[X4U] Firewire

[Randy B.Singer]

Peter Sealy said:

>I have an external 400 Firewire HD which I connect to my TiPowerBook  
>as necessary to clone/backup my PowerBook system. When I buy a new  
>computer which has Firewire 800 speed will my 400 HD still run on the  
>new computer albeit at the slower 400 speed. I know those speeds are  
>theoretical but I guess what I am asking is if a 400 HD is compatible  
>with an 800 port on a new computer. I hope I have expressed that  
>clearly.


Any new Macintosh that you purchase (for the present, at least) will have 
at least one FW/400 port, so things will be plug and play for your old FW 
hard drive.  A new Mac may *also* have (not instead of the FW/400 ports) 
a FW/800 port (e.g. the new 24-inch iMac and the new Mac Pros.)

There is no indiction that FW/800 will be replacing FW/400 at any point.  
There had been recent speculation that FW/800 would be discontinued on 
new Mac models, but the recently released models mentioned above show 
that that speculation was wrong, at least for now.  At some point 
external SATA may replace FW/800 for fast external hard drives.

FW/800 is backwards compatible with FW/400 devices (such as your hard 
drive), but you will need a port adapter or cable adapter to connect the 
older device to the newer port.  e.g.:
<http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1
030104&p_id=331&seq=1&format=2&style=>

Randy B. Singer

Co-Author of:
The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html