My external firewire drives do not work on my iMac 27-inch 2020 desktop, after I upgraded to MacOS Tahoe.
They worked under MacOS Sequoia.
Are firewire devices still supported?
iMac 27″, macOS 26.0
A lot of those old external drives were combo Firewire 800 and USB-B 3.0.
If you have one of those, use the supplied USB-B 3.0 cable instead of a Firewire cable and adapter.
Plus it's a good time to consider replacing those old worn out external drives with newer USB-C or Thunderbolt drives.
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Extract the HDDs from the FireWire enclosure, and install them in a USB sled.
The last Apple Mac with FireWire support was ~thirteen years ago.
I found the “Getting this old drive plugged into a modern Mac requires a trip to Dongletown” to be amusing, though: https://512pixels.net/2025/07/tahoe-no-firewire/
sashegyi wrote:
My external firewire drives do not work on my iMac 27-inch 2020 desktop, after I upgraded to MacOS Tahoe.
They worked under MacOS Sequoia.
Are firewire devices still supported?
Firewire has been on its way out for the last 10 years...
Apple drops FireWire support in macOS 26
https://www.techspot.com/news/108394-usb-killer-dead-apple-drops-firewire-support-macos.html
As for one of the options available: scrounge a USB HDD hard disk sled, physically extract the hard disks from the FireWire enclosure(s), connect, and then preferably transfer your data to some newer USB 3.x or USB4 storage.
No, FireWire is fully deprecated and not supported by macOS 26 Tahoe.
I just want to thank Apple for alerting me before I upgraded to macOS 26.x that my Firewire-based Time Machine drive and my financial backup drive (also Firewire-based) would no longer be supported, despite using a Firewire-to-USB-C converter to connect them to my 2025 Mac Studio... oh ****, that's right -- Apple DID NOT MENTION IT IN THE UPGRADE INFO
External Firewire drive not mounting under macOS Tahoe
