What cable

[confused2]

I have a late 2014 mac mini. With Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 ports. I also have an external hard drive with firewire ports, which I used when backing up my old PB. I would like to back up the Mini and have the back up disk bootable. What cable/adapter do I need?

 

[getrealbro]

I have a late 2014 mac mini. With Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 ports. I also have an external hard drive with firewire ports, which I used when backing up my old PB. I would like to back up the Mini and have the back up disk bootable. What cable/adapter do I need?

Assuming your external drive
* has a Firewire 800 port,
* is at least as large (in GB) as your Mini’s internal drive and
* you already have a FW800 <-> FW800 cable….

You only need this adapter

https://smile.amazon.com/Apple-Thun...rt+to+firewire+adapter&qid=1575815429&sr=8-16

and the Carbon Copy Cloner app to clone your 2014 Mini internal disk and make it bootable.

FWIW for a little more you could just buy a new external USB 3.0 drive like this one that goes on sale frequently

https://smile.amazon.com/Seagate-Po...sr_1_9?keywords=seagate&qid=1575816003&sr=8-9

I have done both.

GetRealBro

 

[Fishrrman]

You need Apple's thunderbolt2 to firewire adapter cable.
BUT... I don't know whether this cable "passes power" through the bus.
That could be an issue if the external firewire drive is a 2.5" drive that uses "bus power".

Check the user reviews in the link getreal posted above, to see what experiences others have had.

Perhaps a better solution:
PRY OPEN the firewire drive case.
Then take the internal drive OUT of it.
Get a USB3 enclosure and put the drive into it.
It should work that way.

 

[getrealbro]

You need Apple's thunderbolt2 to firewire adapter cable.
BUT... I don't know whether this cable "passes power" through the bus.
That could be an issue if the external firewire drive is a 2.5" drive that uses "bus power"....

The Apple adapter I linked to, DOES pass power to the drive. I've used one of these adapters to hook up and boot from an old 500GB portable iOmega Firewire drive on a late 2014 Mini and 2013 iMac.

https://www.amazon.com/Iomega-FireWire-Portable-External-34629/dp/B002BWOO2K

GetRealBro