Moshi FireWire 800 to 400 Adapter
In the move from the old Mac Book Pro to the new Mac Book Pro, the Firewire 400 port was eliminated as part of the normal technology progress of Apple products. This creates the problem of having two Firewire 400 external hard drives I use for music files that I can’t plug into the new computer. As I was shopping around for a new drive I found out that Firewire 800 is electrically compatible with Firewire 400, just a different signal down the wire. So, turns out there are cheap adapters for plugging FW400 devices into FW800 ports.
Purchased the one pictured on the right from the manufacturer Moshi on Amazon, not based on any real input other than it seemed to be the middle price – the primary logic being the cheap ones would be junk, and the expensive ones would be overpriced.
Product is no fuss – plugged it into the 800 port, plugged the 400 cable into the other end, drive instantly mounted and was used without incident or detectable performance differences. You do need to make sure all the 400 devices are at the end of the Firewire chain, otherwise the 800 devices will be throttled down to the 400 speed. But, I only have 400 devices now, so no need to worry about this yet.
Way cheaper than replacing the devices, and since I didn’t realize the missing 400 port on the new device it would have created some hassles to drag the data around anyway. Besides, those drives will probably last for a few more years anyway, why waste them?
This was definitely a good $15 purchase.



