Why is firewire 800 slow on new iMac?

I have two, new G-drives. One of them is used for off-site data storage. I need to copy about 225 GB of data (a single data file) from one drive to the other each week. Using my 13" MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo), the process takes about an hour. Using the SAME drives and the SAME cables, it takes about 6 hours to copy the same amount of data using our brand, new 21" Intel iMac. Obviously, the new, state-of-the-art iMac should AT LEAST be as fast as the year + old MacBook Pro. Any ideas how to get the iMac up to speed?
Thanks!
Philip

Thanks to everyone who commented on this problem. This morning I unplugged all the drives and the computer, came back to it five minutes later, plugged in the iMac and cleared the PRAM. Then I plugged the firewire 800 drives in and began copying the now-259 GB datafile from one G-drive to the other. The speed is back! It is copying a gigabyte every 20 seconds/ 3 gigs per minute. The 259 GB of data will copy in less than an hour-and-a-half.
Main lesson learned: At least with these new iMacs and probably with all Macs, using a firewire 400 drive attached to the firewire 800 port will cause the system to switch itself into a firewire 400 mode and keep it there even after removal of the firewire 400 device(s). Rebooting does not reset firewire 800 functionality. Zapping the PRAM, however, does clear the problem allowing the computer to revert to firewire 800 functionality. I had also unplugged the machine so maybe the SMC circuit was reset by that, too. The bottom line is this procedure worked. This experience makes me have to think about eliminating the firewire 400 drives from my systems.

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No Firewire Adapter Included in new iMAC

OK, am I too picky? I just received my new iMAC and realized that the firewire 400 port on my old G4 is not compatable with the firewire 800 on my new iMAC. I have seen other discussions about how easy it is to buy adapters. I live in the San Francisco bay area, and have been to three radio shacks, two Best Buys and none had this item or were out. I have spent over three hours driving from store to store. The ultimate frustration is that I visited our local Apple store and they don't stock this item!! Apple must realize that many, if not most, people bought a new iMAC to replace their old apple computers and thus an firewire adapter would be necessary. Would it have been too much to have expected Apple to have included this item which for them could not cost more than a few dollars? I waited several weeks for the computer, wasted gas, time and money searching for a very simple and inexpensive item that apple should have included, so I guess waiting a week more to order it is not that bad. Sorry to vent, but this is very poor thinking and quite rude to Apple's customers.

The item is readily available online. Here's one at long-time Apple-friendly OWC. Actually, one is an adapter, one is a cable. Either one would work. I'd go with the cable to eliminate one connection point.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/FIR1369AD/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/1394B96036/
Give your business to the businesses that provide what you need and support the Mac platform. Radio Shack, Best Buy, please... Don't buy at those places when you can get it more easily and for less money at a store that caters to Mac users.
The Apple Store does carry it (though expensive compared to OWC).
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TP320LL/A?mco=MzE3NzU2NQ

How will it be possible to to use a firewire external with the new iMac

I see the new iMac has four USB 3 ports and two Thunderbolt ports.
I have numerous FW 800 externals I use for back up, Time Machine and so forth (many are less than a year old and were not inexpensive).
When I get a new iMac, what will be the process or procedure to use one or more of those Firewire externals with the new iMac?

Try http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A
This Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter should do it for you.
Allan

Daisy chaining external hard drives and a video camera from a single firewire 800 port on my imac

I have only a single firewire 800 port on my imac and want to know if I can daisy chain two external hard drives and my video camera, please? If not is there another solution using USB 2?

Are the external HDs self powered or powered by the FW port? If they are self powered there should not be a problem. If they are port powered they may put a strain on the port's power output but I'n not positive on that.

Firewire 800 port on new MBP not mounting Lacie rugged 500GB drive

Hi all
I've just purchased the new MBP 17" and my Lacie Rugged 500GB drive will not mount.
It will mount over USB though.
I've tried three different FW800 cables and no result.
There are some posts around 10.5.7 update issues, but I've tried everything listed and no dice.
Any help would be appreciated.

I had a Western Digital My Passport Studio model like that. It has nothing to do with cables or your laptop. It has to do with manufacturers who fail to adhere to the proper power standards for the interface. Basically, if the drive demands more power then the port will give, it is never going to work.
I returned my WD to Apple for a refund, and instead tried a SeaGate FreeAgent Go firewire 800 drive. It has worked flawlessly over Firewire on my MacBook Pro, and it even came with both a Fire 800 cable, a firewire 800-to-400 cable, a USB cable, and a special USB power cable so you could draw additional power off the USB ports if a firewire 800 port wasn't putting out sufficient power. That's why I bought it - figured one way or another it had to be able to work on bus power (even if it had taken both the firewire and USB bus in combo to do it).
Another option I've had good luck with in the past is OWC Mercury on the Go drives (eshop.macsales.com). These have always worked fine on bus power for me, but they also have an optional external power supply too, just in case.

Western Digital 3T Firewire 800 will not boot iMac

The internal drive on my iMac (intel) is small (300G) and corrupted. My idea was to buy an external firewire 800 drive and use it as the boot disk.
I bought the western digital "My Book Studio" drive (WDB3G0030HAL). I installed the system from time machine backup and it wouldn't boot so I reinstalled Mountain LIon using the recovery partition. After that, I learned it will boot my macBook Pro but still doesn't boot the iMac.
I have found older articles about western digital having problems getting external drives to boot.
Does anyone have newer information or work arounds?
thanks
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Here is a list of WD bootable drives:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1787/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvd GltZS8xMzUxNTIzMzIwL3NpZC9ueUFYc1g5bA%3D%3D
You can check to see if yours is on it.
FWIW, are you saying that you have one backup and are trying to boot two different machines with it? Unless the two machines have the same build, that is not possible - Macs simply cannot be booted or run with a system version older than what they came with.

Migration Assistant using firewire not working between new iMac and G5. Ah!

I unpacked my new iMac 21.5' last nite and spent three painful hours trying to use Migration Assistant to tranfer files from my old iMac G5, which is using OS X 10.4.11.
I follow all of the instructions ver batim: connect the 400/800 firewire between the old and the new iMacs, start migration assistant on the new iMac, reboot the old iMac holding down the 'T' key until the firewire symbol pops up on the screen. At that point, the new iMac sits there with the message 'waiting for the other iMac to restart.' It never seems to recognize the old iMac. I tried rebooting, reconnecting the cable, etc. No luck.
I also tried using the ethernet option with no luck. The computers find each other but after entering the 'code' twice, the old mac gets stuck 'searching for other computers on the network.'
Any advice? I'd really like to use my new iMac!!!!

May not help but give this a try on the G5:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
I would also first turn off both computers then connect the FW cable. If both computers have a FW800 port then you can use a standard FW800 cable. Boot the G5 into TDM. After the TDM screen appears boot the new computer normally.

Firewire 800 slow performance

I am getting a super slow performance on my 2008 8-core standard mac pro, I cant get more than 25mb/s in any external drive in any of the 2 ports.
Its very frustrating for me.
I am running Leopard 10.5.8.

Well, what kind of external drives are you using...?
As far as I know, FireWire 800 has a “theoretical” transfer rate of
up to 800 Mbits/s - that’s about 100 MB/s...
Under real world conditions one might achieve a maximum sustained
transfer rate of rather 40 to 50 MB/s...
Using a high-performance (7200 rpm) external drive, or an “VelociRaptor” (10000 rpm)
might increase performance...
Regards
Nolan

Firewire 400 issue with new iMac 20"

Hi all,
Maybe one of you can help. I've got a problem with my Western Digital myBook 500Gb external harddrive when I connect it to my (new) iMac 20" using the firewire 400 port. The drive does not show up on the desktop, not in diskutility and also not in the systemprofile (it just says 'FireWire-bus: Maximum speed: maximum 800Mb/sec').
To make sure there's nothing wrong with the port I connected a Canon DV camcorder (using the 400 port but using different firewire cable). I shows up correctly in the systemprofile and I can get data of that. So, I assume the port is functioning properly.
To make sure the external drive is working and there's nothing wrong with the firewire cable, i connected the drive to my 'old' iMac (a core duo 17") and it all works fine. So, the device must be ok and the cable aswell.
Some extra details:
- Both macs run osx 10.4.10.
- If I connect the drive using usb, it all functions correctly, i can even boot from the drive.
- When I booted the 20" mac for the first time i used the wizard to copy over the data from the old mac using the firewire cable. That all worked correctly.
Any ideas what could be wrong?
Any help would be very much appreciated.

Some more details: if i unplug the power from the drive and refresh the systemprofile it does find the drive, although it is listed as an unknown device:
Unknown device:
Manufacturer: Unknown
Model: Unknown device
GUID: 0x0
Maximum speed: Maximum 400 Mb/sec
Connectionspeed: Maximum 400 Mb/sec
(the above was translated from Dutch).
If I then plug in the power of the drive, sysprofile says 'FireWire-bus: Maximum speed: maximum 800Mb/sec' (also translated from Dutch).
Oh and zapping the PRAM did not make a difference, nor did removing WD files from the Library -> StartupItems folder. The LaunchDeamons folder was empty.
Message was edited by: Luca5

Connecting Firewire 400 Drives to new iMac...

Hi all,
I just tried connecting two external drives to my new iMac using the FW400-to-FW800 and FW800-to-Thunderbolt cables. When I plugged the last bit into my new iMac, however, my Magic Mouse and keyboard stopped working. Did I do something wrong? Is there some setting I'm forgetting? Do I need to connect it all while off, then restart? Any and all help/advice is appreciated.
Thanks,
B

Hi all,
I just restarted the iMac with everything plugged in and it works fine. (headslap) Duh.
Thanks anyway!
-B

Anybody connecting older firewire scanners to the newer iMac

I have a Nikon Coolscan 4000 that uses a firewire A output. Since my iMac (late 2012) only has Thundebolt and usb connections, I can't hook up directly. Nikon doesn't support adapter, A firewire to thunderbolt adaptor does not work as the scanner is not visible. Would a firewire to usb be a better option?

I think your two options are: 1) buy new scanner or 2) buy a computer with a FireWire port. The current mini still has a FW800 port (for which I am thankful)

Why can't I register my new iMac?

It is amazing that everything on a new mac is too easy, you only plug in the imac, then turn it on, and the if you have an older mac transfer all your files.
What is more amazing is that after transferring your files using file sharing you view a registration page that in my case I can't continue even if I fill everything. Reading a post here I see that you need to type CMD+Q
Why Apple does not place a skip option in the registration to avoid this issue, not everyone can access the internet and search for a solution to that problem.
I think that in my case the issue was because my IMAC was not connected to the internet and some settings from my old computer causes this issue.

Why Apple does not place a skip option in the registration to avoid this issue...
Please read the Terms of Conditions located to your right, specifically:
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Speculations or rumors about unannounced products.
*Discussions of Apple policies or procedures or speculation on Apple decisions.*
If you have feedback for Apple you can place it at www.apple.com/feedback
Roger

Internet slow on new iMac

Hi -
Strange things are going on with my iMac and internet. The iMac is new and up until a couple of weeks ago, it was on FiOS and the internet was blazing fast. We also have an old G4 Titanium laptop on the network wirelessly. The iMac had a wired connection.
We moved and the new place doesn't offer FiOS, so I'm using broadband cable, but with less than desirable internet performance. Pages take anywhere from seconds to minutes to load and often I get a timeout error. The laptop tends to get better performance with either wired or wireless connections than the iMac (also tried wirelessly and wired). I have tried the speedtest.net and pingtest.net. The speedtest came back with 20+ Mbps DL and 1.0 Mbps UL. The pingtest was bad with about 60% data lost.
I have been on the phone with the ISP and they couldn't see any problems on their end, so they sent a technician out to look it over. He couldn't see anything wrong with their service and setup, so he felt something was up with the iMac settings. I'm no expert, but that seems unlikely to me. I'm here to see if maybe there is something to what he said, or if he was just ignorant.
I have signed up with openDNS and that doesn't seem to make a difference. I have pinged the router/modem (Netgear), and get fast response with no data loss. I'm kind of at a loss. Anybody have ideas about this? Help is appreciated!

Hi - have a look at this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2312547&start=0&tstart=0
there's several suggestions for fixing slow internet speed. Doesn't seem that there is just one fix - different things seem to work for different people. Hopefully you'll stumble on a fix in the thread that works for you!

G4 PCI (with faulty firewire) file transfer to new iMac

I just purchased a new 20" iMac and anxiously awaited the time when I would be transferring all of my files from my old G4 to the iMac. Turns out that the G4 firewire ports apparently are not working. I even bought a PCI/firewire card but it didn't work either, so it must be a problem on the motherboard. Is there another way to do an easy transfer of the files? And is there a way to verify the G4 firewire problem?
Thanks.

Use an "External Harddrive" to move your files.
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http://www.compusa.com/products/productinfo.asp?productcode=324337
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106658
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Safari, mail, software update very slow on new imac

Hello,
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Finally- the problem has been solved
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Why is firewire 800 slow on new iMac?

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