definition provides up to 2.5W per port (if powered). FireWire has so many advantages, but cost seems to be the consideration that's won out.
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

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?

I bought a bus powered OWC laptop drive (100GB 720RPM) for around 170 dollars. But, that was for my laptop, as it's much easier to have a bus powered laptop drive then needing to plug it in to use it. This way I can sit somewhere, not near a power outlet, and be able to use the drive.
As mentioned in an earlier post, 3.5 Hard Drives require to much power in order to be bus powered.
You could buy a 200GB hard drive, bus powered, 4200RPM, and is a laptop drive for your iMac, but that's not the best way to go. First, the drive is going to be very expensive. You could get a 320GB 3.5 In HD for way cheaper. Second, it's going to be noticibly slower.
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

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.

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
I really want a bus powered drive. does anyone know if these will work with my 15" powerbook? one better than the other? oh, and i'm getting it to keep my itunes library on...so will my powerbook have any problem with reading the fw800 drive and the ipod in the fw400 port at the same time?

Well the second linked drive says it is bus powered and does not require a external power brick. Usually most of external 2.5 inch notebook drives (in a 2.5 enclosure) can be bus powered. The 3.5 inch ones are generally not bus powered.

Bus powered external DVD burners risky?

I am thinking of putting a second HD in my 1.83 MBP with the Maxupgrades kit , and getting an external DVD writer.
Years ago I had a firewire bus powered Formac DVD writer, which took too much current out of my Ti powerbook and burnt the internal firewire bus.
Are the modern generation of portable bus powered (USB2 and FW) such safe in this respect?
I see that offering includes an internal battery. Why would they do that if the no-battery ones are OK?
Thanks for any input.

so the battery is not there to prevent overload of the USB port,
I doubt it, though having a functioning battery may do so
but so that the device can be used independently (from computer)
Perhaps the drive could power headphones so you could listen to music, but the battery is there to provide additional life when you aren't plugged in. If your MBP normally gets 4 hours of life from a full charge, add that bus powered burner and it will drop - bigtime I'd expect. The extra battery in the device gives you a bit longer life.

Bus powered external drive

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).

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.
Thank You.

Hi - I have used the Lacie Little Big drives and they are great. I use the 7200 rpm as it's for video and they also have two FW800 ports allowing you to attach as many as you like in a series. It also has a FW400 port for attaching other deivces.
They also make a Rugged drive that is bus powered but this only has one FW800 port so you would need to swap if media was on several drives for video editing etc.
Cheers
Jonnyukbravo

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.)

IMac 24" + 2 daisy-chained bus-powered external hard disks: possible?

Hello everyone,
I have a 24" iMac and two G-Drive Mini external hard disks. Currently, one of the disks is connected to the FW 800 port, and the other to a USB port. Each is powered by it's respective bus. I would love to have the use of the USB port for other purposes. Is it possible to daisy chain both drives to the FW 800 port without an external power supply?
If not, can I power one drive on the FW 800 bus, and the other with an external supply, or must I use two external power supplies? Does it matter which device, first or last in the daisy chain, is powered by the external supply?
Thanks in advance . . .

Hi Captain Spalding
The iMac's FireWire port supports 7 watt.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP507
Check the ratings of both the Mini G-Drives and add that together? If it is over 5 watts, then I would suggest using the external power supply on at least the first drive in the chain.
The power has to come from somewhere and personally to keep the power demand on the iMac as low as possible, I use external power with all of my desktop FireWire Drives.
Dennis

Too many choices, Which codec do I choose?

I am not new to FCP or DVD SP but I am new to the HD world. I have edited my first HD movie using FCP HD (1080i60 format) and the movie is 1 hour and 25 minutes long. It is an instructional video. I used Quicktime compression and selected H.264 because I thought it would result in high quality and a small file size. Two and a half days later the compression completed and the file is 13.4 GB. All I really want to do is to get the best quality video into DVD SP4 so that I can take the best advantage of my HD video and keep the movie to only one DVD if possible. I have to admit that I am lost when trying to figure out which codec to select. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

First of all, transcoding from HDV to h.264 results in compression.
Not only that, but h.264 is a codec that cannot be used to create a SD DVD in DVD SP. It requires Mpeg2/m2v files.
Simply export your HDV movie to your scratch disc with current settings, no recompression, video and audio self contained.
Drop that into Compressor and elect the 90 minute best 16:9 setting, and the Dolby 2 audio setting.
Take the m2v and ac3 files, and import them into DVD SP as assets.
Make certain that the track is set to 16:9.
Might want consider Sitter's book on DVD SP.

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 enclosure, too many choices.

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