Saying goodbye to an old friend - advice needed please

[DaveB]

Hi everyone,

After 11 years I feel it is finally the time to say goodbye to my Mid-2010 Mac Pro (2x3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon with 64GB RAM and a Radeon RX5808GB GPU). It's served me well but I'm now stuck on Mojave and certain media that I work with has started to slow things down. So I'm considering moving to one of the new Macbook Pros (14" M1 Max). I'm not a technophile when it comes to Mac stuff and, given the age of my current machine (which doesn't even have Thunderbolt), it raises some questions that I hope someone more techy than me on here can help me with:

1) My current drives are SSD (internal) and FW 800 connected external. I have a lot of media data on these drives. Is there any way that I will be able to connect these external FW800 drives to the new Macbook Pro, which as I understand it is Thunderbolt 4?
2) Is there a solution that will allow me to leverage my current internal SSD's into an external Thunderbolt enclosure so that I can continue to use them with the new MacBook Pro?

As far as I can tell the main issue for me with this move is going to be my existing storage concerns as above, but if I'm missing anything else obvious please let me know.

Thanks in advance for any help given.

Dave

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Sorry for the delayed response.

I have successfully connected an old OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW 800 desktop enclosure that has an external AC adapter to my M1 mini using the following: FW 800 cable > Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter > Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter - M1 mini Thunderbolt / USB 4 port. Portable drive enclosures that are bus-powered do not work.

Does your FW 800 enclosure also have a USB port by chance?

You could use something similar to what I explained to allow you to move you data/files, but I would recommend that you purchase a new external to use on a permanent basis.

You can definitely find external enclosures that will accommodate the SSDs from the Mac Pro. What brand/model are the SSDs?

C

 

[DaveB]

Hello and welcome.

Sorry for the delayed response.

I have successfully connected an old OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW 800 desktop enclosure that has an external AC adapter to my M1 mini using the following: FW 800 cable > Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter > Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter - M1 mini Thunderbolt / USB 4 port. Portable drive enclosures that are bus-powered do not work.

Does your FW 800 enclosure also have a USB port by chance?

You could use something similar to what I explained to allow you to move you data/files, but I would recommend that you purchase a new external to use on a permanent basis.

You can definitely find external enclosures that will accommodate the SSDs from the Mac Pro. What brand/model are the SSDs?

C

Hi Cory,

Thanks for your reply and for the advice. It’s only FW connections on the external drives and I was really only looking for a temporary measure until I can get some replacement drives + to move the data over. I bought an external enclosure this last week for the internal drives, so that’s ready to go.

Thanks for the cable recommendations. I’ll take a look

Cheers

Dave

 

[DaveB]

I've just realised that I can break apart my old FW drive enclosures and move the physical drives therein straight across into my USB3.1 external enclosure, so no need to move data and I can continue to use these drives. Don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.‍