If I connect multiple USB external hard drives to the dock, can I transfer data to my computer faster with firewire than I would through USB?
1800288
Just note that USB 3 ports of this docking station run at 2.5Gbps/sec (not at 5Gbps/sec). This only becomes a limiting factor if you connect an SSD thorough them. For other stuff 2.5Gbps are more than enough.
1800289
I've tested connecting a LaCie drive to the dock with USB3 and FW, and I get roughly the same transfer rate for either interface. I haven't tried simultaneous transfers on multiple drives, though.
1800290
It depends on your computer and the drives enclosures attached. Only a small set of USB enclosures operate at full USB 3.0 speeds. And USB still requires the computer to manage arbitration of disk IO, which could become overwhelming if you are attempting to move files to multiple drives in parallel. In short, you should try it. But in general, if you need high & predictable IO transfer rates with low latency, such as for OLTP database IO, USB is not your best choice. If you want low-cost bulk IO, USB might be fine.
1800291
USB 3.0 is much faster the firewire. USB 3.0 is 5Gbps/sec. FW800 is 800Mbps. USB 3.0 is not faster than Thunderbolt. However the Thunderbolt link does not speed up the USB 3.0 transfer. Read the link below to get more info on this. The dock works great! I have transferred high volumes of data between a USB 3.0 drive and the computer through the Belkin in a very short time! I really like my Belkin Thunderbolt Express dock! Checkout http://www.everythingusb.com/comparison.html
1138777
Yes, use the usb3 port on the drive left of the firewire ports http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154548
760882
I think you'll get faster transfers with Gigabit ethernet switch; depending on the write/read speeds, I get even more than 100MB/s via ethernet connection.Also I'm not sure whether one can connect two Macs for file transfer via TB/firewire; I've only tried connecting Macs in this manner for target disk mode and for that it works well.
1061931
All the data ports on the hub are FireWire 400 (there is also a power connector for its power brick, which is about the same size as the hub). To use this hub, you would typically run a FireWire 400 cable from a FireWire 400 port on a PC or Mac to the hub, and you could then plug up to 5 FireWire 400 devices into the remaining ports.
473693
You can use USB to USB. Since one of your items uses a regular USB connection, that will be the speed of the data transfer, regardless of how fast the other item is. That being said, I believe this product is regular (or 1.1 / 2.0) USB. This will limit your data transfer to a maximum of around 60MB/s, regardless of how fast your other connection is. That being said, this product DOES have a USB to USB connector. It should work for what you're trying to do. Bear in mind that maximum data transfer speed is equal to the lowest speed connector you use, so your 3.0 or 3.1 is useless in your situation. I'd strongly suggest switching to 3.0 on all your gear if you actually want to take advantage of the high speed capability.
753320
If you're talking about the 6-pin FireWire connector, you may utilize any of the six ports of this hub. However, you have to use a 6-pin FireWire to USB adapter to connect it to the USB hub.
1510475
Theoretically, you can since the dock mode presents the two HDDs in JBOD layout from my understanding but I've only used it to clone HDDs. Please confirm with StarTech instead, I'm just one of the many customers.
1557701
If your MAC is equipped with a USB 3 port use it to connect the drive. Ignore Firewire. If you only have a USB2 port available, use Firewire. Fastest connection possible is USB 3 with current technology!
603517
From WD FAQ: We can only guarantee drive capacity. We cannot guarantee a particular internal hard drive model, data interface, rotational speed, or cache size in the external hard drive enclosure. With the exception of Thunderbolt, eSATA and USB 3.0 external hard drives, USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800 have yet to approach the transfer rates of the internal hard drives we use in our external enclosures
2137310
As long as your machine has a Firewire 800 port you should be okay. What matters is the hardware you are using and not the operating system. You can just drag and drop files to the WD, but I use Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper to automate my backups.
1775460
I would't risk it. I bought this dock and connected 2 Seagate 3TBs. It initially worked, so I went ahead and back up ALL my data. The next day the dock kept getting disconnected and now my IMAC won't even mount the drives. I tried another dock and seems that the drives have been fried by the Thermaltake dock. There goes 2.5TB of data!
1467437
I am not Mac-Oriented... I believe that you can use USB2 interface and firewire on a Mac but the disk format that Mac's use, is different from PC hard drive formats. Your External Disk might require reformatting. There is a software solution available that will permit a PC to read Mac formatted drives via USB.
1362537
This device has three interfaces. A single USB3.0 interface, and two Firewire 800 interfaces. Firewire 800 can connect only to Firewire 400 or Firewire 800.
1952545
one USB to 3 ports used for testing FIREWIRE USB 2.0 ...YOu need software drivers on your computer to use the device
816837
I have used it on both Mac and PC and have daisy chained it with other drives on FireWire. It will do everything you are asking about here.
1269243
You will need additional software in order to do that. With this unit out of the box when connected to your computer via USB 3.0 you can access hard drives in the dock just as you would external hard disk drives.
506599
Absolutely! It comes with a regular USB 3.0 cable and a Firewire 800 cable. If you want to enjoy the speed of firewire (The only real reason to pay this much for a drive), you'll need to get an adapter from Firewire 800 to Firewire 6-pin which are anywhere from $10-$40. I think this drive ships formatted as NTFS or FAT-32 (I can't remember which). Either will work with a PC. If you want to use it with both MAC and PC, you'll have to reformat it to ex-FAT before you start using it. Hope that helps.