Not enough FireWire Power?

Is you MBP running of AC power or battery? Not that it should make a difference but it may. Regardless, I would contact AppleCare as the power provided shuold not have changed.

Howdy!
I'm looking at the same possible problem. I have not purchased a bus powered external hard drive, yet. I have MBP 17 core duo, not the new core 2 duo.
I've looked at http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ComboGB.php

AC adapter optional
Most FireWire and USB ports provide enough juice to power ComboGB, so most users prefer to use ComboGB without an AC adapter for maximum portability. For users who prefer an AC adapter or who must use one with their computer, an AC adapter is available separately.

You will need an AC adapter (or use the included USB power cable) if the port you are plugging into does not provide enough power for ComboGB. This includes all 4 pin FireWire hosts (such as Sony iLink which provides no power at all) and some USB ports.

In most situations, the provided USB power cable can power the drive and pass data at the same time. Alternately, the USB power cable can be used for power only so you may use the USB cable for power and still use a FireWire cable for data.

For yet another configuration option, WiebeTech's Cable-32 is a smaller USB power cable (with no USB pass through) and is an optional power cable for ComboGB.

This setup, with USB power and Firewire data transfer, is interesting. But my research has not 100% comfirmed this option. However, it seems that the external hard drive needs to be a Hitachi drive.
http://www.barefeats.com/mbcd7.html

ALTERNATE STORAGE EXPANSION OPTIONS
If you want to further expand storage on your MacBook Pro, a cool way to do it is with a bus powered FireWire 800 enclosure with a SATA notebook drive inside. (If you go pure SATA enclosure or use the USB 2 port, you'll have to have an AC adapter.) Check with Wiebetech, TransIntl, and OWC for bus powered FW800 notebook enclosures that accept SATA notebook drives.

I wanted to bring this to your attention and I look forward to your comments.

Mark

mbp 17 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I have a core 2 duo and fireWire has problems . if I have 3 lacies on line they dont power up , I have to plug one by one , something isn't working.

They can provide power for later devices in the chain assuming that the bus has enough power to offer in the first place.

However in this case (three bus powered devices in a single chain) you would be hard pressed to get enough power out of a Desktop firewire port...

You are dealing with limited amperage. When you are dealing with a sequential circuit where you need to connect through the last device before the circuit can be completed back into the computer, you are dividing the avaliable electrical energy equally between all devices. While it "could" work with two of them at a time, adding a third in series could reduce the electrical energy to each device causing all to fail simultaneously.

In truth, this is a good thing because running a hard disk below voltage can burn out the motor very quickly in a best case scenario, and in the worst not be able to provide a controlled electromagnetic field to properly read/write states to the disc surface resulting in data loss.

Hi , thanks .
another thing that happesns is that if I shut down the mac with power cord in , hrad drives dont switch of , is this normal ? I have to unpluge the mac .

Thanks

leo, i am in the same boat as you. i have metric halo uln-2 that functioned via bus power on the following machines:

g4 400
12" 1ghz powerbook
15" 1.67 powerbook
12" 1ghz ibook
dual 2.3 g5 tower

but will not bus power on a c2d mbp (15").

this is an issue that is floating to the surface. lots of audio guys are finding their devices no long bus power.

Hey Leo,
What brand/manufacture of hard drive do you have in your enclosure?
Just checking.
But I find the powered by USB, but data transfer by firewire b interesting.
But of course, I have yet to find anybody that uses this type of set up.
Mark

mbp 17 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I too have 17"C2D & mobile HD. Regardless of there being power to the MBP or running off battery I have no trouble mounting and working with my mobile drive (LaCei Rugged All-Terrain Drive). And I have never used this drive with any power going to the drive other than through the FW 800 port.

I think that this is more likely a drive issue or your FW ports may be out of whack.

So, no this is not normal.

Hello all,

I've been running a Seagate ext HDD through a Vantec chassis now for quite some time (USB) without problems. I wanted the better performance of FW, so I bought the ViPowER USB/FW400/FW800 chassis. When my MBP is not powered by the AC adapter, the drive spins up for a few seconds, and then just die. This is really a pain, as I don't always want to power my MBP when using the external HDD (which has my Parallels VM on).

I will try it again when the MBP is plugged in, to see what happens.

Anyone know of a solution to this problem yet?

Thanks

sorry to split hairs but it will be a parrelel circuit not series.

Some people have the same problem with USB , and the final result was the enclosure was asking to much poower for the MBP, soon the put hte HD in a diferent enclosure it's was working .