Firewire 800 to USB 3.0 adapter?

No, there are no USB to Firewire nor Firewire to USB converters available (the items listed for the Seagate drive are for that drive only). You cannot connect the LaCie drive you list to a Firewire port. You'll have to use USB or a Thunderbolt port.

Regards.

I realize this is all somewhat off topic, but I had to say something to clarify the statement that "the items listed for the Seagate drive are for that drive only". This is untrue - the variosu GoFlex options are all just direct plug SATA adapters.

The Seagate GoFlex adapters are self-contained SATA to USB, SATA to FireWire or SATA to Thunderbolt bridges. The bare GoFlex drive, of whatever generation, is nothing more than a 2.5" or 3.5" SATA hard drive in an enclosure that exposes the power and data ports on the back of the drive.

The 2.5" GoFlex adapters supply power to a 2.5" drive through FireWire, USB or Thunderbolt directly, while the 3.5" adapter is a larger base which supplies power to a 3.5" drive via a wall wart.

I have regularly used both the 2.5" USB 3.0 and 2.5" FireWire 800 adapters interchangeably with Seagate and bare SATA drives, both rotational and solid-state, and they are perfectly adequate to interface bare 2.5" drives with the arbitrary host system of your choice.

The 3.5" GoFlex bases supply less reliable DC power and Seagate has also shipped a large number of high failure rate and DOA drives in the 3.5" GoFlex kits. I would stay away from those.

Kind regards,

Nathan Phoenix

Nathan

I'm still confused. I looked at the image of the Seagate adapter and it looks very specialised. (http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/backup-plus-desk /)

I have 1TB drives (eg the WD Passport) that are USB3.0 but at the other end of the cable, they only have standard USB2.0 plugs. I'm in the same boat at the OP (JD Lee) in that my iMac has 2 x firewire and 3 x USB2.0 ports.

Is there some way I can make use of the faster USB3.0 transfer rate on the portable drives - or make use of the firewire connectivity on the back of the Mac?

Cheers.

There is no converter from USB3 to FireWire, that's as in none.

Use FW drives if you want more speed than USB2 offers.

Its not simply a matter of converting the ends of a cable to fit the different ports. Firewire and USB are fundamentally different communication protocols - a firewire bus simply cannot "talk" to a USB device and vice versa.

Thank you. See further question to Michael Black if you can help pls.

Thank you both. Just a further question then. Just by looking at the USB cable, is there any way of telling whether it is USB 2 or 3? I ask because the fitting on the drive itself is shaped differently but the USB end looks like a bog standard USB2.0.

And am I correct in saying the USB3 port is coloured blue?

Yes. USB3 ports are blue.

MichelPM wrote:

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.

Unfortunately, your comments re: speed are not correct.

A little research on your part would have revealed that USB 3.0 is faster in every way (sustained transfer rates included) than firewire 800. This is why apple dropped FW800.

Google's your friend:

http://youtu.be/ZqNWYVJqj3E?t=3m51s

http://youtu.be/t4jiEY1JgOI?t=1m16s

I'm a video editor and also deal with multi track audio so consistent transfer rates are all I'm interested in. I can confirm these results on multiple machines (and both macs and pcs) as can anyone who has used both. I didn't think there was any need to respond to the OP's very polite question in the patronising way you did, but if you do I'd suggest getting your own facts straight first.

Additionally the reason firewire is more expensive is simply because it never became a mass market thing due to initial excessive licensing fees: http://firewireexpert.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/dollar-deal-that-almost-killed-fir ewire.html. Not because of the design of the interface.

usb is a pulling 1 master many slave system that intel made

firewire is a multimaster non pulling system which is based on the signaling protocol of old Scsi

typically firewire would use a lot less cpu time then usb and firewire 400 would in real world performance have a much higher sustained transfer rate then usb 2 even though it was 480Mbit/sec vs. firewires 400Mbit/sec

transferring a system such as firewire to usb3 would likely result in such a huge overhead of converting it could even end up being as slow as usb2 anyway

and would require maybe AC power and so much action conversion it would cost an arm and a leg

this one is your best bet for usb3 on a mac without usb3 ports

http://store.apple.com/us/product/HB865ZM/A/belkin-thunderbolt-express-dock

because thunderbolt is pretty much a displayport signal multiplexed with pci-express and that mean making a converter would be close to as easy as making a pci-express usb3 board

but that does not mean this belkin product is cheap 😝

Hi JDLee,

It's months since you asked this question but I see that there are options now with expensive USB 3.0 to Firewire 800 hubs.

NitroAV 4-Port FireWire 800/1394b + 4-Port USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Professional Hub/Repeater

Best regards,

cms

RandomMacGuy,

Sorry to disappoint, but the NitroAV hub/repeater is just that, a hub/repeater, not a "USB 3.0 to FireWire 800" anything.

It's just a USB 3.0 hub and a FireWire repeater together in the same case. It does not perform any conversion or bridging between the two protocols, and it requires both USB 3.0 and FireWire connections to the host computer. USB and FireWire devices remain on two independent peripheral networks.

The NitroAV hub/repeater may be a convenience for some users, as it reduces the number of black boxes on the desk, but it is not an adapter and would not allow a device with only a FireWire port to use USB 3.0 devices, or vice versa.

Nathan

BTW, to CSound1,

Yes. USB3 ports are blue.

Not always. This is a convension but not a standard, as is the presence of the initials "SS" for "SuperSpeed". USB 3.0 or 3.1 ports may meet one or both visual conventions, or (sometimes) neither. As an example, see section 4 of Apple Knowledgebase article HT5172 (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5172#4):

Some USB computer ports have a blue insert. Why don't I see blue inserts on my Mac's USB ports?

Some manufacturers use a blue insert to designate a USB 3 port or device. All USB ports on Macs that supports USB 3 are USB 3 capable and do not have blue inserts.

Apple has since adopted the blue insert convention on at least some machines, but I do not know off the top of my head which ones may still have unmarked ports. The best way to be sure on models from transitional years is to look at the USB section of the System Profiler report.

You can determine whether a port is USB 1.0/2.0 or 3.0 by visual inspection, however. USB 3.0 ports contain an extra set of five recessed contacts (consisting of two differential pairs and one ground) which are visible above the legacy USB pins, as shown here:

USB 3.x consists in reality of two discrete buses. One is a legacy USB 1.x/2.x bus (using the four standard pins). The other, USB 3.x specific bus is a physically separate, full duplex channel using the five new pins as seen above. USB 3.x devices are mandated to fall back to USB 2.x function if no 3.x bus is found, but the data transfer methods are entirely different between the two protocols, with USB 3.x using high speed differential signalling more like SATA.

I hope this helps.

Nathan

Hi Nathan,

Thank you for quickly explaining that I was completely wrong in my post.

I wish I could find a delete button to remove that incorrect information in my first post.

I'm also sad that this isn't a way to connect USB 3.0 and Firewire 800 devices together.

Best regards,

cms