 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / November 2007FW400 and FW800
What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on them? > What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on them? Probably the most common firewire devices are external hard drives. In my own case I have four external drives, three firewire 800 drives, daisy-chained, and one firewire 400 drive.  SignatureJames Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com >> What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on them? > > Probably the most common firewire devices are external hard drives. In my own > case I have four external drives, three firewire 800 drives, daisy-chained, > and one firewire 400 drive. Are these FW 400 & 800 drives markedly more expensive than USB external HDDs? Or are they more like special purpose drives? I am going to convert to a MBP in early July and while I am aware of USB external drives I have no clue about FW drives. > >> What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on > >> them? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > convert to a MBP in early July and while I am aware of USB external > drives I have no clue about FW drives. FW 400 is not significantly more expensive than USB 2, but it is about twice as fast despite similar 'nominal' specs for the two protocols. FW 800 is about twice as fast as FW 400. If you want very high quality triple interface drives, I suggest buying from Wiebetech <http://www.wiebetech.com>. Their products are a bit more expensive, but the quality is well worth it if your data is valuable to you. Good luck and welcome to the Mac! --Fred I don't know how the OWC (Other World Computing) line of drives (www.macsales.com) hold up to Wiebetech or any of the others. However, I have been using one for about 4 months now on my Ti500 running MacOS 9.1. It has one FW400 port (which I am using), two FW800 ports and one USB 2.0 port. Comes with a cable for each type of connection (3), power brick and CD for drivers for machines older than MacOS X. I had to get my driver software off their internet site. The drives are priced according to amount of storage and desired connectability. It has been working fine for backups which is the purpose I bought it for. Thus it spends most of its time powered off. I have no interest in this company other than that of a so far satisfied customer. I also join Fred in saying good luck and welcome to the Mac. > If you want very high quality triple interface drives, I suggest buying > from Wiebetech <http://www.wiebetech.com>. Their products are a bit more [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > --Fred > I don't know how the OWC (Other World Computing) line of drives > (www.macsales.com) hold up to Wiebetech or any of the others. However, I [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] >> >> --Fred Thanks for the info :-) * Art Beattie [06/21/2007 09:58 UTC]: > I don't know how the OWC (Other World Computing) line of drives > (www.macsales.com) hold up to Wiebetech or any of the others. I've had two of their Mercury Elite firewire drive enclosures for several years and have never had a problem. As a matter of fact, I just ordered a third. Two of these are combination FW400/USB 2.0. I always order the bare-bones enclosure and add my own drive. For the 500GB drive I just built it's a tad more spendy than a WD 500GB FW400/USB2.0 drive from Costco... but I figure it's worth it to have it match my other two drives. :) Signature-=Elden=- http://www.moondog.org > I don't know how the OWC (Other World Computing) line of drives > (www.macsales.com) hold up to Wiebetech or any of the others. However, I [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > > > --Fred Also look at Sonnet Technology. I understand they're getting out of the CPU upgrades business and focusing more on storage. Charssun > >> What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on > >> them? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > convert to a MBP in early July and while I am aware of USB external > drives I have no clue about FW drives. A quick glance at newegg.com shows that for example 500 gb USB 2.0's are running about 120 dollars. USB + FW400 runs about 160 and USB + F400 +F800 runs about 180. So depending on your definition of markedly the answer is probably yes. OTOH, FW400 can be used to backup a computer faster than a USB 2.0, on the order of 1/3 faster. FW800 is probably 10 to 25 percent faster than FW400 dick >>>> What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on >>>> them? [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > > dick Thanks for the info guys :-) > >> What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on > >> them? [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Are these FW 400 & 800 drives markedly more expensive than USB external > HDDs? Markedly more expensive? No, but they are more expensive. Feel free to go to any web site where computer stuff is sold and see for yourself. Note that many external disk drives come with both Firewire 400 and USB 2 ports on them. The only company I know of who makes a disk drive with all three types of connectors is LaCie. > What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on them? Besides external disks, you can also... Put your MacBook Pro into "Target" mode by booting the system while holding down the 'T' key. In "Target" mode, you can connect the MacBook Pro to another Mac via a firewire cable and access the MacBook Pro's hard drive as if it was an external disk to the other Mac. Most useful if you need to do some repair, installation, or other unusual activities that for some reason you can't do via the MacBook Pro The converse of this is that any ohter firewire Mac can be put into "Target" mode and mounted as an external disk by your MacBook Pro. There are Digital Video cameras that use firewire to export the video to a computer. Some of these DV cameras can also be used as a converter for say a VCR to digital and import into your Mac. Great for saving those old home VCR movies of the kids, or Mom making your favorite apple pie :-) The original iPods used firewire to charge and sync with the Mac. I think all current iPods use USB 2.0 these days. You can use firewire WebCams (including most DV cameras, once the DV camera's recording media is removed, as firewire webcams). Of course if you have used up your USB ports and still need to connect more things, using the Firewire port is the way to go for disk storage, as almost all firewire storage enclosures include multiple firewire ports so you can daisy chain multiple drives off of a single connection to the Mac. USB can not be daisy chained, and requires a USB hub. You can network Macs via firewire. This is faster than 100baseT, but less than 1000baseT. However, if you need a quick point to point network connection between 2 Macs, you can use firewire for this. You can also enable the router software on MacOSX to bring any firewire connected Macs into the rest of your network. Bob Harris > What are these ports used for on the MacBook Pro? What can I hang on them? External disk drives and video cameras, although I don't know of any FW800 video cameras and FW800 disk drives are hard to find. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.