Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter not enough power

Does not work for me either on the G-Raid Mini. The 7w of power is insufficient to drive the two-drive mechanism. Works fine with single drives.

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.

yep same problem as well. But, I lost the power adaptor so I can't test if it work on my macbook at all. The G-raid mini drive works fine on my wifes macbook pro. Is there a fix?

Does this mean the G-Drive mini works with this adapter?

Try taking power from the USB port.

Same here.. Only works with power from another source. Not very clever from apple ><

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!!!!

😠

Why is it that some devices operate ok with Bus Power using the Adapter and others do not?

My WD Passport Studion Mobile Drive does not.

DavidH

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)

No **** Sherlock. I was using USB as an example. Why otherwise would my #2 reference FW?