My desktop Imac has ports for Thunderbolt, Firewire, and USB2. I need a new external hard drive right away because my old one crashed. All the new ones on the Apple site seem to be USB C or USB 3. I'm not sure which is compatible. Can anybody help?
Thank you.
Morrie Ross
It appears as if you have an older iMac.
Thunderbolt drives are the fastest and most expensive drives to purchase.
FireWire 800 connected hard drives are the second fastest hard drives for your model iMac.
USB 3.0 drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0 connections and will be slower on a USB 2.0 connection.
For the best quality hard drives possible for your iMac and various connection, look at this Mac-centric site for quality drives for any Mac external connection protocol.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage
Good Luck to You!
It appears as if you have an older iMac.
Thunderbolt drives are the fastest and most expensive drives to purchase.
FireWire 800 connected hard drives are the second fastest hard drives for your model iMac.
USB 3.0 drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0 connections and will be slower on a USB 2.0 connection.
For the best quality hard drives possible for your iMac and various connection, look at this Mac-centric site for quality drives for any Mac external connection protocol.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage
Good Luck to You!
Just to make sure we are not incorrectly guessing at which iMac you have, please confirm you sub-model. Do "About this Mac" from your Apple menu and tell us what the resulting window shows for sub-model, the information that includes a year that I've indicated with the red arrow in the image below:
I also add my support for external drives from OWC. Having thrashed my way through most "name-brand" drives with varying degrees of grief on Macs, we now use OWC drives exclusively. Zero issues. For our desktop Macs we use the 3.5-ich drive Elite Pros that are self-powered (more reliable, IMHO) and I have a Elite Pro Mini on my MacBook Pro for travel.
USB-C and USB-3 will be compatible. USB-C will need an adapter to go from USB-C to regular USB. USB-3 uses the same connector as USB-2 though. Note that transfer speeds will be limited to USB-2 in both cases.
You can of course try getting a Thunderbolt 2 Hard drive but those tend to be more expensive. Though they will offer a higher transfer speed than USB-2.
OWC ThunderBolt 2 compatible External Drive - Mac Sales.com
Don't think anybody is making Firewire drives anymore.
Get an USB 3 drive.
(163708)
What would you recommend?
Thanks
OWC still has a line of external FireWire hard drives/SSDs.
MichelPM wrote:
OWC still has a line of external FireWire hard drives/SSDs.
I stand corrected. Good to know.
I second the recommendation for OWC drives - I have four of them currently (and three are the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini).
what kind of port for external hard drive
