Accessing a FireWire external hd

Hello!

To connect a FireWire 800 external hard disk to your Mac, you will need:

• A FireWire 800 cable, such as this one.
• An Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter - Apple
• And a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter - Apple

The setup should look like this:

Due to the amount of cabling needed, and any FireWire 800 external disk is most likely at least 8-years old, I would strongly suggest you replace the FireWire 800 external disk with a new drive. For not much more than the cost of adapters and cables, you can get a brand-new external SSD with large capacity options.

Jack

You’re welcome.

I personally would never rely on that old of a drive for Time Machine backups. But I do have a couple of older drives that I use for redundant weekly and monthly CarbonCopyCloner backups.

Many of those old external hard drives came with both FireWire and USB port connections. Look on the back.of the drive for a USB port. If it does, then hopefully you still have the USB cable around.

You’re welcome.