Firewire 800 to USB 3.0 adapter?

If you need drives with FW 800 ports try these: OWC Mercury Elite Pro USB 3.0 / FireWire 800 / eSATA 500GB to 6.0TB.

I currently have 6 in service on Firewire. Very reliable and backed by excellent customer support and warranties.

An old post, but in case anyone runs across it, there is in fact a FireWire-thunderbolt adapter as well as FireWire to USB or Ethernet adapter. Hopefully apple stops using ports that no one else adapts and they become absolute in a few years (USB C) that we're looking to utilize years later

Unfortunately, USB and Firewire use different protocols so Firewire to USB is not an option. You will need to keep within the USB domain to connect your external hard drives to your iMac's USB ports.

Firewire has been superceded by Thunderbolt, just in case buying a Thunderbolt-enabled hard drive would be a possibility for you, connecting them with a Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800 adapter cable.

There is such a device on offer from Sonnet.

It's the

Sonnet USB 3.0 + Gigabit Ethernet Thunderbolt Adapter.

It's a bit pricey at first sight, currently selling for 118 Euro in Germany.

And then there is another type of product that doubles the Mac's Thunderbolt 2 port and provides a USB 3.0 port that way. That's the

Akitio Thunder2 Dock Thunderbolt2/USB3.0/eSATA/FireWire 800.

Which, I am sad to say, is even pricier, going for 218 Euro in Germany as of speaking.

You might get your hands on them for less monetary output in the States, as German IT prices are on pharmaceutical levels...

Ancient original post, but the problem remains: There's no way to connect a USB-3 device (i.e., 90% of the devices being made today) to an older Mac, except through the old, slow USB-2 port. You're expected to be happy with "backwards compatibilty", and not mind that your Mac has much faster FW and TB ports sitting there unused. If you know anything about the matter, of course, you, like the OP, will mind very much. It certainly bugs the [carp] out of me.

I've struggled with this for quite some time, and the cheapest solution is to simply buy an external enclosure with Firewire sockets ($40-$50 on eBay) and transfer the HDD to the new case. If you're willing to cough up $35 for an Apple adapter (or would be, if there was such a thing), the cost of the enclosure isn't at all out of line. You won't get USB-3 speed, but you'll still get 5x-10x the speed of the USB-2 port you're otherwise stuck with. Sell the empty USB-3 enclosure on eBay for $10-$15, and you'll have spent less than the cost of the adapter that you wish existed.

Better yet, you can find used low-capacity external FW drives on eBay for $10, yank out the worthless 80 or 120 GB HDD inside, and install your larger-capacity drive. Because older chipsets have their limits, this does require that you do some homework on the enclosure if you want to plug in anything over 1 TB. (And, of course, be sure it's a SATA enclosure - an ATA/IDE drive defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.)

The only "better" option is to buy a SATA enclosure with a Thunderbolt port, but those run $80 or more. Worth it, maybe, if you're a videographer, or a photographer with folders full of RAW files, but FW should be good enough for the rest of us. The cost may come down as these trickle into eBay's "used" category, but don't hold your breath.

FW800 is NOT 5 or 10 times the speed of USB 2.0.

FW800 is, also, NOT as fast as the internal bus speed of your computer and your computer's internal hard drive.

FW800 is only a little more than 2 times faster than USB 2.0.

USB 2.0 theoretically tops out at around 42-44 Mbps data throughput.

Real world is that USB 2.0 data speeds top out at between 36-38 Mbps.

This data throughput is also non-contiguous using USB 2.0.

Meaning with USB 2.0, data is transferred in packets and in spurts of data,

Data transfer IS slower using this method of transfer in USB 2.0 connection applications.

The somewhat "good news" with older USB 2.0 drives is that if used with a USB 3.0 interface, that USB 2.0 drive will get slightly faster and will reach/get to the 42-44 Mbps data throughput threshold when operating through a USB 3.0 data connection.

And this is when still using mechanically spinning hard drives.

With regards to mechanically spinning hard drives, FW800's theoretically tops out at between 84-86 Mbps.

The data throughput speeds with both FW400 (theoretical 48 Mbps data throughput, real world thoughout of about 40-42 Mbps) and FW800 are faster, also, as data is transferred as both one continuous and contiguous stream of data. No use of short spurts of contiguous packets of data.

FireWire transfers data a one long continuous linear stream of data.

THAT is the REAL difference between USB 1 and 2 with regards to FireWire.

USB 3.0 protocol, I believe, changed to an all continous data chain throughput, now, putting USB 3.0 and USB-C on the same data transfer throughput "level" as Thunderbolt 1/2.

Thunderbolt is still way faster, though, and can also be used for video signals and supporting other video monitors. USB 3.0 does not support using it for video monitor support.

I now run my older FW800 equipped iMac from a FW800 enclossd SSD and now see data throughput speeds through FW800 surpass this 84-86 Mbps "limitation" at an average of 90-94 Mbps, now.

This is very a noticeable and welcome surprise, if only a 10% increase in data throughput over FW800.

The old throughput limitations of USB 2.0/FW 400/800 must have been caused by delays impossd by the mechanical nature of conventional hard drives.

Delays caused by read/write head movements, spinning up and down of drive data platters, data seek times, etc.

So, such mechanical delays in an SSD.

As best I could discover, Firewire and USB are non-interchangeable forms of data streams, and thus no vendors carry any cables or adapters to interconnect any type of Firewire port to any type of USB Port. 😟

Unfortunately, this is not possible.

A little research on your part would've revealed that FW 800/400 drives are available.

Google's your friend.

You can buy hard drives that have FireWire 800/400 connections on them.

Three that come to mind is

LaCie

OWC (macsales.com) Mercury Pro line of hard drives.

NewerTech.

I have found, in my experiences, that most users buy USB drives because they are cheaper.

USB drives do not have a consistent, continuous streaming of data that FireWire drives have.

In real life, this tends to make FireWire drives data throughput faster.

That is why drives with FireWire connections tend to be more expensive.

I might recommend one of the hard drives shown below from OWC, that I also use. They contain USB 3.0 AND Firewire 800 Ports on each unit, in the left hand column of drives.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

Here's a post from a Seagate forum that points to a gadget (SEAGATE STAE123 GOFLEX DESK V2 DESKTOP ADAPTER) that apparently makes the conversion between Firewire and USB 3 ($40 or so):

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Backup-Plus-and-Seagate-Slim/USB-3-0-to-Firewire-80 0-adapter/m-p/172296

That's not a general-purpose adapter. It's an add-on port specifically for the SeaGate GoFlex Backup Plus. It won't work with any other device.

Regards.

This is on Seagate's accessories listfor the the Backup Plus Desktop Drive. It looks it swaps with the bottom of the desktop drive to replace the one with USB 3.0 plug with a Firewire plug.

"Upgrade the transfer and access speeds between your Backup Plus or GoFlex desktop drive and your Mac® computer with FireWire® 800 connectivity that’s up to 2x faster than USB 2.0. Features an illuminated LED capacity gauge."

Right now you can get one on Amazon for $33.99 + $5.95 shipping, or you can pay Seagate $49.99 + $9.17 shipping.

Erk, I just lost a long post correcting and adding some information. The one I linked on Amazon is the older version, which does the same thing, and which is also cheaper. The link to Seagate's website is for the new version.

It looks like the package usually comes with firewire and usb cables, but the one on Amazon doesn't have them. I've got tons of cables, so I'm going for the one on Amazon.

I'm a little confused as to the conclusion here. Is there no adapter that will work for a drive that uses USB 3 (or Thunderbolt) to connect to Firewire 800? The drive I have is this one

and I need to connect it to a Mac via firewire 800 if possible.

Thank you in advance!