Daisy-chained LaCie drives won't mount on new iMac

Hi, nopow -

Are each of the external drives equipped with its own external power supply? If not, it would be a good idea to do so - or use a self-powered hub.

If they are, are the power supplies all plugged in and on?

Odd.

Are the drives connected in the same order as they had been with the previous machine? If not, it may be that one of the earlier (preceding in chain) drives is not behaving, or is not equipped for passive pass-through of the firewire bus.

If they are in the same order, then it does sound like you'll either need to keep all drives 'on' so you can access the one(s) you need at any time; or make use of a powered hub.

This is happening to me too on my 21.5" iMac i3. Only with my LaCie drives though, not with my Maxtor FW400 drive, if the Maxtor is first in the chain, it doesn't have to be switched on for the one after it to work. I discovered it when I hooked up the LaCie d2 Quadra v3 I just bought, I had a LaCie Hard Disk Quadra (the rad black one) already that I had been hooking up via FireWire 800 and then daisy chaining the Maxtor FireWire 400 drive and I'm pretty sure it was working without having to turn the Hard Disk Quadra on untill I installed LaCie Desktop Manager. And the Quadra d2 V3 has its own set of problems that LaCie knows about. I think i'm going to return it to the store I bought it from.

Do you have LaCie Desktop Manager installed?

nopow: your OP. I have found the same, with 3 LaCie D2 drives. I guess that the passthrough of the Firewire connections is active, in that they require some circuitry in upstream drives to be energised. However, I used the same drives on my old G5 on OS 105.8 and cannot remember downstream drives, switched on, not working.

Any luck - anyone?

Do you use LaCie's software?

I haven't tried the daisy chain yet with my new iMac and my 3 d2 Quadras, v1, v2, and v3.

I zeroed out the drives initially and don't use any of LaCie's software, including Desktop Manager referenced by f1.4 who also says

"I'm pretty sure it was working without having to turn the Hard Disk Quadra on untill I installed LaCie Desktop Manager. And the Quadra d2 V3 has its own set of problems that LaCie knows about"

f1.4 - what are these problems?? How do you know that LaCie knows about them - and how can I find a way to a solution? I have a brand new drive and am trying to figure out what to do - I have experienced no issues except the LED light blinks.

Can you expand, please, what is wrong with your drive.

Mrs H

It wasn't the LaCie software after all, I was just trippin'. But the problem they're having is the v3 d2 freezing peoples computers after the drive wakes up from sleep. I didn't experience that problem because I didn't keep the drive long enough for it to go to sleep. I know they know because they told me they're working on a soloution to it.

And in another support letter to me they said all LaCie drives need to be powered on for drives after them to work.

What happens, after you have all the drives mounted on a restart?

Is your startup time affected... do you arrive at a frozen Desktop?

These are the symptoms I'm experiencing with 3 LaCie d2s daisy-chained.

LaCie asked me to connect the drives to another Mac. I disconnected the firewire 800 cable from my 27" iMac and plugged it into the port on my 24"iMac and all drives operated flawlesly. Rebooted without any of the drives gone AWOL. No hangs, no freezes.

I've also filed a bug report with Apple.

nopow wrote:

I never had Lacie Desktop Manager installed...

Now you know why 😎

I wrote LaCie about the blinking blue LED light.

They gave me, thus far, an answer that - I believe - does not pertain to my issue with the indicator lights.

It begins:

"I believe that your drive does not mount properly after the sleep mode.

Below are the steps for updating your D2 Version 3 to the latest firmware. This patch addresses issues you may have experienced with your drive sleeping or being unresponsive after the computer has been sleeping."

Then it goes on to give a long explanation with screen shots on where and how to download the new firmware and how to install it. It seems to end up with me in Terminal - a place I've never been and fear to go.

Since I am not having the described problems (yet?) I don't know if this is something I should do.

Any thoughts?

Do you think this firmware solution is the one they were referring to when they said something about they were working on a solution to your problem, f1.4?

Mrs H

PS "And in another support letter to me they said all LaCie drives need to be powered on for drives after them to work."

This seems to confirm what I saw in a YouTube video on how to set up daisychains, regardless of what Apple says in the article on FireWire.

I neglected to include this, the link to the firmware update for anyone who needs it or wants to check it out for me 🙂:

http://www.wuala.com/LaCieTS/Documents/

Mrs H

@ Mrs H, I have an old Maxtor FireWire 400 drive that will allow the daisy chain to pass through if powered off, even if the power cord is unplugged from it. That is how the inventors of firewire designed it to work (Apple is one of the inventors). The fact that we can't get LaCie FireWire 800 drives to work like that is why this discussion was started.

LaCie informed me that their drives need to be powered on for the daisy chain to pass through. It looks like we're going to need hubs for our MicMac iMacs to work with multiple ooh la la LaCie drives if we don't want to keep them on all the time or keep juggling cables whenever we want to use them. Goodbye tidy desk organization. Hello FireWire octopus...

f1.4 wrote:

@ Mrs H, I have an old Maxtor FireWire 400 drive that will allow the daisy chain to pass through if powered off, even if the power cord is unplugged from it. That is how the inventors of firewire designed it to work (Apple is one of the inventors). The fact that we can't get LaCie FireWire 800 drives to work like that is why this discussion was started...

You seem to know a lot about daisy chain, so as long as I have your attention forgive me if I ask a few further question.

I understand you are saying this won't work with my LaCie's, but I'm just trying to understand how it could work.

Do you turn off the power with the on/off switch on the HD, but leave the drive connected to the power brick (which is connected to power) for the drives?

Or do you actually disconnect the bricks from power so there is NO power to the drives - but expect the (say) last drive in the series still to work?

I'd like to have 2 drives - v2 LaCies - daisy chained - they both have on/off/auto switches - if I leave them set at auto, but with their power bricks connected to a power source - and with the 2 drives mounted - should it work? For what I'm describing - would your ideal wish be to not have to have the first drive connected to power and just be able to turn on the power to the second and get it to work? Doesn't that involve a lot of fussing behind the drives - or is that what some of the software that comes with the drives allows from the desktop (which software I always remove when I do a zero-out and partition)

If the drives sleep correctly, then the power is connected but the drives are powered down by the auto switch.

Mrs H