PATA hard drive & FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosures
Sorry, this is a long story. . . A couple of weeks ago, when I was setting up my new Intel iMac, I turned on my 320 GB Maxtor One Touch III, which was connected via FireWire 400 to my old PPC iMac, for the first time in several months. (I couldn't remember what was on the 320 drive and was trying to figure out how to organize several external FW HDDs now that I needed space for TimeMachine backups of the new Intel machine.) Anyway, while I was surfing the Net or something, I suddenly got an onscreen alert that the 320 had been incorrectly detached. I hadn't flipped its power switch or done anything to disconnect the FW cable, so I figured the drive had simply died. Normally, I would have returned it for warranty repair or exchange, since I had it only 10 months. But after searching several online forums and reading numerous horror stories about Maxtor One Touch III drive failures, I decided to explore other options.
First, I opened up the drive case and removed the 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra-ATA HDD. Then I swapped out another drive from a Bytecc ME-720 FW enclosure and replaced it with the 320 Seagate. Now the 320 showed up fine on both my old PPC and new Intel iMacs. So, I figured I just needed to buy a new FW enclosure for the 320.
After doing a lot of online research, I bought what turned out to be the wrong type of enclosure--an IcyDock SATA to FW, when I needed IDE to FW! Returned the IcyDock and ordered an iRocks IR- 9410C IDE to FW & USB 2. It arrived yesterday.
When everything was connected and I flipped the iRock's power switch, its lamp lit but I couldn't hear the drive spin up and it didn't appear on my desktop. When I tested the enclosure with a 160 GB Maxtor HDD inside, however, it worked fine--spinning sounds and drive icon on desktop. So why, I wondered, didn't the enclosure work with the 320 GB Seagate HDD?
The enclosure came with a largely unintelligible manual. One of the few instructions written in English that I could actually decipher urged users to set the jumper on their drive to "master." From the Seagate website, I learned that my drive's jumper was set to "Cable service" because it's an Ultra-ATA. But I tried switching it to the "master" position to see if that would allow it to work with the iRocks enclosure. No such luck.
When I reset the jumper to "Cable service" and inserted it again in the Bytecc enclosure, it worked fine. So I started thinking about differences in the two enclosures. With the Bytecc, the HDD sits on top of a thin metal sheet to which the drive is also attached by a set of screws through a pair of side rails. With the iRocks, the HDD sits on a thin sheet of plastic to which the drive is attached by a set of undercarriage screws. Since the Seagate HDD worked in the Bytecc enclosure, but not in the iRocks, could the problem be that the drive needs to make contact with metal?
To test this hypothesis, I screwed the Bytecc siderails into the Seagate HDD, then connected the drive to the iRocks connectors. When I powered up, the drive light changed color, I heard a brief spinning and, whaddya know, the drive's icon popped up on my desktop!
But, I could not be sure that attaching the rails had done the trick, since I'd also followed instructions I'd seen in another forum for solving FireWire problems by being sure to shutdown your Mac, then connect and power up the external drive, before restarting the computer. So I removed the rails and tried restarting the drive after I'd repeated the FireWire "fix." No good.
Next try: replace rails, restart drive normally. Also, no good.
Final try: replace rails, restart drive according to FireWire "fix." Now it doesn't work!
So I'm starting to think the Seagate drive itself is buggy. I know IDE prices have gone down a lot and wonder:
1. what HDD brands are most reliable for >200 GB (ideally 500 GB) ?
2. which brands DEFINITELY work with the iRocks FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosure?
Apologies for the length of this tale of woe. And gratitude for any insight y'all can provide.
First, I opened up the drive case and removed the 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra-ATA HDD. Then I swapped out another drive from a Bytecc ME-720 FW enclosure and replaced it with the 320 Seagate. Now the 320 showed up fine on both my old PPC and new Intel iMacs. So, I figured I just needed to buy a new FW enclosure for the 320.
After doing a lot of online research, I bought what turned out to be the wrong type of enclosure--an IcyDock SATA to FW, when I needed IDE to FW! Returned the IcyDock and ordered an iRocks IR- 9410C IDE to FW & USB 2. It arrived yesterday.
When everything was connected and I flipped the iRock's power switch, its lamp lit but I couldn't hear the drive spin up and it didn't appear on my desktop. When I tested the enclosure with a 160 GB Maxtor HDD inside, however, it worked fine--spinning sounds and drive icon on desktop. So why, I wondered, didn't the enclosure work with the 320 GB Seagate HDD?
The enclosure came with a largely unintelligible manual. One of the few instructions written in English that I could actually decipher urged users to set the jumper on their drive to "master." From the Seagate website, I learned that my drive's jumper was set to "Cable service" because it's an Ultra-ATA. But I tried switching it to the "master" position to see if that would allow it to work with the iRocks enclosure. No such luck.
When I reset the jumper to "Cable service" and inserted it again in the Bytecc enclosure, it worked fine. So I started thinking about differences in the two enclosures. With the Bytecc, the HDD sits on top of a thin metal sheet to which the drive is also attached by a set of screws through a pair of side rails. With the iRocks, the HDD sits on a thin sheet of plastic to which the drive is attached by a set of undercarriage screws. Since the Seagate HDD worked in the Bytecc enclosure, but not in the iRocks, could the problem be that the drive needs to make contact with metal?
To test this hypothesis, I screwed the Bytecc siderails into the Seagate HDD, then connected the drive to the iRocks connectors. When I powered up, the drive light changed color, I heard a brief spinning and, whaddya know, the drive's icon popped up on my desktop!
But, I could not be sure that attaching the rails had done the trick, since I'd also followed instructions I'd seen in another forum for solving FireWire problems by being sure to shutdown your Mac, then connect and power up the external drive, before restarting the computer. So I removed the rails and tried restarting the drive after I'd repeated the FireWire "fix." No good.
Next try: replace rails, restart drive normally. Also, no good.
Final try: replace rails, restart drive according to FireWire "fix." Now it doesn't work!
So I'm starting to think the Seagate drive itself is buggy. I know IDE prices have gone down a lot and wonder:
1. what HDD brands are most reliable for >200 GB (ideally 500 GB) ?
2. which brands DEFINITELY work with the iRocks FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosure?
Apologies for the length of this tale of woe. And gratitude for any insight y'all can provide.
2GHz Intel G5 iMac 20-in., Mac OS X (10.5.2), 2GHz PPC G5 iMac 20-in.; 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook 15-in.
