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How do I connect firewire 800 hard drive to my new imac

How do I connect a firewire 800 hard drive to my new iMac which has no firewire ports of any kind


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Feb 21, 2020 8:07 AM

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Posted on Feb 21, 2020 8:31 AM

That's a very difficult question to answer. Apple makes a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 adapter but makes it clear that this adapter works with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 ports. Your new Mac portably has Thunderbolt 3 ports. Apple also makes a Thunderbolt 3-to-Thunderbolt/Thunderbolt 2 adapter. Using those two adapters in series would get you to Thunderbolt 3-to-Firewire 800 BUT I don't know if it would actually work or not. There are a number of Thunderbolt 3 Docks on the market that include a Firewire 800 port but they are not cheap. It all depends upon how important it is for you to keep those Firewire 800 drives in service. It would likely be more cost effective to buy a new USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt 3 hard drive to replace the Firewire 800 old one.

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Feb 21, 2020 8:31 AM in response to framefiller

That's a very difficult question to answer. Apple makes a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 adapter but makes it clear that this adapter works with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 ports. Your new Mac portably has Thunderbolt 3 ports. Apple also makes a Thunderbolt 3-to-Thunderbolt/Thunderbolt 2 adapter. Using those two adapters in series would get you to Thunderbolt 3-to-Firewire 800 BUT I don't know if it would actually work or not. There are a number of Thunderbolt 3 Docks on the market that include a Firewire 800 port but they are not cheap. It all depends upon how important it is for you to keep those Firewire 800 drives in service. It would likely be more cost effective to buy a new USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt 3 hard drive to replace the Firewire 800 old one.

Feb 21, 2020 9:37 AM in response to Allan Jones

I agree with Alan's approach, if you can extract the drive from the enclosure OWC (www.macsale.com) makes a number of enclosures that would work. I intend to buy an OWC Thunderbay 4 with Thunderbolt 3 (USB C) to connect to my next iMac. You can get the Thunderbay 4 in a JBOD (Just a bunch of disks) set up or if you want to make a RAID setup you can do that too. I'm going to move all the data on my Firewire 800 drives to a RAID setup on my Thunderbay. It's not cheap but it's a great approach allows you access to all of your old data and is FAST!!!!

Feb 22, 2020 4:00 AM in response to framefiller

Kinda funny this post.

I guess I am not the only one still using an aging iMac that still uses FW800 in 2020.

I have/use three external FW800 drives with my “still going”, late 2009, 27 inch screen iMac and planing shortly on getting a fourth with another SSD inside.

I'll be running into this same issue if I ever purchase a much newer Mac.

How do I connect firewire 800 hard drive to my new imac

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