Connecting firewire HDD

[willie45]

I have a number of HDDs with lots of music on them which I paid a fair bit for over the years. Some of them have a Firewire 800 connection on them.

Now I have finally bought a MacBook Pro with just USB-C ports and a Mini with both USB3 and USB-C ports on it I'm looking for a way to use them with it. Is there a simple cable or at least some sort of way to connect these?

I'd settle for either a USB3, or preferably, USB-C connection

Thanks

W

 

[JackRabbitJobs]

Apple sells them.

 

[willie45]

From what Apple told me they use two adapters, one on connected to the other and it costs £79 for both. It looks like an expensive and not very elegant solution. I was hoping for a single cable.

If that's not possible then I guess the only way is the Apple solution and I'll need to add to my adapter/dongle collection. In this case the HDDs are old so i suppose it's sort of almost forgiveable but TBH all the connectors I need to cludge together their products has a dedicated drawer in my study which is not.

I wonder how much they make out of adapters. Changed days since I bought my first mac all these years ago.

 

[joevt]

If your FireWire enclosure doesn't include a USB port, then you need to move the HDD to a different enclosure or buy an expensive Thunderbolt to FireWire solution.

Do you know if the HDD are SATA or IDE? 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch? I think USB enclosures are relatively inexpensive compared to Thunderbolt.

 

[monokakata]

I agree with @joevt. I've done what he suggests, for SATA drives anyway. Open up the FW drive case, pop out the drive, pop it into an inexpensive USB enclosure.

If that suits, then you might buy a large-capacity new bare drive, and copy over the stuff from the ex-FW drives onto it.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

You need to prepare an "inventory" of the firewire drives you have.
That is, you need to ascertain if the enclosures the drives are in are easily "open-able"... or not.

IF any of the firewire enclosures you have also have USB ports, try accessing them that way -- the ports are probably USB2, but you can still "get at" the data.

For those enclosures that are easily openable:
You could open them, take the drives out, and then access the drives inside using a USB3/SATA docking station. These are cheap and work with both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA-based drives.

For those enclosure that aren't easily openable:
You have the choice of "prying them apart" (which will break the case but if you're careful you can extract the drive)
or
Get the Apple "cable-combo" that you need:
1. Apple thunderbolt2-to-firewire800 adapter
and
2. Apple thunderbolt3-to-thunderbolt2 adapter.

A considerable amount of work here, but sometimes one just has to do, what one has to do, to reach the goal...

You might be able to pick up the two adapter/cables above on ebay, used at lower-than-new prices...