Firewire issue after installing Lion

Interesting.

I have upgraded my three Macs to Lion.

3 Firewire devices on my Mac Mini work perfectly.

2 of the 3 Firewire devices on my iMac work perfectly but my drobo V2 works for a while then seems to drop offline/become unresponsive.

Only way to fix is to power off the iMac, power off/on the dorob then power back on the imac, then works for a whiel and then does the same again.

All other Firewire devices working perfectly.

**** frustrating..........

Robin

Strange!. My Firewire 400 port is now working perfectly on my Mac Pro running Lion. The only thing I have done differently was to create a new disk partition and install Snow Leopard, as I was in need of FW. Having rebooted into Lion, the port imports video perfectly.

I am happy but a tad confused....

Robin,

had the same issue. I had one suggestion from Drobo (1), and made one interesting discovery myself (2):

1. Drobo pointed me toward the firewall prefs. It could be that DDserviceD is blocked. You have to set it to allow. I did so, and Drobo worked for me again on FW800.

2. I had another issue with Drobo (after I ran AppleHardwareTest, and FW started to act funny again). Is to connect Drobo first via USB....which works perfect (though a tiny bit slower). And then switch back to FW800.

good luck

Rolf

Same problem for me...

I use a Freecom Quattro Hard Drive with FireWire 800, 400, eSata and USB2.0.

I upgraded my MacBooks with Lion. Since the upgrade, i'm unable to use my Hard Drive with FireWire (800 & 400). With USB, it's working perfectly...

I tested the drive on a OSX Leopard MacBook and everything worked fine... FireWire was perfectly recognized... USB also was fine...

I'm sure it has something to do with the upgrade, but like other members, i'm unable to have any support from apple since my macbook is 'too old'... (Mid 2010...) Really Frustrating... I paid for an upgrade that was more a downgrade...

Any ID to solve this?

Just made a test... When formatting the drive for MS-DOS(FAT), i'm unable to use it with my FireWire800 port, BUT, when formatting the drive for HFS+, everything is working fine!

So i think that my firewire port is working fine, but the problem is that OSX Lion is unable to mount an FAT drive on the FireWire port... but on the USB port its working fine...

I have just installed lion upgrade from snow leopard and now my firewire FA-66 Edirol Sound Card is no longer visable no matter what I it will not appear so there is definately an issue with this upgrade.

I was having performance issues with my FW800 connected drives (2010 Mac Mini) after upgrading to Lion and now that I've installed 10.7.1, it won't even boot if the drives are connected via FW. If I use USB, it works. If you have FW working under 10.7.0... I would suggest not upgrading to 10.7.1.

FWIW, my enclosure uses an Oxford Semiconductor chip.

Hmmm

I know it does not help you but I have a Mac Mini 2010 with 3 Firewire drives attached which is working perfectly.

My drobo on the other hand which was connected to my iMac became very problomatic and has now been retired!

2 other Firewire drives on my iMac are performing perfectly.

Seems to be very inconsistent.

Robin

VirtualRain wrote:

I was having performance issues with my FW800 connected drives (2010 Mac Mini) after upgrading to Lion and now that I've installed 10.7.1, it won't even boot if the drives are connected via FW. If I use USB, it works. If you have FW working under 10.7.0... I would suggest not upgrading to 10.7.1.

No issues whatsoever with FW800 and 10.7 or 10.7.1 for me.

My drives are LaCie d2 Quadra v2s; a post elsewhere notes v2s work where v3s have issues. 😕

I should have said I have also upgraded both machines to 10.7.1 without any further hiccups.

Robin

I had a similar problem with a Lacie D2. I assumed that either Apple had decided not to support FW anymore (unlikely until Thunderbolt takes off) or Lacie hadn't updated the drivers.

I was forced to resort to USB hoping that the problem might get resolved soon.

I gave it another try this evening and it worked with FW800. I am not sure how or why. The drive was mounted using USB at the time so I ejected it, plugged in the FW cable and there it was! very odd.

This 'fix' (Resetting the SMC) also works for the iMac, be it in a slightly different way, because there's no battery to be removed. For it to work on the iMac, simply pull the plug lead before holding the power button for >5 seconds.

I have to do this every time I connect any new FireWire device, even though I am still on Snow Leopard. I see no reason to believe the problem lies with Lion, as Snow Leopard also showed these issues. At least in my case. And since I also used a Western Digital hard drive at the time, I know what I'm talking about. My drive was a WD My Passport Studio 500GB. It would stop doing anyrhing at all after transfirring >500MB of files to it, no matter whether I would be in the middle of a transfer or not. Most of the time, the drive would NOT unmount itself, though. It would simply cause a system modal HANG, showing the beach ball and even stopping the seconds counter on the clock. All would then be fine after I'd UNPLUG the WD drive, apart from the obvious warning about the drive not being unmounted properly.

I used an iOmega Ultramax without any problems whatsoever until its power supply kicked the bucket, and I now use an iOmega eGo 500GB as a replacement for the WD drive.

Since the iOmega UltraMax passed away, I've bought a G-Drive (G-Technology). It seems to work quite all right, except that I've received my first random umount from it just a few minutes ago. I'll have to keep an eye on the situation, as I still have the opportunity to return it free of charge, should need be. However, I strongly blame myself for this specific unmount, as I'd been moving stuff around on my desktop and one of the firewire cables is a bit wobbly in the drive (although all Daisy-chained devices still worked, so I'm baffled for it -- the G-drive is currently the first drive in the chain, being connected to my Mac)...

I certainly hope this unmount is the first as well as the last one I've seen from this device. I just wish Apple wouldn't have 'upgraded' the FireWire drivers/stack since Leopard, because all was just fine in those days. It seems, for me at least, Snow Leopard introduced this issue and Lion did not resolve it. Looks as if Apple really isn't giving much for FireWire support any more...

I just bought a MacBook Pro (1 year old) running Lion OS and tried using my Firewire external HD. Had to use a 800 to 400 cable. Like most of you, the computer did not recognize the drive. Tried plugging/unplugging a few times still nothing. Anyway left it plugged in as I was connecting a Firewire 400 DVD drive. The drive worked no problem, then suddenly the HD shows up on the desktop. Works fine.

Maybe it needs time (about 2 - 4 min).

I have exactly the same problem. I also contact Freecom (my hardware manufacturer) and they said they just hope in an Apple Update that will fix this issue. Any self-solution to date? Thanks

I am using a Drobo connected via FireWire 800. It has always worked under previous versions of OS X. I have found like many of the other people who have posted that it works intermittently. Apple says they have not heard of this problem, and tried to say it is a software problem. Judging from the multiple examples, it does not seem tied to specific software or hardware, but rather is a problem with Lion. I will provide written feedback to Apple, but it is not promising that it is not now a known issue.

I would appreciate any suggestions. In the meantime, it looks like I will be connnecting with USB.

Dudley Warner