Firewire 800 and mbp 2011

I see this problem too with a new 2.66GHz 4-core MBP 2011. I have two WD 500GB FW800 drives. Both are fine with FireWire on MBP 2010 and with USB2 on MBP 2011. Neither work with FW800 on MBP 2011. The symptom is a hang after a few GB (<12GB or so) of apparently normal writing. -Tried reinstalling the OS and resetting the SMC. Neither helped. There is clearly an issue. Hardware or software? Apple or WD?

I have the same macbook pro and the same WD drive and the same problem too...

i also have the same problem with a new 2011 mbp. Not very happy as it is my only drive right now.

Instead of the highly reliable Oxford bridge chipsets used by better external drive makers, Western Digital's external drive enclosures use proprietary bridge chipsets and firmware that are, to be blunt, plain garbage. WD makes fine hard drives, but the external enclosures WD puts them into should be avoided.

I'm having the exact same problem, however I am not using a Western Digital drive. I'm using a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex.

I use this drive as a Time Machine backup drive. I've used it for about 6 months with no problems on my previous MacBook Pro. I recently set it up as the Time Machine drive for my new 15" Mackbook Pro (early 2011) and as reported by another poster in this thread, after less than 12GB (usually between 4GB and 7GB for me) the FW800 port will shut down. The Time Machine backup hangs and TM goes into an endless "Stopping backup...." state. The drive shows as mounted in Finder, but attempts to navigate the directory hierarchy (eg: read from the drive) fail.

So, we have a half dozen people, all with FW drives that have worked previously and on other Macs, unable to access them for more than a few minutes on the MBP 2011 under FireWire, while they do work under USB.

I don't think it is the drives, unless it is an error in the drives that caused an incompatibility just with this model of MacBook Pro (but not prior ones or iMacs or when operating under USB, etc.)

I've tested my drive several times under two configurations. I alternated between FW800 and USB 2.0. The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex is a SATA Drive in a plastic case. The SATA port is exposed on the back, and Seagate ships it with a "USB Cable" which is a USB to SATA adapter that plugs into the back. They also ship a FW800 version. I have both.

Before each attempt to use the drive, I partitioned the drive.
Run 1: FW800: Plug in drive, partition, start time machine backing up 500GB of data.
Result: Lockup after 4.39GB of data. Verified in finder, drive is not responsive. Time machine "cancels backup" for around 5 minutes before I bail.

Run 2: FW800: Plug in drive, partition, start time machine backing up 500GB of data.
Result: Lockup a bit after 6GB of data. May have been 4.39 GB of data again. Verified lockup in finder. Time Machine unable to cancel backup.

Run 3: USB 2.0: Plug in drive, partition, start time machine backing up 500GB of data.
Result: Time machine makes it to 12GB when I decide "maybe it is fixed" and want to try firewire again. Drive remained responsive, and Time Machine cancels backup immediately.

Run 4: FW800: Plug in drive, partition, star time machine backing up 500GB of data.
Result: Time machine makes it to 4.39GB of data (exactly again!) before the drive locks up. Attempt to verify lockup by copying empty folder (just created) to drive. Unable to copy folder and unable to cancel Time Machine.

Run 5: USB 2.0: Plug in drive. This time for variety, I partitioned it and started Time Machine backing up 500GB of data.
Result: 27.71GB in and I'm not stopping it. Able to copy the empty folder to the drive while time machine is running with no problems.

Overall Results: Two constants in this experiment: The drive and the Laptop. The change is the SATA adapter used to connect to the drive, and the port on the laptop where the drive was plugged in.

Consistently unable to connect via firewire, and consistently able to connect via USB 2.0.

Conclusion: Either my drives FW800 adapter is broken, or there is a problem with the FW800 port of my 2011 MacBook Pro 15" (2GHz) Since the FW800 adapter has been in regular use for the last 6 months, I believe the issue is with the FW800 port on the new laptop.

The only question in my mind is whether this is a hardware defect, a design problem, or a software problem.

I have the same problem on my MacBook Pro 13 2.3GHz Core i5 early 2011.
I have a WD HDD, USB2 and FireWire800.
When I connect it with the Firewire cable it stalls and after a while completely hangs.
When using the USB it is working great.
The same HDD works fine with both USB and Firewire on my older Macbook Pro and iMac.
***?!?

After switching to USB I was able to back up my entire machine. It took all day because USB is dog slow, but it was successful. That exonerates the hard drive. My FW adapter was working before. The new thing in my setup was the laptop, so I think it is the laptop's firewire port that is the problem.

These machines are a whole new design. They look the same but inside Apple went from a NVIDIA chipset architecture to Intel. Which means new drivers for firewire, I'm guessing. Actually, hoping because if it is a hardware problem that will be worse for everybody involved.

Further testing seems to indicate that it is an incompatibility or bug in the driver on the MacBook, that is particular to certain models (or interface chips) for firewire hard drives, but not all.

Small file copies do not cause the problem to manifest. I was able to copy a 1GB file many times to the drive without issue (more than 10.) However, when I forced a 25GB time machine backup, the drive stalled at 12GB. (this is the Seagate GoFlex 1TB with the GoFlex FW800 cable.)

Taking the exact same data, I tried simply copying the it to the drive (thinking the issue might be Time Machine) and it failed this time at 5GB the same way.

you can use this command in terminal to watch what's going on with your drive:
iostat -w 4
the command "df" will let you see the disk number for the drive in question.

Connecting a drive from a different manufacturer in an OWC case (still bus powered over FW800) I was alble to copy the 25GB file to the drive without issue.

So, I believe the problem is a software driver incompatibility issue.

I am also having this problem. I am on my second machine they just shipped me. I am using a wd with FireWire and USB. It is hanging up on video transfers to the drive using FireWire. I'm wondering if I should just return the machine and give up. Do you think Apple will make this right?

How did you get WD to send you a new hard drive? Was it torture or were they easy to work with?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that your seagate goflex fw800 drive was 750gb or less? If so, then your results and mine might indicate that it is a power issue of some sort. My Seagate is 1TB and it is a nonstandard sized drive (I opened the case yesterday). It seems to be about 17mm tall! This means it is significantly taller than the typical 9mm drive, and that they achieved this capacity by adding more platters. More platters means more weight which means exponentially more power to spin them.

Elsewhere I saw that Apple has boosted the power provided via USB on this model to allow the iPad to charge as fast as it does connected to the wall. Maybe this means there is less wattage available on the Firewire port than manufacturers were previously expecting. (I believe FW doesn't specify an amount of current in the spec.)