Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter not enough power

Fair point. I was merely pointing out, as per the title of this forum:

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter not enough power

that there are problems with many external drives which used to work fine on a Firewire 800 port, but now fail to mount on the new Thunderbolt port as the Thunderbolt port only delivers 7w of power whereas the Firewire 800 port has a 12w bus power output.

I have been using macs for years & have generally found Firewire to be a great connectivity protocol, but now with USB3 / Thunderbolt I think it's time has past...

Sorry about the confusion.

It doesn't work for me with a single Iomega eGo 2.5" bus powered drive, but it works fine via USB bus power. It also does not power my MOTU Ultralite Hybrid (audio interface) via the bus, but again, it works fine when powered via the external wall adapter.

Hi Jeflear

I was about to purchase the thunderbolt to firewire to power my ultralite hybrid. Are you saying there is not enough power to drive the ultralite when it is the only thing connected to the thunderbolt bus?

I was hoping to power it off the thunderbolt as I get horrific noise when using the wall power adaptor.

Bob_kat,

The adapter won't power your Ultralite. FireWire has a minimum and maximum spec for wattage and the TB adapter only provides the lowest allowable wattage of the FW spec. Consequently many bus-powered FW devices won't work with the TB adapter. The Ultralite is one of them. Try: moving the Ultralite to a different place, using a different power strip, removing other devices on the same power strip, checking the shielding on your cables, swapping out the power supply (or just calling MOTU. They were helpful on the phone.)

There's some inconsistency but overall it would appear that we can't rely on the adaptor to supply power. By inconsistency, I mean that I have a couple self powered portable drives one of which works if I plug it in after the computer wakes up or boots up. If I wake the computer with it plugged in or if I start up or restart the computer with it plugged in it doesn't work. The other won't work without being plugged into its auxilliary power supply. Both, by the way, are iOmega drives.

Same for me.

Luckily I tested it is advance of playing a gig at the weekend using Serato.

Complete JOKE!

I can't believe that Apple hasn't considered the fact that the majority of creative professionals need high capacity fast mobile storage.

I suppose we now need to wait for 2Tb Thunderboth enabled SSD drives which by my reckoning will cost more than the MacBook Pro!!!!

😠

One of two possibilities. 1) the device requires more power than the interface provides. This has often been a problem for bus powered drives which is why some USB decides require 2 ports. 2) perhaps it is a FW chipset incompatibility with the interface. Both are just guesses based on past experience.

The new Thunderbolt adapter only provides 7w of power which is not enough for your drive.

My suggestion, upgrade to a USB3 or Thunderbotl drive. Here is a great one I have bought recently: http://www.freecom.com/Products/External-Hard-Drives/Mobile-Hard-Drives/Mobile-D rive-Mg

This forum post is discussing issues with Firewire power, not USB...

The issue with the new Thunderbolt port is the 7w limited power output. This is causing problems with some external Firewire drives (especially drives that have multiple 7200rpm disks)

But your answers don't make sense.

1. FW drives don't have dual USB power options. Power is delivered on a single interface cable similar to power over ethernet.

2. There aren't issues with FW chipset incompatabilities. It's purely down to power limitations that are widely known with the new Thunderbolt interface.

Okay, let me draw it out for you. In the past many USB external could not be powered by a single port and for this reason they required a second port to suppy power. I was speculating that the power supplied by Thunderbolt was similarly insufficient for some FW drives. Now is it clear?

You must be quite new to the Mac world to be unaware of FW chipset incompatibilities. They exist - just ask the many Western Digital owners who have discovered their FW hard drives bearing the Mac compatible emblem could not boot their computer.

DHood, I answered that above. FW has a minimum spec of 7w and a maximum of 45w. Some converters and drives took advantage of the higher power that Macs provided via FireWire. Thunderbolt provides 10w of power, max, so the TB converter is totally compatible on the data side, and minimally compliant on the power side (7w). The drives and audio imtercaces that need more than 7w won't work via bus power but should work fine if powered externally.

I found out after purchasing a Retina MacBook Pro that you can in fact use the G-RAID Mini, the way to do it is to have two Thunderbolt to FireWire adapters, plug in the first one to the drive and the computer, wait for the drive to start clicking, and then plug the other cable between the computer and the G-RAID on the second port.

This obviously only works if you have a rMBP as you need the two Thunderbolt ports.

At the risk of being accused of bring USB into the conversation again, I'm wondering if anyone has tried the new G-Raid Mini to see if it is bus powered by USB 3.0. Or if it can be bus powered with a combo of USB 3.0 and Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter. I have a MBA that has only one TB port, obviously. I'm wondering if there is any hope of the G-Raid Mini being bus powered on it.

Or if anyone has other recommendations for a raided 2TB or more drive that is bus powered. I hate having to bring 3 hard drives when I travel just because my 2TB Lacie Little Big Disk is not bus powered.

Hi,

The G-RAID Mini needs to be used with the expernal power supply if being used with USB 2.0 or 3.0.

I too have also tried to use FireWire and USB, with no luck, the ThunderBolt to FireWire adapter just does not give out enough power.

I therefore think you're out of luck for the 2TB RAID unless you use two USB bus powered drives and software RAID, but I've not tried this myself.

James.