Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter not enough power

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.

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.

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.

Just purchased imac (late 2012) along with Thunderbolt to FW adapter. When connecting to My Book Studio 2 to iMac with FW/Thunderbolt connector, the drive WILL NOT mount. Contacted WD, they advised firmare update is not necessary given FW800 cable connection worked fine on previous machin (PowerMac G5). Referred me back to Apple to get cable and adapter tested.

Contacted Applecare and whilst drive connection appears as connected in iMac hardware system report, the drive will still not mount on the desktop.

Took drive and cable into Apple store, and Genius could not get the drive to mount on a MacBook Pro despite changing the cable and adapters.

Conclusion - it doesn't work. Not technically qualified to say why but my hunch is it's something to do with inadequate power output from the Mac. The iMac will wake up the drive but it just won't mount.

Hope this helps.

Does the MY Book Studion 2 have a Power Adapter or is it "FireWire Bus Powered"?

When using the Thunderbolt to FW Adapter my experience has been that it must be powered by additional A/C power becuase the FireWire Bus Power is not enough.

DavidH

The My Book Studio 2 has it's own power supply. The drive show's on the Firewire device tree but it just does not appear on the desk top. 1 boot in about 20 if I'm lucky.

Mr. Peebly. Any solutions to this issue with the MyBook Studio 2? I've got a new iMac on the way with no native Firewire. Frankly I've always had issues with the MyBook Studio 2 regarding "sleep", but Thunderbolt to Firewire sounds like I'll be having additional problems.

I also have a Firewire Lacie2big. I hope that works!

Applecare were unable to resolve the problem and Apple customer services gave me a refund for the adapter.

Applestore did (in fairness) test the connection when I took my drive into the Manchester store. They tested another Thunderbolt adapter and the problem still persists. Applestore felt the problem resides with WD and felt I should demand a refund under terms of the drives 3 year warranty.

On contacting WD, they advised given the drive worked perfectly on a PowerMac G5 FW800 port, no firmware update was required (not recommended, potential risk of data loss) and the problem must therefore be with the Thunderbolt adapter.

In conclusion classic case of neither vendor accepting liability despite Apple's refund policy (which is not an admission of fault), hence caveat emptor.

I have now decided to use the drive on USB2 which mounts and works perfectly. I plan to buy a new WD 3GB which will serve as my main backup drive (using USB3) and demote my exisiting drive as an additional USB2 backup dive.

It would appear FW800 is a dying connection type and there are little speed differences between FW800 & USB3.

I use the Thunderbolt connector to connect a Sony TRV30E camcorder with FW cable sourced from:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002S4OHOG/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8 &psc=1

This means I can still import DV footage into iMovie.

Three is a huge difference between Firewire 800 and USB 3.0.

Firewire 800 offers up to 800Mbps while USP 3.0 offers up to 5Gbps. For a 5400RPm drive like the Western Digital, this is the difference between capping the speed at around 60-80MB/s and the drive maxing out at around 95-105MB/s. Obviously for a faster drive, the difference would be even more. My 7200RPM G-Drive Mini caps at around 120-130 MB/s and my G-RAID taps out at over 300MB/s.

Thanks for the backround. I've always had trouble with my WD MyBook II on Firewire to a now three year old iMac I was having WD HD waking from sleep unless it was second in line to a Lacie2big Firewire external HD.

I actually have third and fourth Firewire devices in the chain sometimes. I'm really dreading to see what will happen when I upgrade to a 2012 iMac with no Firewire and use the Thunderbot adapter. As you know Thunderbolt external devices are pretty pricey. Maybe I'll "downgrade" and use the USB 2.0 on my Firewire devices, but of course I don't want to use up all my USB ports. I know there are add on externally powered USB port multipliers, but the two I've tried don't work well either. I've seen recently a all in one (Thunderbolt, USB) port multipliers but it was $300.00 and I don't know if that would only cause more issues between my devices.

Upgading hard drives or computers can really be expensive. I may sell my old hard drives as I can afford to upgrade to Thunderbolt external hard drives.

I've concluded that success is entirely up to the enclosure. I have two different FW 400/800 enclosures from OWC, a LaCie drive and an IcyDock FW 800 enclosure all which work with the ThunderBolt adaptor. I can daisy chain them in any order and they work. I no name generic FW enclosures that work perfectly well connected to my older Macs but not so well with the adaptor. One intermittently loses connection while the other is fine until the computer sleeps.

I've swapped drives around and that made no difference with the two cheap generics. That's why I've concluded it is the enclosure/chipset.