Firewire to USB 2.0 adapter?

I pulled out my fathers lacie 120gb hard drive and its firewire 400 i believe (6pin). There are 2 ports on the rear of the drive for firewire, but i only have 1 cable. i also have the power cable. But my dell dimensions 4600 does not have a firewire connector on it, i believe my toshiba laptop has a 4pin firewire but im not sure. Is there anykind of firewire to usb 2.0 adapter? I see my has a usb 2.0 to round port adapter. Hoped they'de make the adapter I need.

I hate to say this (and am happy to be corrected if im wrong) but I dont think they exist. what about a cheap pci firewire card for your desktop, or if the laptop doesnt have firewire you can get pcmcia cards for that.

pci card

pcmcia card

If the laptop does have a 4pin connector and the drive is 6 pin you CAN get converters for that.

4pin to 6pin cable

PB

no such thing exists, but if you want to salvage the drive, you can take the drive out of the lacie enclosure and buy a cheap USB enclosure to put it into...

i do believe my laptop has a 4pin firewire. Im going to bestbuy to see if they carry anything like that. There is no compusa around here in NJ anymore.

well the laptop does not have a 4 pin firewire. So i went to circuit city to try and find the pc card adapter. found one in the "open items sale" box, figured its $40 normally that it would probably be around $25. Nope, they took off a wopping, $3!!!!!

anyway, i pluggd it in, hooked up the hard drive and NOTHING. I could not figure out how to access it. The computer recognized the pc card, but I could not figure out how to get the hard drive open. I checked all the different drive locations and nothing.
Am I doing something wrong?

Ok, I've just looked at some of the manuals for Lacie's firewire only drives. they tell you to turn the drive on before connecting the cable to the laptop. and it should be automatically recognised (assuming win XP).

Again assuming Win XP does it show up in disk management (click start, select run, type compmgmt.msc, click ok, select disk management)


does it have the model name or number on it so I can check to see if the manual is online?

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i'll have to try that when at home. but I dont have xp, i have this crap called vista

ok i just followed the directions from above. it recognizes it in disc 1, but it is not allocated. I cannot figure out from the menu how to try and get it to recognize it so I can open it.

edit: after playing around trying to figure things out. I was able to find out how to create a new drive. I started to create drive E on the laptop. Then started to do the formatting. But this is where I got scared. I was afraid that if I turned the pc card slot into drive E that i wouldn't be able to use my verizone wireless broadband card in it anymore. Is this true or am i just over-reacting and nothing will change and i'll be able to use this stubborn lacie hard drive?

If the computer sees it , you can f-disk it [format it] Do a search or find for f-disk and follow instructions .

well i returned the stupid pc card adapter for the laptop. I got the firewire pci card for the dell tower. So Im going to install that tomorrow and clean up some of the older wires that are just lying in the back of the desk. Plus now with the 3 port firewire pci card, if I get the epson printer I want all i'll have to do is plug it in since its only firewire connection.

i think firewire and usb have like diffrent interfaces, im not sure.

Glad you have got it working. should be a nice little drive now its running.

PB

this totally sucks. I installed the pci card slot for the firewire. Couldn't believe how easy it was. But my god!!! the amount of dust and dust bunnies back there it was disgusting. Thank goodness i had the can of compressed air. But anyway, the computer recognizes the drive as drive H. But inorder for me to access it it needs to be formatted, but if I format it i'll lose anything saved on it. Thats the whole point of me installing this card. Is there anything I can do to access whats stored?

Sounds like its been used on a non windows based os, would your father have been using a mac or linux??

p.s dont tell everyone how easy it is to fit expansion cards - you'll do me out of a job!!!

PB

It was used on his mac laptop.