Firewire 800 to USB adaptor?

This is a good place to ask, but when I looked for a Firewire 800 to USB cable yesterday, I couldn't find one. If the USB port id broken, would a Firewire 800 to Firewire 800 cable work?

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firewire 800 to firewire 800 cable

Firewire to USB adapters that have existed have exhibited very poor performance.

The only options that are really viable

are

USB-C to Thunderbolt 2

Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800

Thunderbolt 2 to USB 3 or earlier.

Firewire 800 to Firewire 400.

Macs with only a Displayport connection can't use Thunderbolt for data transfer.

Damaged ports may be indicative of CMOS batteries that need replacement. Some Macs only have a CMOS capacitor.

Have a certified tech determine which one you may have. Or lookup your machine on http://www.ifixit.com/ if out of warranty and legacy.

There are Thunderbolt to FireWire adapters around.

I'm not aware of FireWire to Thunderbolt, nor of FireWire to USB.

Thunderbolt is a way to extend a PCIe bus out of a computer, and there's no way that FireWire can provide anything close to that. FireWire to USB might be able to map the host FireWire traffic to specific USB devices, but that'll be a project. And FireWire is much slower than is USB-3, so there'll be performance discussions and potentially performance issues there.

Pragmatically, you'll probably be able to double or triple the storage capacity of that existing G-DRIVE storage box with a replacement USB-3 storage device and for not much more than the cost of the necessary adapters, assuming that you can find or can build what you're looking for.

Last I checked, a couple of terabytes of USB-3 HDD storage was well under US$100. A couple of Apple adapters in a dongle chain necessary to reach that G-DRIVE would put you up in that same price range.

As for the existence of any FireWire adapters beyond what's available, FireWire host ports and FireWire device ports are getting scarce. If you can use or can add a FireWire host port to a system as is possible on a few older Macs, then the PCIe or PCI-X bus can usually support other I/O adapters internally. Or externally on most (all?) Thunderbolt-equipped Macs, via the Thunderbolt connection and an external PCIe or PCI-x cage, and install PCIe or PCI-X adapters in that cage. Though that external PCIe or PCI-X cage will not be cheap.

And if there's a specific hardware requirement for that existing G-DRIVE storage, then scrounging a non-broken G-DRIVE enclosure and swapping parts around to get that USB working is probably going to be more expeditious than scrounging or building a path for that FireWire-based approach, too.

You are welcome. I am very familiar with the difficulty accessing the back ports on an iMac. Would a Thunderbolt to USB work?

thunderbolt to usb cable