For 3 straight days, my 1TB external firewire 800 drive has turned itself off briefly and then come back on. Unfortunately, it is equivalent to me turning it off, and back on. Data could become corrupt.
I don't know what is causing this problem, and I don't know how to prevent it.
Turn everything off, first. Disconnect the FireWire cable from the computer, and turn the hard rive on (energize it) and leave it that way. Now, without tossing on the extension cord, bend it slightly and slowly up and down and see if the drive turns off. Start bending the cable (slight bend) next to the plug connected to the electrical outlet, and also next to the other end of the cord. Remember to bent it one way, and hold it that way for a couple of seconds before you bend it the other way. Make sire the extension cord is not loose at the back of the hard drive.
OR: If the extension cord is one that unplugs from the back of the drive, turn the drive off, and replace the cord with another.
Touch the power switch with your finger (with the drive energized) , and move it slightly without turning it off. Again, press it slightly and keep it pressed for a couple of seconds.
If you can't duplicate the malfunction, plug the drive into another outlet and see how it works with the computer.
If you can tell for certain that the drive is turning off, these are suspect areas:
1. Extension cord
2. Power switch
3. Electrical outlet (or electrical power source)
4. The drive's power supply
Kirkpatrick. I have the same problem on the Lacie Drives. I have 6 external firewire 400 drives and have gone through the cords to check, including connecting each drive individually to the machine and testing each cord on other machines and the same problem persists. I have connected these same drives to a different TIGER machine with the problem showing up again. I reloaded all operating software on a machine with the same problem arising. Have also tried different version of TIGER including leaving it back to 10.4. Will now load Panther to see if that helps. Let me know if you find anything.
Just curious to what you guys meant by "shutting down". Is it just the drive spinning down (i.e. sleep) ? If it is, perhaps checking the System Preferences / Energy Saver setting, there is a checkbox "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep if possible". Uncheck it and see why happen.
1. If problem suddenly developed after weeks or months of successful use, and no system changes were done around the time problem appeared, then perhaps the drive has gone bad. If still in warranty, contact LaCie support if purchsed in the US, or your reseller if purchased outside the US, for warranty repair.
2. If drive works fine on other computers, then there may be OS corruption that needs to be corrected; can try booting from installation CD or DVD to see if problem goes away when booted from a clean OS. No need to reinstall, just test drive using Apple Disk Utility when booted from the OS X installer CD/DVD
The drives have worked flawlessly. Have connected them to another computer with no problem arising. The machine that I am having a problem with recently had TIGER installed. Many other problems appeared after installation of TIGER and am now narrowing down to a few things including the drives.
"Shut Down" - sounds like it is powering down and before drive stops spinning, it spins back up again. Usually does this three times. After it does it, Dsk Utility will hang up with beachball of death for hours. Never waited till it finished and are forced to power down holding down power button.
Have noticed in the console excessive CPU action and the fans start coming on. All this occurs during the "beachball of death".
Still trying to narrow down the problem. Highly unlikely that it is the Lacie Drives. They are awesome.
Then I suspect a bad install/upgrade to OS X Tiger.
The only thing close to a computer that LaCie makes are our Ethernet Disk and Eithernet Disk Mini file servers; they have embedded operating systems, so really aren't general purpose computers.
No issues here in our lab using FireWire devices with Macs updated to 10.4.2
Remember, that people here on the discussion boards are typically users with problems. No reason for users with no problems to frequent the discussion boards.
OK. I have done some more research into the lacie drive issue. It appears that some of the problem is the power supply. I have switched around with other D2 drives I have and it appears to work (at least better). I also found in the activity window that the processor is overwhelmed with and ads (no idea what it is) which apparently fontbook uses to index hard drives to source fonts (mostly bad ones). Not only is the drive being accessed for this purpose but also loads down the processor. I wonder if this could be some of the problem.
All seems to run smooth until I load some font suitcases and then the problem loop begins again.
Would be interesting to know if us problem people have a similar configuration.
Powerbook 1.25
512 MB ram
4 external D2 drives
Used primarily for print production
- quark 6.5, adobe cs and suitcase
Mike,
Any idea what files in the OS that deal with burning DVD's might be corrupted? I recently purchased a Lacie Firewire DVD d2 burner and it was working fine before the 10.4.2 update. It is now not burning DVD's in any Apple software environment giving me a 0x80020022 Error Code. It will burn CD's in all software environments. It is working fine when using Toast. (I guess this bypasses the Apple software?) I have applied all the updates for the drive: Firmware, system drivers etc.. I even tried using Patch Burn. The drive is listed as being vendor supported in the System Profiler. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben
I have here the same problem with two Lacie Extreme Big disks.
I upgraded our G5's (2x2,5 & single) to Tiger (10.4.2) and since then we cannot use any of our Lacie's on any of our G5's.
It seems tat the communication between drive and computer shuts down intermittently and then you have to wait in front of the coloured ball.
I have a similar couple of problems with FIREWIRE after upgrading to 10.4.2:
1)LaCie external HD firewire mounts on the iMac (the disk is formatted as FAT32) but I cannot see the files (iphoto and iTunes), before upgrading I could see the files. This disk doesn´t have USB port. Checked the firmware and it is upgraded for 10.4 Tiger.
2) External HD, formatted as MacPlus (not FAT32) mounts as a USB disk, but NOT as firewire.
Any suggestions is appreciated.
Greetings form Mexico
Rodolfo
It's not going to sleep, it's as if the electricity suddenly becomes disconnected to the drive. It "blips" completely off, and then back on in about 1 second.
The projects (Motion and FCP) that use data from that drive becomes disconnected, and I have to re-connect everything. It is a huge hassle, and it will not stop occurring.
