acomdata and firewire

I have an acomdata external drive model# hd160fes-72. How do I get a driver for new iMac. When I Use a firewire to USB connector it crashes my computer, why?
I cannot find a site for acomdata hardware or a telephone number. When I use firewire to usb connector, shouldn't that work on a computer that you directly connect firewire and it works properly?

FireWire and USB are different protocols with different data requirements and Apple never claimed any such adapter will work. Get an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire connector and you'll have a supported product.

^^^ He's got it right. You need the TB to Firewire adapter.

None of those firewire to USB adapters you can find do anything.... they do not work.
You won't find such an adapter from any reputable company.

Can you give us a few more details about that converter. I have been doing a bit of searching and most of the devices I have looked at do not seem to work.

Some of the problems mentioned seem to be driver related . Apparently most of the drivers are not expecting to find the device on the USB port. The other issue is that many firewire devices draw more power than USB provides and the conversion devices often do not account for this.

Beaten to the punch again. Nice concise responses gents as usual.

I researched this in some depth a couple of years ago.

In a nutshell (and I don't remember any of the technical terms), Firewire transmits a stream whereas USB transmits in packets, then after each packet it waits for a response, that was good send the next or that was not good resend that one again.

Even the combo hubs you can find - the USB in goes out via USB and Firewire in goes out via Firewire. You can't put Firewire in and USB out and vice versa.

I went in circles for months with several sites that I felt were legitimate saying it would work if you could find the proper adapter - it was fruitless - the proper adapter just isn't out there.

Pinnacle use to make a piece of video hardware that could capture via firewire and output via USB, but it's been discontinued long ago.

Have not done any research to find out how USB 3 works and if FW to USB 3 would be a possibility, but a quick look at some of the major cable/adapter companies and no one has one.

Thanks for the explanation. It never dawned on me that this difference existed. It probably explains why FW 400 was always faster in the real world than USB 2. Everybody talked about "overhead" but did not explain it.

@OP In looking for information about this problem I rain across at least one user who was able to remove the hard drive from its existing enclosure and place it in a new one to resolve these problems. If I remember correctly the screws holding the drive in place are behind a metal plate near the on/off switch.