Firewire 800 / 1394b

Hello,
I use firewire for my audio-devices.
Unfortunately Firewire 800 / 1394b does not work with Windows XP/Vista. I tried for three months, read everything about it, but there is no solution. Does anyone know, if it works with bootcamp and Windows 7?
I hope that somebody can help me, because these guys from Apple couldn´t.
Thanks in advance!

Hi and welcome to Discussions,
Micosoft has released an update patch for 1394b and XP SP2 http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B885222&x=15&y=17
But for Vista it still seems to be lacking that support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE1394_interface#Operating_systemsupport (the german Wikipedia article lacks this).
Also according to the a.m. Wikipedia article the 1394 bus driver was rewritten for Windows 7, so chances are good that Windows 7 supports 1394b better.
I am still at XP, so I can't verify if that's true.
But I also never had problems with my Firewire devices (external harddisks, not audio devices).
Regards
Stefan

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NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card (34)

After some foot dragging by FireWire direct, today I finally received the NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card ordered almost a month ago.
First Impressions: Unimpressive at best.
According to the FireWire direct rep, it is supposed to work using the Mac OS built in drivers and require no additional driver....
Upon first insertion, my MacBook Pro promptly went into a kernel panic.
NOT a good introductory performance!
Upon restart, I did get the thing to work, "sort of".
First, it requires AC power even with a 2.5" external drive meant for bus power. Bummer, but so be it. However, less acceptable: it is VERY fussy about sequence, reminding me of evil SCSI voodoo rituals from the past century. Seems it only likes to work once- if I remove the card, it requires a reboot to recognize anything attached to it subsequently.
Functionality is intermittent. Sometimes I can mount and unmount a drive several times in a row, sometimes just once before it fails to recognize the drive and requires another reboot. One drive it took a long time to recognize but eventually it did- only to freeze up rock solid soon thereafter requiring an uncomfortable long push on the power button to shut down- nothing else worked. That drive was a known to be working Lacie, the first a known to be working WiebeTech and both are totally reliable on my G5 and previously completely reliable on the MacBook Pro using the integrated FireWire 400 port.
Unscientific results so far show a modest speed increase transferring a few large files, nothing like double the FireWire 800 speed hoped for. In any case if it ain't reliable it ain't gettin' used. Hoping for a driver solution in 10.4.7? (Wishful thinking)
No one likes a fussy device, much less one doomed to corrupting directories with that kind of behavior. I'm disappointed with Apple for omitting the FireWire 800 port on the 15 inch model and leaving us with this cheesy "solution".
I am not a big fan of dongles, or things like Express cards which are just asking for trouble by introducing intermediary third party connectivity issues exactly like these...
Oh yeh, and the little metal door on the Express Card slot tends to hang open and not snap closed- just to add insult to the whole process.

Well, after two days of use I have a bit of data regarding the NitroAV (and Apple's implementation of ExpressCard/34).
First some general observations: like bigwheel, there are a few too many rough edges to be fully pleased. After inserting the card, a menu bar icon appears next to the Airport icon. On mouse over, the drop down shows "Unknown Vendor" and "Firewire Controller" are greyed out, while the 3rd "Power off Card" is selectable but does NOT power down the card. Looks like I have to shut down the MBP, then eject the Nitro card.
I also can confirm intermittent unmounting and remounting. My latest experiment is to leave the drive mounted and then have it wake up after sleep. So far it's worked once, but will post if it continues to find my FW 800 drive over time.
One major design flaw of the ExpressCard implementation - to engage the card you push in until it clicks, while to disengage the card you merely push in a second time. But how are you supposed to ATTACH FW800 cables?? I find I have to try to hold the ExpressCard firmly so it doesn't go in while fumbling with the FW800 connector. WAY too fussy...
OK, here's some actual test data, involving transfers of 1,000 MB of files (147 Canon RAW files, approx 7 MB each).
I used three hard drives for various transfers -
1. Internal stock 100 GB - 5400 rpm (TOSHIBA MK1032GSX)
2. FW 800 / 400 500 GB - 7200 rpm (Seagate 3500841A in OWC Mercury Elite case)
3. FW 800 / 400 250 GB - La Cie 7200 rpm drive
All test are transfer of 1 GB of files from HD to HD-
Test 1: Internal to FW 400 - 68 seconds
Test 2: Internal to FW 800 - 65 seconds
Test 3: MBP built in FW 400 daisy-chained - 54 seconds
Test 4: Nitro FW 800 daisy chained - 43 seconds
Test 5: Nitro FW 800 port A to Nitro FW 800 port B - 43 seconds
Test 6: MBP built in FW 400 to Nitro FW 800 - 35 seconds
So it looks like there is some speed increase, but I was surprised that mixing the FW 400 and FW 800 ports gave the fastest transfer speeds! The Nitro card is dependent on Apple's implementation of buses, and this seems to be the winning combo. Not that intuitive that shifting one of the FW 800 devices down to FW 400 will speed things up, but that's what my simple test seemed to imply.
I didn't test read times only, but it would seem that these should speed up (and hopefully speed up my primary application of Aperture).
MBP 2.0, 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Daisy-chaining firewire 400 and firewire 800?

I would like to daisy-chain two Western Digital MyBook Pros to a Macbook:
- FW 400 from Macbook to first drive
- FW 800 between the drives
Would this work or not? I have one of those, they have 2 x FW 800, 1 x FW 400, 1 x USB at back.
(If not, I'll buy a 'Premium' which has 2 x FW 400, and 1 x USB..)

JoeyR wrote:
I'm not sure if the hardware in the first drive, that's connected by firewire 400 is "smart" enough to jump the data over to the FW800 connectors for daisy chaining.
Just pulled this from the WD site. I would say this indicates it would work. You won't get more speed but they should work daisy chained. This indicates the drive is smart enough to do this.
+Question: Will Western Digital FireWire 400 (1394a) external hard drives work connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port?+
+Answer: The FireWire 800 Specification (1394b) states that FireWire 400 devices will work while connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port. The FireWire 400 cable (4-6 pin or 6-6 pin) will not connect to a FireWire 800 port (9 pin) therefore you will need to connect the hard drive using a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable (1394a to 1394b cable). These cables are available at most computer stores.+

Confused! LaCie FireWire 800 PC Card

Greetings!
I purchased an Iomega 250 GB external hard drive. Because my notebook doesn't have an 800 Mbps port I also purchased a LaCie FireWire 800 PC card. I was aleady to hook all of this up today, when I discovered that the LaCie card has 2 FireWire 800 bilingual ports compatible with FireWire 400/1394a products. It also has 1 FireWire 400 6-pin port. The Iomega ext. hard drive has 2 FireWire 800 (1394b) ports and 1 FireWire 400 port and a USB 2.0 port.
Does a "bilingual" port on the LaCie mean that both a 1394a and a 1394b cable will work in the same port? If not, then how do you get the LaCie FireWire 800 PC card to work at 800Mbps?
Thank you in advance!!!
tenntooter (back again after a long time out of town.)

The information provided was helpful. I purchased the iomega external hard drive and an Lacie card, but I haven't been able to get these working properly. I only worked on this for a short time though, and I now have time to work on this some more. I'm sure that I've overlooked something. I'll get it to work I'm certain.
Thank you!

Employee at the Genuis Bar told me to get pci-express firewire 800 card

told me any card would work in my new.......well it WAS new till they announced upgrade, 2x3ghz quadcore xeon.
I want to add another firewire 800 bus since I have the AJAHD hooked to the existing bus.
So I went to Fry's and got the "PCI-express firewire 800/1394b controller card 3 ports".
put it into one of the empty slots, rebooted, and got nothing, just some dull chimes, that don't stop.
it fit within my macpro, but it was a lot shorter than the SATA card, that had no problems.
So I guess I need to know exactly what type of firewire 800 card to I have to get.

I installed 1 of these in an 8 core OS 10.4.11 FCp 6.0.2 QT 7.3.1 dedicated to io HD
don't recall a driver disk for mac, however I rarely if ever use the supplied driver disk for anything anymore 'cause it's almost always out of date. go to mfg site and get drivers etc.
this is the first link I saw googling siig
http://www.smalldog.com/product/42566/atfgc
by the way it worked great. needs a 1 lane slot. you'll need to check expansion slot utility. typically goes in slot above gfx card or slot4 (top) slot

Firewire 800 device not recognized after a power cycle

I picked up a Seagate FreeAgent Desk | Mac edition (1 Terabyte) a few weeks ago and the first thing I did was format it on my iMac (it came formatted, but I figured it wouldn't hurt). I also wanted to make sure it was done right. So I know the FS works great with this iMac.
As you may see, I have a 3.06 24" iMac to give you an idea of what machine this is being plugged into. The one FW 800 port in the back.
I picked 1394b (FW800) because the speeds are so impressive - and so far this drive is working great! With one exception ..
When I power the machine down & bring it back online, the drive does not automatically come back - and I have to disconnect either the power, or Firewire 800 cable (which I've tried two of - the stock one with the Seagate product and another high quality cable). After that it's smooth sailing.
I just want to get this device working between boots so I can rely on it to take my time machine backups without worrying about fiddling with it to get it working.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, and unfortunately this is my only FW 800 device (not much troubleshooting possibilities). I'm looking to buying a WD MyBook Studio 1TB Fw800 drive - but I won't be doing that (yet) if the port is my issue and not the Seagate drive.
This link is to an image in which you can see my Fw settings in System Profiler.
http://i39.tinypic.com/105dz4y.png
I've been reading the Seagate forums looking for some help, and there seems to be issues with the drivers powering themselves off and confusing the OS, but this doesn't look to be the case. Unfortunately I've got 700GB of data on this drive and will need to move the contents to my on-board drive so I can format the unit with Fat32, plug it into an XP PC (gogo upstairs) and run the Seagate Manager.exe and see if I can modify the power settings (all on a whim, awesome).
I'm just curious what I should do - I don't live in a city where there's an Apple store but there is an Apple authorised reseller/service centre. It looks as though I'll be heading there to see what's up.
Has anyone else seen a problem like this?
Thanks in advance,
hENN

not enough specific information about what caused the problem but I'll give you some pointers to ALWAYS follow with firewire drives. I've been using them for many years without issues through all the OSX versions.
If Mac is powered on: power on seagate and wait a few for the hard drive to spin up, connect firewire cable to Mac first then Seagate. When done : a) unmount the seagate listen for the hard drive to complete its cycle then power seagate down, remove firewire from Mac first then seagate. b) or just power down Mac then power off seagate when the Mac is done.
If Mac is not powered on: connect firewire cable to mac and seagate, power on seagate and listen for hard drive spin up to complete then power on Mac.
The problem with firewire is, if user makes just one mistake with the above then firewire recognition comes into play, such as device will not mount to desktop, etc. Sometimes user gets lucky and nothing happens but consider that rare.
So if user does have firewire troubles , what to do? Not fool proof but many times successful, disconnect external power and all cables and power cycle the external on/off a few times but listen for hard drive spin up and spin down. On the Mac either one or both zap the pram and or power manager reset. This works many times but does not save an external if user highly abuses the procedure. You can also apply this to USB troubles.

Can I power an external ST91000640NS using FireWire 800?

Hi,
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 capacity
7200rpm speed
2.5" 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 current
0.85A
5V start max current
0.51A
Average idle power
2.95W
Average operating power
5.43W
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 range
8 to 33 V
Input power
0.3 W
Output voltage range
12 V to 30 V (varies by product)
Output power
minimum of 7 W per port
The disk will be put in an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini enclosure, by the way. (Though I don't think that matters.)

Kappy may be right — he most often is. But the Constellation is an enterprise drive designed for continuous use in servers, not for bus-powered use as an external drive. Among currently-available 1TB notebook drives, the kind that are normally used in bus-powered portable external enclosures, there are none that run at 7200 RPM, so I assume that's why you've settled on the Constellation. My concern about your plan is twofold: first, the drive is 15mm high. Will it fit in the enclosure you've selected? Ask OWC. And second, because the Constellation is normally run on AC power without any amperage ceiling that it's likely to exceed, I wonder whether during spinup or heavy usage it will occasionally draw more power than your FireWire bus can supply, causing it to be automatically powered off. I'm not conversant enough with electrical specs to be able to tell whether that's a possibility. Perhaps Kappy is.

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.

New Firewire 800 External Hard Drive and how to use old External USB Drive

Hi All,
I have a new LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk hard drive 500 GB - FireWire / FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB / eSATA-300 on the way, when it arrives I plan to use it as my Time Machine Backup drive with the FireWire 800 connection. I am currently using a Seagate Free Agent USB 2.0 320 GB external drive as my Time Machine disk. The reason for upgrading is the USB drive is slow slow slow! I am not concerned about the data on my old drive and will just wipe it clean using Disk Utility. What I would like to do is use the old drive to archive iTunes 7.7.1 and Aperture 2.0 music and photographs. Can someone give me an idea how to go about doing this?
Thanks!

Hi, yes that will copy the whole iTunes..including everything in iTunes..BUT, as you add to your iTunes on the Main HD, with the ext HD I think you will have to manually update anything added. Or dragNdrop the whole thing again.. You could also locate you iTunes music Library & just copy that across..With images once again find your iPhoto library & just copy that across..L

Problems with File Transfers Over Firewire 800

Problems with File Transfers Over Firewire 800.
Over the past month, I have had problems when transfering files from my harddrive, over Firewire 800 to a portable drive. I usually transfer very large files (20gb or more) to the portable drives for moving files around. When I drag a file over to copy onto a drive, the transfer starts normally. If I drag more files to copy over, the computer screen goes darker and a large icon comes up that looks like a power button icon. It tells me to restart, so I have to do a hard shut down on my G5. Weird. I also get the dark screen of death sometimes when I am transfering those large files and open another application to do some work while it's copying. It's killing me. I am having to sit here and wait for the transfer to finish before I can do anything.
Any thoughts...
Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5
Mac OSX 10.4.3
Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Have you run the Apple Hardware Test? Sounds like it could be a RAM problem.

How to connect an external harddrive with firewire 800 to a macbook with firewire 400?

Hello,
I 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.
I'm glad for any advice.

There are many adaptors, try here

Print to Video does not work with Firewire 800 to 400 cable

I need to print video from a Mac Pro with only Firewire 800 port to a Sony DSR 50 with only Firewire 400 port. I'm using a Firewire 800 to 400 cable and I also tried a 400 cable with a 400 to 800 adapter attached. I'm able to control the Sony deck but I cannot get any audio/video to it.
Anyone else have this problem?

When you've got the deck connected and in fcp you go to view: videoplayback, do you see the appropriate apple firewire option available and chosen? And if you hit command-F12 (show all frames) do you see anything? If it doesn't work, try restarting the computer with the deck remaining on.

My new MacBook Pro and Imac can't recognize my digital video camera (Canon GL2) via FireWire 800 9 pin to 4 pin cable.

My new MacBook Pro and Imac can't recognize my digital video cameras (Canon GL2 or Sony) via FireWire 800 9 pin to 4 pin cable. I've tried two different cables. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Is your DV camera plugged in to AC power (not batteries only)? When you step down from 9 pins to 4 pins, you lose the "power" pins.

I need to connect my old Mac book pro to the new one to transfer files. The old one doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 and the new one doesn't have Firewire 800. Will the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter or Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter work?

I want to transfer data from my old Mac book pro to my new one using migrate. The old computer doesn't have Thunderbolt 2 and the new one doesn't have Firewire 800. Does the Thunderbolt to Firewire or the Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter work to connect them and transfer data?
Thank you!

Yes, use a Firewire cable and the FW to Tbolt adaptor.

Where can I find an adapter that will let me use my firewire 800 devices with a thunderbolt only ported macbook air?

Been looking for a way to use my firewire 800 devices with my macbook air - which has only usb and thunderbolt ports. I've seen internet pages for an adapter from sonnet but have not found anywhere to actually purchase such a thing. Would love to be able to at least try to use the thunderbolt port - for something - or trade the thing in for something with present day usable firewire 800 ports. Is this thunderbolt technology already getting shelved? I see like 5 items on the market that actually use this port... really? That's it? Thank you for any guidance!

Sonnet has an TB-capable expresscard adapter.
http://store1.sonnettech.com/product_info.php?products_id=392
FW800 Expresscard
AND
TB cable sold seperately

Firewire 800 / 1394b

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