The Hidden Power of FireWire

Posted by John Baker on 03/17/07 in Hardware, Tips & Tricks

FireWire logo

I’ll cut right to the chase: both Macs and PCs have had FireWire for years, but Macs can do some really cool things with FireWire that Windows users have probably never even dreamed of. Many of these features are not widely known among people who have not had to use them in an emergency situation, but they can be quite useful in a pinch. Here’s a quick rundown of just a few of the great things you can do with FireWire on your Mac:

Target disk mode. It’s no secret to the other staff here that I had a bit of an issue with my Mac not too long ago. I couldn’t boot the machine and I was desperate to get my data, which is where target disk mode came in. With this feature, you can make your Mac look just like an external FireWire volume, so even if you can’t boot into OS X, you can connect your computer up to another Mac and pull data off of it or perform diagnostics. Sure, you should make regular backups to avoid having to use this feature at all, but in a tight situation it can make all the difference.

Mac-to-Mac migration. If you’ve done a first boot on a Mac recently, you’ve probably seen the screen asking if you’d like to move your data from another Mac to your new one. The fact that you can network two Macs together with a high-speed FireWire connection is really cool, but don’t misinterpret this seemingly simple feature â€“ it’s not just taking your data and putting it in a big lump and sitting it on the desktop of your new Mac. It pulls all of your preferences, settings, and user data from your old Mac and sticks it in the appropriate places on your new machine, essentially putting you right where you left off. Quite a nifty feature if you’re getting a new machine.

Booting from FireWire devices. This feature is somewhat along the same lines as target disk mode, except it’s really the opposite. Instead of booting your machine as a FireWire volume, you can boot your machine using an external FireWire drive as the startup disk. I’ve known some Mac users to keep a very slimmed-down “first aid” version of OS X on first-generation iPods to boot from in emergencies. Again, a really nice feature that we hope we’ll never have to use, but it’s beyond useful if we ever do.

FireWire 800. If you need super-fast external drives or video capture, the cutting-edge FireWire 800 is the way to go. Both the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro have FireWire 800 on-board. Yes, you can add a FireWire 800 card to a PC, but even the most high-end PC setups, such as Dell’s XPS series or Alienware’s ALX line, don’t come with FireWire 800. It’s a nice feature to have built-in for pros who need the latest in technology.

So there you have it. There are many more neat things you can do with FireWire on your Mac, but these four features really highlight some of the best underappreciated Mac features out there. Keep them in mind for future reference.

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29 Comment(s)

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Jack Cory said on

March 17th, 2007 at 8:45 am

awesome, the only one I knew about is the mac to mac migration. Thanks for information

trainwrecka said on

March 17th, 2007 at 9:01 am

i have the 24 inch iMac and it also has FW800 built-in. i used it for my mac-to-mac migration and that puppy was blazing fast.

Confused said on

March 17th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

I’m still confused why you guys are posting stuff that aren’t related to Mac apps at all, is this MacApper or another generic mac blog?

come on guys I like the app reviews that’s what we’re here for, put this stuff on another blog

otherwise great site just keep it relevant!

Andre said on

March 17th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

You should’ve probably mentioned that it’s not just firewire drives that macs can boot from. USB works just fine on intel macs.

-1

nan said on

March 17th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

Andre, you’re right. But.. The post is about FireWire!!

mackiller said on

March 18th, 2007 at 12:47 am

macs still suck.

-1

Alex Galonsky said on

March 18th, 2007 at 12:55 am

Confused:

http://macapper.com/2007/03/17/the-state-of-macapper/

phil said on

March 18th, 2007 at 12:55 am

well lets see. my thinkpad boots usb or firewire has migration. can do firewire 800 and if i need the data off the drive i pull the drive slap it into an external case and do the same thing. so hidden power of firewire? no not hidden just another way of doing the same thing.

Brett Johnson said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:16 am

There is one additional feature you briefly hinted at in the Mac-to-Mac migration section: IP over Firewire networking. Under the Networking section of System Preferences, you can enable the Firewire port as a network interface (in addition to the Ethernet and Airport interfaces). You may then create a 2-computer network with a very fast interface (much faster than 100baseT ethernet). I hook two macs together via Firewire, they typically find each other via Rendezvous/Bonjour, or you can explicitly use Connect to Server and supply
yourMachineName.local as the server name. I often use this to quickly transfer large media files between two macs.

Andre said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:17 am

nan, I realize that but a single sentence mentioning USB wouldn’t kill anyone, now would it?

-1

Alex said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:22 am

#1 is OBVIOUSLY not true. Everyone knows macintoshes never have problems

oligore said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:24 am

@mackiller
that’s pretty sad. You come to a mac blog just to say mac sucks

Durrr said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:42 am

Here’s something to consider: THIS ISNT A ‘FEATURE’ OF FIREWIRE. This has to do with Mac software/firmware. And who would have thought that Macs would have something a PC doesn’t? Same way PCs have things that Macs don’t.

C.B.Leslie said on

March 18th, 2007 at 1:48 am

“macs still suck.”

Pretty much.

-1

Wes Ball said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:01 am

There’s another really great thing Mac’s can do with firewire.

Output any quicktime movie stream through firewire. You could hook up an DV camera and record the video, or you could get one of those cheap D/A converters and pipe it straight into your TV.

I only recently found out about this. You have to download a little app from apple, but hey, its FREE!

Check here for more info.
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2004/12/22/video_out.html

BEn said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:06 am

Actually you can do all of those except for number 1 with a pc. The last one you can go buy a firewire 800 card for the 3 devices on the market if you so chose. The migration works as well, in fact you can use usb, firewire and ethernet. Any x86 machine can boot from whatever the hell it wants too aswell. In fact I booted off of my thumb drive yesterday.

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Kevin said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:08 am

@ Brett Johnson:

With Windows, you can still have a firewire card as an ethernet device. Nothing new or special there.

As for a number of the other features, its nothing that USB hasn’t been able to do for a while now. There are things that macs can do that pcs cant, and the opposite does hold true, too. Firewire is a nice technology, but fairly limited in its implementation.

BEn said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:10 am

Sorry missed a few things.
“There is one additional feature you briefly hinted at in the Mac-to-Mac migration section: IP over Firewire networking…” Well thats because firewire is a networking standard not a serial standard any firewire computer can do that.
You can also output video over firewire on any os, this a feature of the video polayer not the operating system. QT for windows does this as well.

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Trolling is... said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:20 am

Macs Suck because you want one.

Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft. Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows

-1

Rennervater said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:27 am

Hey this article is on the doggdotus front page

http://doggdot.us

Paul Stamatiou said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:28 am

Not sure if it has been mentioned in the comments yet, but the 24 inch iMac features a FW800 port.

pics:
http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/09/18/first-impressions-24-inch-imac/

MomKicker said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:30 am

I am very pleased with my Firewire port from windows. I don’t now why you need the other functions.

-1

AM said on

March 18th, 2007 at 10:46 am

I’ve yet to find a single Windows user who can boot his/her pc from an external drive - when their drive fails all of them have had to install new drives but could never boot from an external USB drive - this was with Windows XP. Can someone tell me how its done in Windows (is there a disk cloning feature built-in?) so that I can tell my friends when they call me about a drive thats crashed? I talking about making a clone not backing up data.

Scott said on

March 18th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

You can also use Target Disk Mode to install software from a data DVD on a Mac that doesn’t have a DVD drive. I put Tiger on an old G3 iMac that way.

ardor said on

March 18th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

Thank you for writing this article! My friend and I are always talking about what’s better, Firewire or USB. No matter what cool facts I pull up about Firewire’s speed, compatibility, and functionality, it never seems to get as much credit as that darn USB 2.0. Cheers to Firewire!

Sebhelyesfarku said on

March 19th, 2007 at 10:04 am

FireWire is dead. eSATA is the new king, dumbasses.

-1

Troy said on

March 21st, 2007 at 3:52 am

PHIL: when it comes to Target Disk Mode, no, your Thinkpad is not exactly the same.

Example: I use my PowerBook 12-inch to offload and work on digital photos I take while on the road. Once home, I simply stick a Firewire cable between the tiny tot and my PowerMac and boot the Powerbook into target disk mode. Quick and painless way to sync and archive stuff and save shetloads of space on my PowerBook.

Using an external Firewire disk may *sound* similar, but it adds a level of complexity to the whole process. One more thing to carry around, and when you’re buzzing about snapping pics for a newspaper, it gets quite cumbersome.

And having to take your Thinkpad HDD out, place it into an external Firewire caddy and THEN sync it to a desktop PC? Nope, not the same thing at all. Sorry.

cars has chasing said on

March 24th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

chasing cars snow cars chasing snow

-1

Jazmin Mackey said on

June 14th, 2007 at 5:19 am

This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”

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-1

b2c91e11a072 said on

May 10th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

b2c91e11a072…