1394 Firewire to...what?

Factual Questions
1

I have an older external hard drive with a bunch of family pictures on it. It has two 1394 Firewire ports and that’s it. My MacBook isn’t new, but it’s new enough not to have a Firewire port: it’s got two USBs and a “Mini DVI” port.

The only thing I can find that looks to have the right connections is on Amazon and has terrible reviews.

What to do?

2

I’m thinking there might be some kind of USB docking station that has a firewire port on it, but that could be expensive. I’d look for assistance from someone who has a computer with a firewire port - transfer the files once, then sell or ditch the firewire drive.

3

Does your Macbook have an ExpressCard slot? If so, you can get a Firewire thing for that.

Or else unscrew the firewire case and use something like this to connect the drive inside to USB:

Ugly but very functional.

4

One way would be to open it. External hard drives are just internal hard drives with an enclosure around them. Once you’ve removed the drive from the enclosure, you can get an adapter to convert whatever interface the actual drive uses (either Serial ATA or IDE) to USB.

Alternately, you might try calling up computer stores and seeing if they have a computer with Firewire available to transfer the files. I’m not sure what you’d transfer them to, though. If you have a big enough USB stick that would work. If it’s only a few pictures, you could always email them.

5

Does your machine appear on the compatibility list for this device?
http://www.belkin.com/uk/p/P-F4U055/

6

There are exceptions to that rule - in particular, there are some where you would have to solder on the IDE or SATA connector yourself.

7

Nothing that works :frowning:

I tried finding one as I have 2 great Firewire multichannel audio interfaces, but no longer have a laptop with Firewire - just USB. I even purchased a couple of Firewire/USB adapters, and returned them as they didn’t solve my problem.

8

If you have a Thunderbolt port on your Mac you can get a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter from Apple for $30. Edit: I think that one is FW800, so you’ll also need a Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 cable.