2 fire wire cables for HD?

abzeleney

abzeleney

Active member
Hey everyone,

I just purchased a Fire wire 600 cable for my external harddrive. Before I was using a USB cabe (I KNOW) and it was working ok and it registered the hd on my comp. When I put the fire wire 600 cable in the external harddrive and connected it to the comp, it didn't register at all.

Things to note:

I turned off the hd, unplugged the usb then connected the fire wire cable and then turned it on...,.nothing happened.

The red light was on showing that the hd was trying to find the comp.

I tried both fire wire ports on my iMAC 20" intel core duo


My external hd has two ports for firewire 600...do i need to get another wire in order to make it work?

sorry, it's just really frustrating any suggestions would help.

Andrei
 
nicholasraeburn said:
What the hell is Firewire 600!
Click to expand...

May have found my problem..I think i got a firewire 600 cable instead of firewire 400. confused though because the 600 fits into my comp and my hd perfectly.

6-pin is firewire 600 right?
 
What the hell is Firewire 600!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dude, you got it mixed up with firewire 800.....that's what nicholas is talking about....I think...

It's all good, people make mistakes, from now on it's firewire 800!!
 
Your getting confused between a 6 pin cable and a 4 pin cable i think (one is bigger than the other) but as for firewire standards its either FW 400 OR 800.
 
Yeah, I apoligize.


For the record..Im a mac noob. I just made the transition abouta week ago but have been busy.

Now when I looked at the specs for my iMAC it says it has Firewire 400. Is fire wire 400 a 6pin? I'm just trying to figure out why it isn't working. I plan on taking it back to the store and getting another cable (hoping that's all I need to do). I really don't want to use my usb cable anymore
 
Ok.

Question still hasn't been answered. Do I Need to fire wire cables to make the Hard Drive connect to the computer, or do you think it's just a faulty cable?
 
You only need 1 cable. 6pin or 4 pin. Could be a bad cable if it's not mounting. Is this an off the shelf drive, or did you assemble it yourself?
 
External 300 gig Maxtor HD in an enclosure. Works with my usb, but fire doesn't work...it could be the enclosure, but it might not be. By any chance would you know the speed difference between the 6pin and the usb 2.0?
 
It may be the wire. Did you get a cheap one off eBay possibly? Order from Other World Computing. They're mac specialist. Bought a cable from them and never had a problem again. When I plugged the bad cable into my computer it shut down (my whole computer). I even posted here about the problem and no one had even heard of something like that.

You'd be amazed a what a bad FW can do. Simply "not working" is on the good end of the spectrum - screwing up your FW port is on the bad end. I would tell you to check your port but you don't have another cable do you. Also "Belkin" cables work. Get the thick ones not the cheap thin ones.

-Nate
 
I tried all the ports (two on my computer and tried the two on my hd). I returned the cable and got another one..still doesn't work. Granted, I did by a cheap cable though and my enclouser is second hand, but the guy never used the fw port anyways. I'm off to a computer store to get a good one, and if that doesn't work I'll be concinvinced that it is the enclosure.

Thanks for your thoughts, and suggestions. All post later to tell you what was up.


Andrei
 
Does the drive show up in your System Profile?
Does the drive show up in Disk Utility?
It can show up there without ever mounting, just wondering, if not, it's the enclosure. If so, it could be the drive. Just thinking out loud.
 
Do you have another Firewire device you can check? If another drive or camera works then the port on the drive you have is most likely bad.

-A
 
I have my Video Camera connected via firewire as a preivew device and that still works. I do not have another 6 pin to 6 pin device to check. When I look in the system utility it doesn't give any details, not even for my video camera..which I find a little strange. I'm assuming it's my enclosure. I plan on taking it to somebody's house which has a mac and seeing if it's my firewire port, or the harddrive enclosure...otherwise I may just have to by another enclosure :(

Thanks,
Andrei
 
abzeleney said:
External 300 gig Maxtor HD in an enclosure. Works with my usb, but fire doesn't work...it could be the enclosure, but it might not be. By any chance would you know the speed difference between the 6pin and the usb 2.0?
Click to expand...

I thought for a fact that USB 2.0 was faster than Firewire 400, but guess I was
wrong after I've done a quick search... as follows:

FireWire, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

Hi-Speed USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower data flow control)

Because of technical differences, Firewire is a better bet for transferring uncompressed (raw) video from digital camcorders, even though USB 2.0 has a higher maximum speed (400Mbps vs. 480Mbps).
 
You don't get the full bandwidth published. That's just it's maximum burst rate. Real life rates are slower, but more slower for USB than Firewire. Firewire is actually a network protocal. It's much more efficient than USB. Always go Firewire over USB every time.
 
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