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New USB 3.0 External Drive, or Gamble on Firewire Card?

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Joined
Oct 11, 2012
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187
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra
CPU
i7-9700K
Graphics
RX 580
Mac
  1. iMac
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hi Everyone,

Wanted to get your thoughts on something. I have a LOT of photos and music, so I have a 3TB storage drive on my Hack, 1TB external (plugged in through eSATA), and a 2TB external which has FW800 or USB 2.0. The USB 2.0 is really slow, but my Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H only had a FW400 port, so I bought a FW400/FW800 cable. The drive stalls and ejects pretty consistently, so I've reverted back to USB 2.0.

Options:
Buy a cheap FW PCI card (which I've read people have had issues with because it's a Texas Instruments part) - $23
Buy a expensive FW PCI card (Startech), $63
Buy a new hard drive with USB 3.0 - $100

The 1TB external I have transfers nicely via eSata, but the drive is loud (older WD Mybook or something like that). My 2TB is nice, it's an Iomega eGo Silver Desktop Mac Edition, which runs great via FW800 with my iMac. I see the prices drop somewhat on USB 3.0, I saw a 3TB at Costco for like $100. Just wondering what you think? Has anyone been able to fix the issues with the Gigabyte FW port, or is that more of a hardware issue?

Also, silly question, but is USB 3.0 fully supported in ML? I don't have any 3.0 devices, so I've never tried, but my computer case has a port for it and my mobo has several slots for it. Thanks!
 
Hi Everyone,

Wanted to get your thoughts on something. I have a LOT of photos and music, so I have a 3TB storage drive on my Hack, 1TB external (plugged in through eSATA), and a 2TB external which has FW800 or USB 2.0. The USB 2.0 is really slow, but my Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H only had a FW400 port, so I bought a FW400/FW800 cable. The drive stalls and ejects pretty consistently, so I've reverted back to USB 2.0.

Options:
Buy a cheap FW PCI card (which I've read people have had issues with because it's a Texas Instruments part) - $23
Buy a expensive FW PCI card (Startech), $63
Buy a new hard drive with USB 3.0 - $100

The 1TB external I have transfers nicely via eSata, but the drive is loud (older WD Mybook or something like that). My 2TB is nice, it's an Iomega eGo Silver Desktop Mac Edition, which runs great via FW800 with my iMac. I see the prices drop somewhat on USB 3.0, I saw a 3TB at Costco for like $100. Just wondering what you think? Has anyone been able to fix the issues with the Gigabyte FW port, or is that more of a hardware issue?

Also, silly question, but is USB 3.0 fully supported in ML? I don't have any 3.0 devices, so I've never tried, but my computer case has a port for it and my mobo has several slots for it. Thanks!

USB 3.0 is hit or miss on hackintoshes. For some people, it works great; for others it doesn't work worth a damn. It depends on a lot of factors. For instance, I have two systems with the same motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3). The USB 3.0 ports on these are supplied by an Etron EJ168 chip. One of them works beautifully, the other doesn't. <shrug> In general, USB 3.0 ports supplied by the Intel 7-series chipsets work fine, but 3rd party chipsets are a crap shoot.

I think your mobo's USB 3.0 is OK, here's a short guide on the proper BIOS settings to make it work: http://www.tonymacx86.com/hardware-troubleshooting/95626-enabling-usb-3-ga-z77x-ud5h.html

And here's some more information about the USB 3.0 ports on your mobo:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...nside-ga-z77x-ud5h-usb3-problem-under-ml.html

Firewire is dead technology - if I were you I wouldn't throw any more money that way.
 
Thanks so much for your input, and the links. You've convinced me to go USB 3.0 rather than trying to still utilize my FW hard drive. Maybe I'll get my BIOS set up and see if I can borrow a USB 3.0 flash drive from someone at work to test it out. Thanks again!
 
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