Firewire issues after Snow Leopard...

I have been lurking at this topic now for quite a while as I consider this the biggest issue with Snow Leopard.

My i7 iMac would be a serious professional system but no FW/800 cripples it unacceptably.

I wanted to warn others with this problem that I am pretty sure that the kext fix corrupted some of the files I moved after I had used it. I can't track down the corruption, but when any of those folders are opened, they freeze the computer completely. Happens even after they are copied to a virtual Windows machine (where they work perfectly) and back out again. Strange. Anyway, after this test I reverted to a system image and the problem hasn't returned. So be careful if you use that fix; hopefully it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Hey Mac Mini 2008 - You mentioned that your issue was fixed with 10.6.3 because your enclosure's chipset was addressed in the kext. Can I ask you how you know they addressed that particular chipset? Is there a list somewhere of everything that an update contains for instance?

well, i was in fact too optimistic cuz my firewire is gone/flakey again. More gone than flakey actually.
It will work perfectly for a good long time, and then next time i plug something in it does not see it.
It's almost like it's on a timer. Then a while later it will see things again.

probably going to get another machine

i'll wait and see what the next update does.
I can use my old powerbook for mobile recording with logic. THAT thing is bulletproof...but slow:)

DOug M

I mistakenly started a new thread as follows, before I found this one here.
Here goes:

I have an early 2009 2,66gHz Mac Pro. 7GB Ram.
At some point it got incredibly unstable running 10.6.4 (and earlier SL versions).

I've tried running it with stock RAM. Same issue. Tried clean re-installing. Same issue.

I post this here because I have the exact same system running on an iMac (cloned) - and it works fine with all my firewire drives so this must only affect certain (older?) machines.

I have read a lot of the "general instability" threads concerning SL and they seem all to have issues as diverse as mine; basically this is what happens for me:

I boot the machine and it works fine until a certain *key event* makes everything wonky. At this point, all these seemingly random issues pop up.

Such as, but not limited to:
The finder will crash and then give that darned "could not be relaunched -10601" error.
Most things to do with saving/exporting will fail and crash the corresponding app.
Toast will not launch.
AFP Server becomes unresponsive, as does screen sharing.
Opera will crash.
Disk Utility will crash on launch.
iTunes will crash, then fail to relaunch "checking library" then beachball.

I have tried to identify this *key event* because it might help the apple engineers get this fixed.

It seems sometimes to be something to do with Quicktime-based operations. Clicking around in Disk utility is also a good way of making it hang. It never happens spontaneously without user input. There is always something I click, that starts the whole thing off, although the trigger is generally very diverse. A friend of mine has the same issue, and he says he can always trigger it by re-scanning AU units (?) in Logic.

Once you have reached "Firewire ****" the machine needs to be hard-reset. A reboot gets as far as the blue screen with the spinning wheel. I don't know if it goes on spinning forever because I don't have forever to wait, but it does not reboot within 20min. If there are no firewire drives attached, none of this ever happens. I have a 2TB DualDrive FW800 WD and a 2TB Lacie which is also FW800.

Now I'm trying to identify which one of the two FW drives is responsible, and I will post back with results. I shall also try FW400. They are both brand new drives by the way.
I swear this is going to make a little vein in my frontal lobe go pop pretty soon.

Sorry to add to all this...I have been watching this thread for a while..
My problems are more severe, and are not getting any better.
I have a 1TB Classic Hard Drive from Freecom which simply will not mount at all. It spins, makes three 'beeps' and then nothing. It used to work fine when I bought it last year. I'm not very tech but I remember having to do the partition thing when I first got it.

I have tried the Kext utility, and rolling back the OS to 10.5.8 all to no avail. I am particularly stressed as my family's home movies are on the infernal Freecom, not backed up (i know, doh).

Basically all I want to do now is get the material off the disc and throw it away, and buy an Apple Time Capsule. Does anyone have experience of recovering the data using perhaps a Windows machine??

I have to add to this thread as well.

I have a 2nd Gen Drobo that will constantly Error-36 when copying files under Snow Leopard via FW800. This behaviour is not present under 10.5.8 Leopard at all, and files transfer nice and fast over the FW800. I can barely get a 500MB file transferred under SL before it errors, and a reboot of the machine is necessary to get the Finder back to normal. I have tried re-installing many times and trying both manual and auto-updating with the same result. I can only currently use USB to the Drobo, unless I want to downgrade to 10.5.8, which to me at the point of 10.6.4 now, is not possible for daily use. I have jumped through all the hoops with Drobo support to zero resolution, which isn't surprising since there isn't anything wrong with the device.

I do hope that Apple addresses this issue since Firewire is a very basic and fundamental part of OSX. To let this bug continue to be present is unacceptable.

I'm having a similar problem - I've got a Macbook Pro late 2008 model - had no problems with it until I updated to 10.6.5 - now every time I tried use any of my external Firewire drives (2 Guardian Maximus RAID 0 1TB disk arrays and a WD 750gb) my computer gets an intermittent spinning beach ball - can't figure out any way to fix this - so any suggestions would be welcome.

Why hasn't Apple responded to this one?

I also have this problem where I get an error 36 when transferring large files on my 2007 MBP to my 2nd gen Drobo via firewire and usb. I've also experienced similar firewire dropouts where the drive suddenly becomes unavailable and the Drobo goes into standby mode. Apple hardware test reports that everything is okay and have performed the usual PRAM resets etc.

Drobo support have not found a resolution - I get the "standard" answer that I have faulty disks and I should replace them.

However, based upon everyone's experiences, it seems obvious that there is a SL software issue with the 2007 MBP firewire kernel extension as I've also connected the Drobo to my late 2008 MBP and have experienced a rock solid firewire 800 connection. Both machines run SL 10.6.5.

I wish Apple would fix this urgently as it currently makes my Drobo unusable for my iTunes storage.

i don't think my problem with a target disked clamshell ibook (g3) is a sno.lep issue, just a daisychaining issue: i've got an external f/w hdd (2x 6pin connectors) chained to a samsung hd tuner (2x4pin) chained to the ibook.

when the middle device (the sammy) is off, it's a passthru: the ibook is mounted as expected. but if the sammy is turned on (my dvr s/w turns it on only on demand, the green option;-) the ibook isn't recognized on plugin, no passthru:-(

what's worse, if the ibook is already mounted when the sammy goes on, it's immediately TURNED OFF!!!-( with the expected "improperly discon'd" msg, with the possible corruption warning unfortunately true:-(

guess i'm just asking 2 much from a minimac;-)

wait! it gets better: if both tuner is on and target disk is plugged in (but not mounted) turning off the tuner in the middle of the chain immediately shuts off the ibook:-\

Thanks for all the info and hints - last week on plugging in a WD Passport FW800 drive alongside a buss powered FW400 audio interface my MBPro 2.33 (2007) crashed and then came up with no mouse control and ten minute reboots. On reading the hints I removed firewire kexts and got my control and bootime down but of course no firewire on either 400/800 or my express card. Applegenius test drive wouldnt boot properly and he suggested the logicboard replacement but I still wondered if firewire was really dead.
I tried the replacement kexts with no luck but I had upgraded to 10.6.6 by then so maybe that is a nono. Then after playing with kexts I redid 10.6.6 upgrade just to make sure I was back to the start and used kextutility and now my bootime is down to less than 2mins with the kexts in and my firewire express will work - so im now just hindered having only one firewire port when i used to have 3 ports on two buses.
Ive had nothing from the built in ports since they went missing and i guess the computer is no longer struggling to find the built in ports hence quicker boot times.
Ive read through this thread and linking threads to see if this is a western digital issue i have that has closed or bust my ports - the drive i had to get data off onto another machine so it appears to work so I'll wait and see if anyone else has experiences that fix things in any way

best

Here's my $0.02. I have an iMac 7,1 with an Intel Core2 Duo @.8 Extreme (24"). It's working perfectly with FireWire 800 as well as 400 on Snow Leopard 10.6.6.
Well, perfectly... There's one iOmega Ultramax 1TB that hasn't hiccuped once in its lifetime (except if you count Windows XP (Boot Camp) issues, but those are down to Windows XP's crappy support for FireWire). I also have a... WD MY PASSPORT STUDIO 500GB. AND... It's causing issues. I've heard (or should I say, read) many people describing my exact issue - the disk activity would go to 0 when copying large files to it.
In my case, the situation was really nasty, because what happened was that I could READ from it perfectly; not WRITE to it. Seeing as I have no USB ports available on the computer, switching to USB is not going to be the answer - using a powered hub still doesn't give the device enough juice to do its job... The WD caused trouble from the beginning, even on Leopard. I think I was on 10.5.7 when I bought the WD in portugal - I've always regretted that purchase. Seeing as I have read numerous reviews even of Windows users (on non-Mac computers) having this issue with it on FireWire, it seems to me that those with this particular device might be facing two problems instead of just one: the SL FireWire issue (which seems to be non-existant for me except when the WD is connected, and even then it seems to only consider the WD), and the issue(s) arising from just the WD, which happen to be similar. When I first started using the device on Leopard, I didn't install any 'helper' software (no Turbo Drivers; no Drive Manager).
It was very unreliable right from the off. I had had my Iomega Ultramax a while before that and had no issues with it whatsoever. It's a beast of a drive that cruises happily along at its max speed (FW800), so no issues there. I'm using it as my Time Machine drive. TThe Iomega has its own power brick (as in: it's not bus-powered) and it seems that its secondary ports (for daisy chaining) are powered by it rather than by the iMac's FW Bus, because if I power down the Iomega I have no way to use any device connected to it. That seems to be good, though. Many of you have hinted this be a power-related issue. My parents both have Iomega drives as well, and FireWire has never been as popular here in the Netherlands for any other type of device (except AV Cameras) as it has been in the US (or perhaps still is - there's what I don't know). Anyway, I've used my parents' drives in daisy chain to my own Iomega and all worked fine. The only drive that seems to cause real trouble is my WD My Passport Studio. And they don't necessarily seem to be OS related either, because the problems persist in Windows via Boot Camp and even on native Windows systems (be it XP or higher, with XP being the worst by far; haven't tried Windows 7 yet).

But it gets better: once when I booted in Windows XP, it wanted to detect all my FireWire devices anew. And didn't recognise them. In the Windows XP device manager, an interesting error showed up. Something like: This device has stopped because it caused problems. Then, when booting back into Mac OS X, ALL of my FireWire devices were mysteriously gone, including my trusty Iomega drive... And they would not come back until after zapping the SMC (PRAM only didn't help). They would show up on FW400, but not on 800. I then did the SMC zap, and decided to leave the Mac off, as it was time to go to bed anyway. I then powered on my Mac with no devices connected except mouse and keyboard, and did another SMC and PRAM reset just to be sure. Then, when I connected all devices again (all on their proper connections), I discovered that all was fine again.

Mind you, I have never experienced speed issues with ANY drive at all, except for the WD drive. Also, I have worked with various FireWire Video cameras; all daisy chained through my Iomega drive. So far, they've all worked like a charm. It seems that I might be lucky here, though, as I am inclined to think that the Iomega actually also doubles up as an additional power source for FW devices; apart from being 'just' a hub.

I am so disappointed in Apple for not responding to this issue.

Here's my story:

I'm a Logic Audio user who was forced to buy a mac when Apple bought Logic back at version 5.5 (worked very well on XP). I was out of recording action for a couple of years and just recently invested in a Motu Ultralite MKIII hybrid firewire/USB (thank heavens) interface. The idea was to power the interface via the firewire 400 bus so that I could record in the field.

I was running Tiger, but had to install snow leopard to support Logic 9. I tried an update and even the kext file fixes, pram zapping etc. but due to continuing firewire troubles decided to do a completely fresh install.

Fresh install of Snow Leopard, Logic, and my audio drivers. Updated everything. Result: I cannot work with firewire 400 (my machine does not have 800). Timing issues. Hardware not detected. Hangs.

So I revert to USB, which requires a wall wart for my interface, and everything works. What about all those with firewire only interfaces?

My personal view is that this must be related to Snow Leopard not handling a particular type of firewire chip.

Aug 31, 2009 was when this thread was started and there has, to my knowledge been no comment from Apple. I find this a deplorable way to treat people who have invested money and time in your products and trying to trouble-shoot them. We deserve a statement at the very least.

I can't roll back to Leopard to solve my problem as I jumped from Tiger, which doesn't support Logic 9, so I'm stuck with a semi-functional setup, which was sold to me as functional. Very annoying Apple.