External HD Transfer
 

I have two WD 2TB External HDs and the older one appears to be failing. While connected to my iMac's USB ports, can I transfer the data from the older one directly to the newer one without having to copy to the OS X HD first?

You should be able to yes. What are you intending to move? If it's nothing that the OS relies on then you should be fine.

My old WD external drive has a bunch of movies I transferred from VHS that include a lot of family events, even some from Super 8. I was just concerned that I couldn't just transfer from one drive to another without having to copy to the main computer first.
Thanks Kevriano.

Recently had a Seagate drive start clicking on me, so went out and spent the dough and bought one of the OWC Guardian RAID drive boxes and two 1TB WD drives. Feel much better having the double backup. Good luck with the transfer!

You might want to check out the Firewire scene if u have a bunch to move; my plan to use USB was quickly changed to Firewire 800;
Copying 52,000 files and 58 GB - USB 2.0 = 33 hour
Using Firewire 800 for same data - 44 minutes

Question here?
 

So is a FireWire 800 external HDD compatible with FireWire 400 Plug? In another words will it work if I connect a FW800 HDD to FW400 laptop?

Thanks so Much!
MC

If you use this - yes, but it will be 400 speeds.
Firewire 800 to 400 Adapter

Oh lovely, but would it still be a faster than USB 2.0?