Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

DeuceDeuce

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2007
821
1
San Dimas, CA
Does anyone now where I can get a Firewire cable to USB cable or some sort of adapter that will work for a small external hardrive that is powered by the firewire cable?
 
There's no such thing as a firewire->USB cable. Your external hard drive will either have a jack for a power cord that the manufacturer sells for it, or you will need to power it via firewire or USB (you didn't say which). Those are your options. As a side note, there are some USB "Y" cables that can draw power from two USB ports out to one USB port.
 
What really sucks is that a new USB case for the hard drive will likely cost less than the adapter.

aka, $10 case or $99 adapter.
 
This is news to me...I've never seen one before, or even heard the possibility mentioned (only the lack thereof)...just googled and came up with this:

http://www.usbfirewire.com/Parts/rr-527950.html

And some other similar ones, but everything seems to say that they're windows-only. I was given to understand that the differences in architecture between buses precluded the possibility, but I guess not. Still, he's out of luck here if he wants to use it with his Mac. Unless yours works, Skil. Does it?
 
This is news to me...I've never seen one before, or even heard the possibility mentioned (only the lack thereof)...just googled and came up with this:

http://www.usbfirewire.com/Parts/rr-527950.html

And some other similar ones, but everything seems to say that they're windows-only. I was given to understand that the differences in architecture between buses precluded the possibility, but I guess not. Still, he's out of luck here if he wants to use it with his Mac. Unless yours works, Skil. Does it?

Wow, that thing is really huge and annoying looking.

Personally, I don't have any FireWire peripherals to plug in to test it out... :eek:

Here's a picture of it, though. The wording is "USB AM-" and below that "IEEE 1394 4P".
 
Only camcorders - and not hard drives, especially ones that draw power - tend to use 4-pin ports, so I think the OP may be out of luck there either way.
 
There may be adapters that pass through power, but there's no such thing as a simple USB<->FireWire cable that allows data transfer. The adapter in the link provided TheStrudel (assuming it works) must have some circuitry to be able to transfer data from one connection type to the other.
 
Yep. I agree with Sun Baked's idea to just get a new enclosure.

That and it seems like the price went up, the $119 price for the above linked out-of-stock item is way more than a cheap ass USB case.

Especially for something that won't work on the Mac.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.