Firewire 400 faster than stock 4200RPM HD?

Simple question: can an external hard drive perform better connected over Firewire than my stock iBook HD?
Also, is it true that a 7200RPM HD installed into my iBook will void the warranty? Is there an official Apple link to substantiate that?
Many Thanks!

I've heard reports that using a bootable external FW drive of sufficient speed does result in better performance than an internal 4200 RPM drive.
A 7200 RPM drive won't in and of itself void the warranty. Those high-speed notebook drives may use more power though. If you're in the US, aftermarket modifications can't void the terms of a warranty unless the aftermarket part itself damages other components or the installation was performed incorrectly leading to damage. How old is your machine? Apple's US warranty terms are 1 year; I thought your iBook model was discontinued a while back.
Of course Apple won't warranty the drive itself.

Similar Messages

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    Hello,
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    My question is this. If you were going to burn a disk image to a DVD-R, which is the fastest method, Directly from the internal hard drive, or from the 7200 rpm Firewire 400 hard drive? I am not sure which way is best.
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  • PowerBoook G4 as Target to MacPro (firewire 800 bearly faster than 400)

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    Hi Brent NYC,
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  • Is firewire 800 on mac mini 2010 faster than sata2 ?

    is firewire 800 on mac mini 2010 faster than sata2 ?

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  • Firewire 400 external vs internal hard drive - which is better?

    I’m thinking of buying a handy little Mac Mini (circa 2008) from a friend to replace my ageing, workhorse Powermac (sniff).
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    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.
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  • Firewire 400/800 Questions

    Hello -
    I recently upgraded to a new 24" iMac and noticed that there is only one firewire 400 port (as opposed to my previous G5 which had two.) In my old configuration I had an external drive connected to one of the firewire 400 ports and all of my peripherals (DV camera, card reader, etc.) in the other port.
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    I am considering buying a firewire 800 drive as a potential solution and wondered if it would, in fact, be a solution. Also, would a firewire 800 port be that much faster to notice a difference? If so, I might buy one anyway.
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    I have a Core Duo, so I have two FW 400 ports. Thus I'm answering this based on theory, not experience. FW 800 is supposed to support 400 Mbps connections. So you can use the 800 port by getting a cable that has an 800 connector on one end and a 400 on the other. You can definitely use more than one FW device at the same time. However they will share the bandwidth. If they are not designed well, they might possibly interfere, but that shouldn't happen.
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  • Can you connect Firewire 400 to Firewire 800?

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    Hi
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    You could connect the computers by an Ethernet cable, too.
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  • Question pertaining to firewire 400 vs. 800

    I am currently in the process of learning the Mac world. I have been using my wife's iBook for sometime and am waiting for things to work out for a new MacBook. So as I embark on my switch over from the Dark-side to Mac I was wondering, if firewire 800 is the new big deal, why wouldn't Apple have used it instead of the 400 in its newest books?
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    I think Apple will remove itself from firewire over time. USB2 and intel is their direction. Firewire 800 is not all that its cracked up to be. Its cretainly not 2x as fast as FW 400. I have all three and mostly use FW 400 because it is the most convinient to use. USB2 on a Mac is significantly slower than on a windows machine although the intel Macs have better USB2 throughput. I'll still use my firewire 400 devices and some time in the future migrate to USB2.

  • Firewire 400 or 800?

    So, I just purchased a Samsung camcorder, but only came with USB cable. From what I read from this forum is that you need to have the firewire cable to import video from camcorder to Mac.
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    http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?cid=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030104&pid=328&seq=1&format=2
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    The two ends of a 6-pin-to-4-pin FireWire cable look like this:
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    There's no advantage using FW 800 ..on a Mac which has a FireWire 800 connection.. because FireWire from a camcorder generally runs at only a quarter the possible full speed of FireWire 400 anyway, and it'll run no faster using FW800.

  • Playing Russian Roulette with Firewire 400 drives and Final Cut Pro

    oh boy! this has been a fun week!
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    well, now I am finding out that the culprit is I think the POWER MAC g4 itself.
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  • Firewire/400/800 Confusion

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    Hi. Thank you for that piece of important info. Booting would be mandatory. I also just discovered that my Mac has FW400 and FW800. Did not know that. TYVM. - Frank

  • WARNING! Firewire 400/800 usage precaution of all Mac mini

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