Ext HD speed and Bus-Powered Firewire 800

After having gone through various External HD over the years, Firewire 800 (WD Studio with power adapter) is by far proving to be best in terms of connecting speed when handling my 350gb+ library.
However, lately, I was exploring the option of having a portable External HD drive with "bus-powered" port so that I don't have to rely on the power plug whenever I want to listen to iTunes library.
So, here are some questions...
1) Bus-powered Firewire 800 1TB - no experience with this before. all my firewire external drives had required power adapter, but during this search I just found out that such exists.
Can MBP Firewire 800 port provide enough power to spin 1TB external drive w/out a hiccup??
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
2) Obviously for a smaller size drive with bus-powered option, I must go with 2.5" drive, which meant, I have either 1TB @ 5400rpm OR 750gb @ 7200rpm for MAX Storage option. I do want 1TB... BUT would 5400rpm / 7200rpm matter when it comes to iTunes library??
I ened up getting my current Firewire 800 external drive after experiencing lagging iTunes speed via USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. But later I found out that slow connecting (constant beach ball when selecting music) is typically resulted from having many playlists/id tags/etc.
So, I want to be sure before I get a new drive, I choose the right speed drive.
Btw, here is my current set up: MBP 13" (mid-2009), iTunes (10.1.2), 500gb 7200rpm internal drive, 8gb memory
Anyone experience with above set-up that I am thinking about??

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
I wonder if there might be a problem with the firewire bridge in the WD? The most reliable Firewire chipset that I know of is the Oxford 924+, but not everybody uses these. You might be able to find out what is actually used on the WD web site.
Since the USB connection works, the WD drive itself is probably fine.
Does your FireWire 800 work properly with other devices? If not, or if you don't know, you could try a SMC reset, which may help if the problem is with the FireWire port on the MBP:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411?viewlocale=en_US
Otherwise, you could try the drive in a different enclosure, like the Mercury on the Go from OWC, which has the Oxford 934 chipset. I have WD drives in 3 of these enclosures, and have never had a problem with any of them.
Good luck!

Similar Messages

C2D and Bus Powered Firewire Audio Interfaces Problem...

I have been doing some research and I have came accross this:
http://www.bigbluelounge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33365
Anyone have any explanation on this? Is is true?
Why is this so?
What has changed on the C2D that would cause this?

Can Anyone Confirm this?
Would this be fixed with firmware?

Multiple bus powered firewire devices - how on MBP

Looking for answer to the following- if anyone can help:
Ideally would like to power a bus-powered firewire drive and a bus powered FW audio interface to acheive complete "AC Free" battery powered portable operation. Is this possible - and if so how ?
I have heard of problems when chaining multiple bus powered devices on MBP
True ? - if so under what circumstances ? Are there workarounds ?
Also - are there two independent BUSSES on the MBP - or are both ports actually only on a single shared bus (as in the iMac, for example)
Finally, will an ExpressCard/34 card provide for bus powering as I desire here.
Any help appreciated - thx

Hi,
see here for ablock diagram of the MBP internals: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/15inMacBookP ro_0706/index.html
Also follow the links that are provided with it.
IMHO, a FW drive and a FW audio interface will be too much for the bus power provided, but I might be wrong.
The MBPs do have 'only' one FW bus that supplies both FW400 an FW800.
Also IMHO Express Card slots don't provide any kind of bus power, but I might be wrong on that too.
Regards
Stefan

Bus powered Firewire devices crashes

I have a Macbook Pro (June 2009) and a Western Digital Passport hard disk with a Firewire 800 connection, bus powered. It has an optional USB 2.0 connection
It keeps crashing the system with firewire, not with USB.
Especially when I move large files or Time Machine backups or migrations with Migration Assistant, the process stops at some point, eventually forcing me to shut the computer down.
My bet is that it's something related with the power, because this problem does'nt occur with the USB connection.
I also have an USB keyboard connected. Could this be the problem? Is the USB keyboard sucking so much power out of the mac?
Please help.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
I wonder if there might be a problem with the firewire bridge in the WD? The most reliable Firewire chipset that I know of is the Oxford 924+, but not everybody uses these. You might be able to find out what is actually used on the WD web site.
Since the USB connection works, the WD drive itself is probably fine.
Does your FireWire 800 work properly with other devices? If not, or if you don't know, you could try a SMC reset, which may help if the problem is with the FireWire port on the MBP:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411?viewlocale=en_US
Otherwise, you could try the drive in a different enclosure, like the Mercury on the Go from OWC, which has the Oxford 934 chipset. I have WD drives in 3 of these enclosures, and have never had a problem with any of them.
Good luck!

Slow large file transfer speed with LaCie 1T firewire 800 drives

I am transferring two large files (201gb and 95gb) from one LaCie 1T firewire external drives to another one (using separate connections to a PCI Express firewire 800 card in my Quad G5. The transfer time is incredibly slow – over for hours for the 201gb file and over 2 hours for the 95gb file.
Does anyone have any ideas why this is so slow or what I might try to speed up the transfer rates?
Thank you.
G5 Quad 2.5 8GB DDR2 SDRAM two SATA 400GB Mac OS X (10.4.5)

You posted this in the Powerbook discussion forum. You may want to post it in the Power Mac G5 area, located at http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=108

HT201338 Can I connect a firewire 400 to firewire 800 adapter and then a firewire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter(standard Thunderbolt to firewire adapter) together to digitize video from a miniDV video camcorder?

I have a 10 year Canon MiniDV camcorder that I used to connect via firewire to digitize the data. Now my IMac only has a Thunderbolt connector and my camcorder uses the older firewire 400 standard. I would like to digitize the video into my IMac. How can I do this?

I did a little looking around and found a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter, and then a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter, but no Thunderbolt to Firewire 400. Amazon and Apple stores had the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 cable and Amazon had the Firewire 400 to 800 adapater.
Wherever you get the cables, ask them if it will work OK with what you want to try and do - if they don't know make sure you can return if there is a problem. I think it will because the Thunderbolt side is so much faster than what the camera can pump out to it. If it were the other way (Thunderbolt device to a Firewire computer I would expect that to fail since the Firewire could never keep up with the data rate of the incoming Thunderbolt device).
Maybe if you have a local Mac user group or a friend with an older mac with a firewire 400 port you could do it this way too?
Good luck

Portable bus-powered (Firewire works, USB doesn't ?) hard drive for PB ?

Does anyone have any experience with the OWC Mercury On-The-Go 100GB portable drive ? It's $250 at OWC (macsales.com).
Any other choices to consider ? Macworld gave the OWC drive it's Editor's Choice back in May when it was $300. It's got a case, dual interface (FW/USB), and boots OS X over FW.
Powerbook 1.5GHz 15 & Dual 2.3 desktop Mac OS X (10.4.3)

We've bought 10-12 of the Mercury drives for some of our traveling art directors in the past 6 months, and everybody loves them. The work great.
I bought one myself a few years ago and it's still chugging along.

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

Upgrading my intel iMac to internal SSD and running 1TB external drive from firewire 800 for mass storage while still using a second external drive for backups...my goal-speed with a SSD, to still have 1TB of room for everything i have now..possible?

I seem to kill HD's every two years...the last two i've installed were WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives. The speed gains over stock drives have been remarkable. I don't blame the drives for the failures, my machines are up and running 16 hours a day, every day, year round. They die from 'mileage' so to speak...i assume...there's no viral acvtivity or questionable downloads to gunk things up...just lots of work.
I have my third new drive ready to install in my intel based iMac...but i've had a thought...I want to install a SSD in my iMac for the speed gain (and recent price drops)...for standard storage i want to use this new WD Caviar Black 1TB in an external drive bay and connect via firewire 800 for storing everything except the OS and my most commonly used software...am i crazy? will the firewire 800 external drive negate the speed gained with an internal SSD??
I have four iMacs in my office, and one at home. I buy second hand and install new drives and boost memory. I'm going to do this on my 'home' machine...if it works out well i want to upgrade the other three this way...but first i need to know if i'm just dreaming, or will it really make a difference? or even possible??
Thanks!
2.66 intell core2duo
2009 iMac
8gig ram
1 gig hd
OSX ver. 10.8

The SSD gives great bootup and Application launch speed. I think it also speeds up the video rendering a bit, I do all that on the SSD and then move the finished project to the external drives. As far as the speed for the external drives they are quick enough for viewing video and the file transfer rate is good. I had initially put the SSD into an external cradle (FW800) and the system was faster than on the internal drive. I only got a 1.5GBs SATA drive, perhaps yours could benefit from the 3GBs. I know the 6GBs would be too fast and costs a lot more, even the MacPros need special hookups to make use of the 6GBs.

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.

FireWire 800 bug in 10.4.9, 10.4.10 and higher? Leopard?

Hi there,
I'm not completely sure if this topic belongs in here, so sorry if it doesn't. I hope Apple reads these forums too...
I have a MacBook Pro 2.33 Ghz 15", running Tiger 10.4.10.
I bought a LaCie d2 Quadra 500 GB to be able to backup my data better and faster with FireWire 800. But while my other 2 LaCie-drives work perfectly through FW 800, this drive doesn't mount and Tiger tells me to initialize it, because it can't be read. Initializing doesn't help, DiskUtility isn't able to do anything with the drive and DiskWarrior tells me there's something wrong with the drive.
The drive works perfectly through both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. When I boot my MacBook Pro from another external drive with Tiger 10.4.8, the drive also works perfectly through FireWire 800 and when I boot my MacBook Pro from the Installation-DVD.
I updated my other external drive to 10.4.9 and then the drive could not even be mounted when booted from the other external drive.
I had never tried something like the following before, but I tried to move some older extentions from 10.4.8 to 10.4.10 and was able to mount the drive through FW 800, but not without warnings that the extentions were not installed correctly. So I downloaded Pacifist and tried to see which extention would be the problem...
I have spent many many hours, but wasn't able to find the specific extention, but when I was about to give up, I used Pacifist to move the following extentions from my Installation-DVD to the system on my internal drive:
- IOFireWireAVC.kext
- IOFireWireFamily.kext
- IOFireWireIP.kext
- IOFireWireSBP2.kext
- IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext
- AppleFWAudio.kext
And 1 FrameWork:
- FWAUserLib.framework
And it worked. The drive shows up through FireWire 800 at last. While I'm very happy about it, I'm also affraid that the next update to 10.4.11 breaks it again... And what about Leopard...
Please Apple, will you please have a look at this, so that it works again with the latest updates and under Leopard, because I want to use this drive for Time Machine as soon as Leopard arrives. Thanks.
Best Regards,
JeePee

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Why that probably works is that the installation DVD files are unalterable. Chances are the reason why your problem manifested itself in the first place is that your devices hooked up via Firewire either have a firmware update that is too old to be recognized, or data corruption in those particular files you pulled over. The updates themselves don't break Firewire. The vendors who haven't tested their firmware with the latest operating system is what breaks it, and corrupt data files break it. Trying to tell the difference between the two is difficult. LaCie's Mac support is firewire AT lacie.com. Contact them and ask if their drives that are your model have been tested to work with 10.4.10. If they have, then you have some evidence your files got corrupt somehow. If they haven't, you can be sure that they made a mistake in trying to follow specs with their last firmware update.

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)

Wiebetech bus-powered FW800 external & daisy chaining...

Please, only people that ALREADY OWN & USE the Wiebetech drive reply. Thanks.
I just bought one - the 500GB. I have three questions:
1) From your experience in running this unit, can I use it on only bus power, in a daisy chain with another FW800 drive if the other drive has a power adapter?
2) What if I have a FW400 drive also plugged in, and the FW400 is connected to the FW400 port and has it's own power adapter?
3) Also, does including a FW400 drive in the loop AFTER the FW800 Wiebetech have any adverse affect on the FW800 speed or it's bus-power?
It sounds like the draw for the 500GB on us power will be running questionably close to the max output on the port. So I'm trying to do some homework ahead of time to see if I might run into any anomalies. Thanks.

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.

Older iSight (Firewire 400) on New Mac Mini Intel (Firewire 800)?

Hi! I have an older iSight camera (circa 2003), model number A1023/EMC no. 1950, which uses the older FIrewire 400. It was purchased with one of the first gen Mac Mini's (PowerPC) which I still have.
I've upgraded and now have a new Mini with an Intel Core 2 Duo, and the newer Firewire 800 port. I have a Firewire 400->800 adapter, and when I plug the iSight in, the green light on the camera lights up, but then goes off. The system doesn't recognize the camera (System Profiler/Hardware/FIrewire). iChat doesn't see a camera.
This is the adapter:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002HMTV1I/ref=oxya_ohproduct
Under the profiler/firewire, I see " Firewire Bus: Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec" but no entries for the camera.
Is the problem in the adapter? The computer, or the camera? Is there a way to force the Firewire 800 port speed down to 400? Don't know what to do. Thanks for any advice! --michael

Hello michael
Connecting your iNtel min's Firewire to any Firewire 400 cable automatically sets the correct speed.
If your iSight and cable will work with other Macs and if Firewire 800 devices will work with your new mini, perhaps your new adapter is faulty.
My method for verifying external iSight function is explained here:
http://www.ralphjohns.co.uk/EZJim/EZJimpage4.html
You will need to add your adapter to the other connectivity devices (ports & cables) that must be tested.
If other Firewire devices can be recognized by your new mini, the next tests I would suggest is to connect your adapter, FW-800 cable, and iSight to your old mini to see whether it still works there. If not, and if you have reset your iNtel mini's Firewire ports, the cable or adapter you have may be defective.
If iSight works with the new cable and adapter on the old mini but not with the iNtel one, apply all relevant suggestions from Apple's iSight Troubleshooting article to your new mini:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2090
The reset suggested there sometimes restores proper iSight function.
One other possibility is that a different brand of FW800 cable might work for you. Depending on which FW800 cable you are using, this thread may be of interest:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9091838
EZ Jim
G5 DP 1.8GHz w/Mac OS X (10.5.8) PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11) iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9) External iSight

How to test FireWire 800 port

Hello -
My MBP's FW800 stopped working on my WD MyBook 1Terabyte Pro Edition II HD. I tested with an identical MyBook HD and same. I switched cables. Nada.
Both FW400 and USB work just fine.
Any way to test/verify the port is dead without having to take it in for service check, which means I am without a computer for a week or two?
Thanks for any sage advice given.
Steve

hi fgm14,
"If you connect a bus powered firewire device
(Firelite) in my case. You MUST NOT connect any other
firewire drive EVEN IF POWERED in either the 800 or
the 400 port"
I found this info too. I think it was the reason for "killing" the 800 port temporarily (see my post above).
In fact both, hd and camera were self-powered during capturing. In my Case there is one special aspect which MAY have caused the port-killing: I think - I'm not sure - that I disconnected the camera's power plug after capturing but let the camera-fw-400-port connected. Maybe the mbp thought (so far it is able to do? from now on the fw-400-unit is to be bus powered.
At the moment I solved it this way:
- external hd connected to the 800 port of the mbp c2d
- camera connected to 400 port of the external hd
So far it works: capturing dv-material with final cut pro to the external hd.
I find this a great pain - can anyone else confirm
this advice?
In fact it IS a great pain having 2 ports one cannot use simultanously without paying a lot of attention on how the parts are powered. Is this apple-like? I think we have to consider: it is - as the myth of apple products reliability is only a myth! I had 2 logic boards to be replaced (G4, G5; in both cases one of the two processors didn't work right from the start), three 23'' acd's were returned because low color and lightning quality before I bought a even cheaper eizo-model.
I love the apple hard- and software-designs and maybe on windows its much more trouble with the system, but is it satisfying enough?
Does Apple ever answer these forum questions - I see
no way to talk to them after 90 days.
My experience: the only way is to buy an apple care protection plan to reduce your efforts and costs for a time. Normally phone support ends up in "Please contact your local apple service provider."
Good luck
ccp
G4 · G5 · MBP C2D Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Ext HD speed and Bus-Powered Firewire 800

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