Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with firewire

Do I have to get a new computer to get an iPhone?

mccxxiii — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:23:43 -0800

Is there some kind of adapter I can get that will let me plug a USB 2.0 item into a Firewire slot on a Mac Powerbook G4? I have a Powerbook G4 with a Firewire 400 plug-hole and only a USB 1.0 plug-hole, and I want to get a new iPhone. The new iPhone requires USB 2.0.

Is there something I can get that will turn my Firewire 400 into a USB 2.0, or at least let me plug one thing into another? I don't care if the speed is degraded just a bit. (I understand that USB 2.0 goes to 480, where my Firewire only goes to 400.)

Or could I somehow take out the USB 1.0 innards and replace them with a USB 2.0 card? Would that be crazy expensive?

There's so much life left in this PB, and I've got plenty of RAM and an upgraded hard drive. I don't want to get a whole new computer just to get an iPhone.

On the other hand, I really want an iPhone ...

How many hard drives does it take, before WinXP can see them?

jadepearl — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:42:29 -0800

External hard showing "weird". Better known as, sharing an external/portable hard drive between osx and winxp. I have tried out no less than 3 of these Lacie external hard drives.

They are formatted FAT32 and register perfect on my macs at home. However on 2 WinXP machines they register as a regular drive, are listed as "full" and nothing can be loaded or read from them. This all started because they initially could not be found on the winxp though device manager "saw" them just fine and disk managment found it "healthy". I got it enabled and allocated a drive. Now it does not show in disk management. This is what I have done so far:

1) Reformatted one on a mac for pc -- still not "mounted" though seen by device manager. Forced allocation using disk management. Unable to format on the PC to NTFS after it mounted. Unable to read or write because "full" or not recognized;

2) Plugged in a "virgin" FAT32 drive after forced allocation and it can be seen but now only registering as a drive with no further info and again, "full" cannot read nor write nor found by disk management;

3) MacDrive 7 unable to find or read the drives initially until I forced allocation and again, no read nor write nor formatting. App keeps asking where the mac drive is;

WinXP service pack 2 on my machine; hard drives connected via USB 2.0; Novell Zenworks and network drives are a part of my environment.

The drives are new and Lacie is generally a reputable firm. FAT32 should be able to be read by a WinXP machine. This is a consistent problem after trying 3 drives. Any advice would be nice.

Speaker vs Hard Disk

armoured-ant — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:23:20 -0800

I have an external firewire hard disk sitting on top on a powered monitor speaker on my desk here. Is this a terrible idea? Will it shorten the life of the drive? What's a safe distance? The drive is a MyBook, and the speaker is a Tapco S5. Thanks folks!

Firewire Won't Detect Camcorder

muckster — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:48:53 -0800

Totally boring firewire question: I had to reinstall windows xp, and now the system won't see my camcorder. It's a Panasonic GS-120 connected through firewire to an HP desktop running a slimmed-down version of SP2. In the device manager, I see a "Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller" with up-to-date drivers, but plugging the camera into either of the firewire ports doesn't bring up the plug-and-play notification. I'm using a 6-to-4 pin cable. The same camera is detected without problems when I connect it to a Vista laptop with a 4-to-4 pin cable.

I searched pretty hard for drivers etc but googling this stuff is a complete mess. Thanks for any ideas on what to try to fix this.

Can I output my screen display via firewire?

razdrez — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:43:26 -0800

Can I display my screen output via firewire? It'd be nice if I could play, say, netflix on-demand movies just by hooking up a firewire cable between my pc and my "converter box". I just bought a tablet pc that I'll be using as a direct-to-disk recorder for my video camera. So, I'll be able to play DV video over firewire to my tv, using an old camcorder as a converter (which I'll later rewire into a firewire-to-video converter box).

It seems like Macs can at least convert other videos to a firewire stream using some Quicktime magic:
Exporting QuickTime Movies with Simple Video Out X

But is there anything like that for XP? Or something more advanced, like a video driver that automatically converts your screen display to a firewire stream?

Firewire for laptop

TigerCrane — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:36:28 -0800

Can I put firewire on a laptop if I don't have a PCMIA slot? I have a laptop (PC) that has a weird card slot. I think its called a "mini PC" card. It has a big notch in the card. In anycase, its not PCMIA. All the firewire cards are PCMIA. Is there anything I can do?

If I get an external harddrive enclosure that has a firewire port, can I go from the video camera directly to the external drive?

How to daisy-chain an iPod to my ext. FireWire drive?

kchristidis — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:17:29 -0800

Daisy-chaining my iPod to my ext. Firewire drive -- I can't seem to get this to work. I've got an external Firewire drive hooked directly to the MacBook. When I connect (daisy-chain) my 3G iPod to the external drive, the iPod powers up for a second and then abruptly shuts down.

Is it a case of not enough power throughout the chain? If so, which one's to blame, the MacBook (for not giving enough power from the start) or the ext. drive (for consuming too much power)?

Is there something I can try to have the two working together simultaneously, or do I have to buy a Firewire hub?

(And a rhetoric question: if you can't daisy-chain two Firewire devices on a modern computer, how are you supposed to connect up to 63?)

Thanks in advance for your help!

How to share loads of peripherals between two or more computers.

swift — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:36:56 -0800

I'm trying to simplify my computer wiring situation, and could use some strategic advice. I have a bunch of devices, and 3 machines. How can 2 (or preferably all 3) machines share all the peripherals? My little KVM doesn't quite cut it. Here's the list:

USB keyboard
2 VGA monitors
USB mouse
USB printer
USB scanner
Speakers (mini-jack)
Firewire webcam
USB microphone
USB card reader
Firewire iPod
periphals as yet unpurchased..

Mac Mini
Dell Precision
and bonus, PowerPC

Why are transfers to my external firewire drive so slow?

Venadium — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:14:03 -0800

What kind of transfer speeds should I be expecting from my new external Firewire 800 drive? I just hooked up my new WD MyBook Pro (the one with 3 different interfaces) to my Macbook Pro. After deleting all the junk that came installed on the drive, I started transferring over some of my stuff, starting with about 8gigs worth of backed-up DVDs (it was actually 2 DVD disc images). It took less than 5 minutes to transfer, but crapped out on me right before it finished giving me some cryptic error. I looked it up a bit and it seems to have something to do with the fact that the drive was still formatted in FAT32, which I would have changed anyway had I noticed that. So I reformatted the drive to HFS+ using Disc Utility, and started the transfers over again. This time it took about 20 minutes to transfer the same amount of data. After that was finished, I transfered about 3.5gigs worth of pictures and again this took longer than I would have expected, about 10 minutes.

Also, even after the transfers completed, the circular LED thing on the front of the enclosure is still rotating, which according to the manual means the drive is in use. Could this be related? Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on?

Video capture on a ThinkPad T42?

stleric — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:03:03 -0800

Is my ThinkPad laptop capable of video capture? I've got a ThinkPad T42 laptop that's getting a bit long in the tooth, but since I've got a DVD+/-R drive, I've been curious if it could handle video capture well enough to convert some old VHS tapes to DVDs without having issues with dropouts, poor frame rates, or errors.

It's a Centrino (Pentium 4-M) 1.6 GHz processor, currently 512 MB of memory (I'll probably upgrade to 1.5 GB soon), 5400 RPM 80 gig hard drive (I've got an external 7200 RPM 250 GB that I'd probably store the video on), Radeon 7500 video card (32MB), two USB 2.0 slots, but no built-in Firewire ports.

So my main questions are:
1. Can my computer handle TV/DVD-quality video capture, or would I just be disappointed attempting it?
2. Are there any worthwhile USB 2.0 video capture peripherals with RCA plugs (and possibly others) available, or should I stick to Firewire peripherals?
3. If I'm stuck with Firewire, would video capture through a PCMCIA card with Firewire ports be a reasonable solution?

Thanks, everybody!

Help me configure the ultimate Mac OSX backup solution.

drgonzo2k2 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:04:57 -0800

Help me configure the ultimate Mac OSX backup solution! I just received two very nice external firewire hard drives for Christmas. My plan is to place my music collection on one drive and use the other drive to have a perfect copy of all my music in case the original fails. As I add to my collection every couple of days or so, I'd really like to automate this to create regular backups. My plan was to have both drives connected and powered on, with the backup drive unmounted. The OS would mount it when needed to do the backup and then unmount it again when it was finished. I thought I could accomplish this with SuperDuper! and its scheduling function, and for the most part it works. The only problem is when my wife logs in the system mounts the backup drive. Then spotlight wants to index it, and if I log in it seems to get stuck in this weird phase of mounting and unmounting.

If anyone could tell me step-by-step how to make this work and have the drive ONLY be mounted when it is needed to perform a backup, I would greatly appreciate it. If I can get this to work I'd like to do the same thing with my system drive and a 3rd firewire drive that I have.

Need to transfer lots of data from old internal drives to new external drive.

arnicae — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:04:59 -0800

I have two IDE hard drives in my closet, and I need to get the info on them into a new external drive. What's the best way to do this? Upon selling my old Mac G4/400 desktop in 05/2006, I took the hard drives out and put them in static-proof bags. These drives have about 200gb worth of mp3s and 250gb worth of movies on them. My ideal world would involve an external ESATA (SATAII) drive connected to my new MacBook Pro via ExpressCard that would house all of this old info.

To recap: two IDE drives -> one ESATA drive (intended for right now to be a 750gb Seagate FreeAgent) via ExpressCard

Is there any easier way than to find someone with a desktop tower that has spare bays open and the internal hardware available to xfer this data? My other option I guess would be to house the two existing drives in an external fw800 enclosure and xfer the data through my laptop to the new drive.

Are there any better options? Thanks!

Will attaching an external drive to my Mac Mini improve booting time?

salmacis — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:36:28 -0800

Will attaching an external Firewire drive to my G4 Mac Mini make a big difference to booting speeds and application loading times? I'd like to use an external Firewire drive as the default boot device. I think the internal drive is a crappy 4200rpm 2.5" 60Gb drive. Booting is pretty slow. Loading applications is pretty slow. How much (if any) of a speed increase could I expect? The new drive will be faster, but will the Firewire 400 interface counteract this?

Apple: Delete Files On Another Mac?

davidinmanhattan — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:52:07 -0800

How do I delete files on one Mac that I am connecting to via Firewire target disk mode? My five month old MacBook Pro's display is dead. I woke up this morning to find the display just didn't. Apple support was, um, unsupportive (an "I'm so sorry" would have been nice, but I digress) so I spent $40 on a Firewire cable and now have access to my MacBook Pro via my PowerBook. Tomorrow I will take the MacBook to the Apple store, but in the mean time I have very sensitive documents on the MacBook that I don't want anyone to see. (OK, I'm stupid, but who can remember every password to every site, so I kept a list, and there are bank account numbers, and, honestly, my personal journal, which, while not terribly exciting, still is personal.)

I can copy files and backup whatever I need, but I can't figure out how to delelte.

I just want to delete some files before I hand over my (digital) life to someone.

Any ideas? I have unsuccessfully scoured the Internet, but no luck!

Thanks!

Lookin' for a new external that will satisfy

dino terror — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:22:35 -0800

Leopard / Time Machine / External Drive Filter: Looking for a new 2.5" external. How big should it be if my internal is 120 gigs? Firewire or USB? My initial thinking is that USB is more common, I can plug it into PC's if I care to make an NTFS partition, and I've seen drives that allow you to daisy chain other USB things through the drive. But being relatively new to Macs, are there things Macs can do with Firewire(400?) that they can't do with USB?

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about?

chunking express — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:43:34 -0800

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about? I want to put a Western Digital 500 GB SATA drive in one. I'm interested in enclosures people have actually used. (I can find reviews online myself.)

Firewire connection problem?

anticlock — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:00:57 -0800

I have an external hard drive that I'm unable write data to using the firewire connection. I have an external hard drive that I'm unable write data to using the firewire connection. It is connected to my notebook via a 6-pin firewire 400 cable into a pcmcia cardbus. As soon as I connected the drive, the computer recognized it as formated and ready to go. However, I am able to write data to the drive using the USB connection. (operating system is XP)

The first time I tried to write to the drive I got the error: "The request could not be performed because of a I/O device error." I followed the manufacturer's solution recommended here. Device manager -- Policies -- optimize for performance. Enable write caching.

When I next tried to write data to the drive I got a "delayed write failure error". The manufacturer's recommendation referred to this Microsoft support page, which reads: the cause is "enable write caching on the disk" feature for your disk is turned on" and recommends turning it off, contradicting the previous recommendation.

They also list other causes: Your Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) hard disk controller is configured in either of the following ways:
You are using a 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.
Your BIOS settings are configured to force faster UDMA modes.

I haven't delved into the BOIS settings or the registry and I'm not inclined to. But before I persue this any further, I wanted to see if anyone had any suggstions or could point out some simple solution that I'm overlooking. Thanks.

Four hard drives. One problem.

ImJustRick — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:40:52 -0800

What can I do with 4 big IDE drives? I have four biggish IDE drives (is that what they're called?).

I had planned to buy a Firewire 4-bay enclosure and make a RAID out of them, but 4-bay enclosures are spendy and noisy.

I keep seeing deals on 1-bay enclosures ($22 on DealMac! Yeah!); if I pick up four of thoise is there some way I can turn them all into one big drive? Specifically what I want to do is store all my movies and MP3s on one huge server that I can access throughout my house.

Or is there some other way I can use them?

Is there a firewire equivalent of a USB memory stick?

GuyZero — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:46:18 -0800

Is there a firewire equivalent of a USB memory stick? That is, something flash memory based that would automount on a windows PC as a mass storage device but that had a 6- or 4-pin firewire connector instead of a USB connector?

Where's the Fire? Using Open Ports

sjuhawk31 — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:39:37 -0800

PortFilter: What to do with open Firewire ports. I have two open Firewire ports on the back of my Apple Cinema display...and it seems that any and all peripherals released nowadays come in USB 2.0 versions only. That's fine; I have a nice USB hub that I use for that. But how can I take advantage of the speedy Firewire connections that are currently unused? An ideal solution would be to have a USB hub that connected to the Firewire port. But any cool peripherals would be considered.

Why can't my PC see my Camera? Works on the Mac.

lotusmonster — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 07:19:38 -0800

Why can't my PC see my Camera? Works on the Mac. It's not the cable, the software, the computer, or the camera. I have a Canon HV20 HD video camera that only has a firewire output. Link to camera specs. When I take it to the computer lab and connect it to the Macs there, it works perfectly. However, my desktop PC does not recognize it. I have installed the software that came with the camera. And I can connect my external hard drive to the Desktop through the same firewire port, so I know it is not a hardware issue. And since I used the same cable at the Mac lab, I know it is not the cable.

Any ideas as to why it will work on the Mac and not the PC?

I tried Canon Customer Service already....

thanks

IP over Firewire in Vista

nervestaple — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:36:12 -0800

I see that Microsoft has quietly dropped IP networking over Firewire/1394 from Windows Vista. Is there any possible way to enable it, using third-party drivers or software?

Why won't WinXP recognize my WD MyBook by firewire?

RossWhite — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:52:51 -0800

How can I get my Western Digital MyBook drive to show up when connecting with firewire? I've connected with USB 2.0 to my WinXP machine and installed the firewire drivers that came on the hard drive. Rebooted, then plugged in the drive with firewire. Can't get Windows to recognize the drive. I've also installed the firewire drivers on the Western Digital site. Still no luck. Any suggestions?

How to set up a direct connection between MacBook Pro and PC?

zenja72 — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:36:36 -0800

How can I set up a direct connection between my older pc that has windows xp and my new macbook pro? The problem is, my college only allows 1 connection to the internet per person in a dorm, so using a router/splitter is out the question. Since the ethernet slot on my PC is going to be used by an internet hook-up, how can I easily share data between the two sans ethernet (at least without the ethernet slot on the PC)?

Is there a usb-firewire or usb-usb crossover cable out there? I haven't had any luck searching the web.

Dead or just mostly dead?

Gilbert — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:05:34 -0800

My external drive has gone pfft. Now what? Mac user with a 200 GB Maxtor firewire drive. Drive is suddenly not appearing in the finder. Disk utility can't find it either. A couple of questions:

1. Is it really all gone? One partition of the drive was just a backup of my system, but the other had some files of a more *personal* nature that I'd really like to try and retrieve, if possible. Is there any other utility that might help me at least let me peek into the file directory and save some stuff?

2. What's my best bet for my next drive? This one failed with little warning, so I'm not inclined to get another Maxtor.