usb1.1 blues...

[adamjay]

as i have now jumped the pond once again from pc to mac (its been a good 5 years since having a mac).. i got myself an 867mhz G4 12" Powerbook.

unfortunately, this particular powerbook model shipped with USB1.1 and not USB2.0.

many of my old pc files are on an external usb2.0 250gb hard drive, of which has a fat32 partition that mac is not liking at all. i've backed them all up to DVD though so no worries there.

my question... is there such a thing as a firewire to usb2.0 converter? i've looked but no success.
and also, i am about to reformat the external drive to mac's file system. will it even be worth having with only usb1.1 on the powerbook? i only use it for archiving work, data backup, etc.

many thanks.

 

[MisterMe]

Re: usb1.1 blues...

Originally posted by adamjay
as i have now jumped the pond once again from pc to mac (its been a good 5 years since having a mac).. i got myself an 867mhz G4 12" Powerbook.

unfortunately, this particular powerbook model shipped with USB1.1 and not USB2.0.

many of my old pc files are on an external usb2.0 250gb hard drive, of which has a fat32 partition that mac is not liking at all. i've backed them all up to DVD though so no worries there.

my question... is there such a thing as a firewire to usb2.0 converter? i've looked but no success.
and also, i am about to reformat the external drive to mac's file system. will it even be worth having with only usb1.1 on the powerbook? i only use it for archiving work, data backup, etc.

many thanks.

From my reading of your post, it seems that FAT32 is your problem and not USB. If that is the case, then FireWire is not going to help you one way or the other.

 

[cubist]

If you reformat it it will be OK, but slow. Wow, 250GB! That's huge...

I don't know of any Firewire to USB 2 converters.

 

[adamjay]

thanks for the input. yea 250GB and its just about full. i produce electronic music, so each track i finish is a 70MB .aiff plus the associated project files, samples, patches, etc... every day of work takes out about a 100MB chunk of my hard drive.

i guess 12MB's per second wont be horribly slow.

 

[adamjay]

Re: Re: usb1.1 blues...

Originally posted by MisterMe
From my reading of your post, it seems that FAT32 is your problem and not USB. If that is the case, then FireWire is not going to help you one way or the other.

yea, i am going to reformat that drive though.
i had to use FAT32 for a specific linux based program that specified FAT32 file systems. but will reformat to mac.

is there any good program (freeware or shareware) that i can use to change the format of the drive without losing its data? it IS backed up, but like i said.. usb1.0 if i lost it it would take days to get 250GB back on there.

 

[gbojim]

I haven't seen a USB2 to Firewire adapter. However, you can get a combination USB/Firewire hub if an external device will work for you.

You will not be able to reformat the drive without destroying the existing data.

 

[TEG]

1) You can buy a new External Case for the Hard Drive. All Hard Drives are ATA or SCSI, yours is most likely ATA. You can buy a Firewire Case, and just switch the drives.

2) You could ask a local Mac dealer (like CompUSA) to do the transfer for you, it may cost like $20, but they will usually do it for you. They may even switch drives in the cases for you too.

3) If you want to hold off on the transfer, get a copy of Virtual PC with at least Windows 98, then you can get the data until you make a desicion.

TEG