8500/External FireWire Hard Drive

I have a maxtor 80gb. model 3000DV. any idea if that would work?

It depends on the external drive electronics - some will work with 4 pin, some won't.  I have 2 different brands of external drives.  One will work with 4 pin, the other won't.

Allen T.

I don't know if that drive specifically will work or not, but the 4 pin FireWire bus is _non_ powered.  If your drive has its own power supply (either ac or battery) you may be okay.  If it needs to be powered by the FireWire connection on the computer side, you're out of luck.

Message Edited by Muskoka143 on 12-23-2003 12:11 PM

for the most part 3.5" hard drives will always need external power because firewire cannot give enough power to run them.  if you have a separte plug or ac adapter it will work.  or at least mine did.

Yup, the only difference between the 4 and 6 pins is that the 6pins transfers power from the PC to the external device. This is sometimes used for small 2.5 inch external drives and other devices without power adaptor.

As IEEE 1394 is a standard the 4 pins should work on all devices provided they have their own power supply. I have 2 drives with this 6 pins port and it works fine on my laptop with 4 pins. Both drive do have their own power supply. If you have a device without a pwoer supply you will need to purchase one seperately (see the manual of the device for that).

Also each IEEE 1394 aproved 4 to 6 pin cable/adaptor should work fine as it is all standard stuff

The non-powered IEEE 1394 port on my i8500 is exactly the reason I went with a USB 2.0 external HDD. 

It's very small, very fast, and needs no additional power supply.