Firewire issue after installing Lion

Same problem here...

ProTools MBox Pro working perfect on iMac Snow Leopard via 800 firewire, update to Lion and can not get to work. Tried all suggestions, nothing worked. Works via firewire 400 but not 800.

Working fine with Lion on 15" MacBook Pro but not iMac.

To add our experience of Firewire with Lion - there's definitely something happened with Lion compared to Snow Leopard. We've got 2 Iomega 2Tb drives and a LaCie Blu-ray burner on a Firewire chain that have always been perfectly happy under Snow Leopard and are still happy under Lion, but our Sony HDR-HC3 camcorder is no longer recognised since we upgraded to Lion. It has worked perfectly for the past 5 years on a variety of iMacs under a variety of Mac OS's, but now causes the Firewire chain to instantly collapse when it is added in - the Iomega drives spontaneously unmount themselves. Connected on its own, it isn't seen at all by the Mac. We've tried the SMC approach, but it has made no difference. We've spent a lot of money getting the Firewire boards in the camcorder replaced, and it has made no difference. We have an appointment on Saturday at our local Apple store, to see if they can help.

Hi

Same sort of problem

Using an Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive (Mac Edition, 2TB) as the Time Machine back-up for my iMac (mid-2008) and MBP and realised that the older Firewire-400 port does not pick up the Iomega, whereas the -800 port does. I'm sure it's supposed to work, as the Iomega was shipped with both 800-800 and 400-800 cables.

Didn't have it pre-Lion but reading all of the above, seems as though this is probably the same thing.

The FW-400 port does however seem to still work when it comes to the connecting my iMac and MBP as a target disk. Wonder if it's just a matter of updating drivers?

Hello everyone,

I had the same problem and was watching the internet for a solution but didn't find.

I contacted someone I know from Apple and this was the SOLUTION for me using a Imac with Lion installed:

- take out the power cable from the computer

- Press the power button for about 10 seconds

- conext the power cable with the computer

- Connect Firewire Device

- Start the computer

After I did this Final Cut Pro foundnd my JVC HD-200 immediately.

Give it a try! I was also really surprised that this worked!

I had a similar issue. The drive would mount and was readable but I could not write to it. I tried all the resetting and formatting the drive but those didn't work. For whatever reason when I turn off the Wi-Fi I am able to write as much as I want to the drive. I am using the latest MBpro with Lion 10.7.2. Not sure if it will help but its easy to try.

Same issue with OWC Mercury Rack pro connected FW800 to Mac Pro (2010 model) running 10.7.2.

Get the following in the system log:

ICANotifications framework timed out waiting for a FireWire device with GUID '7754603589489988' to become ready!

When the rack drops, the finder is frozen for 30-60s (activity monitor says that the Finder is irresponsive). Once the Finder comes back, the rack comes back as well. On a different FireWire port, I have 3 OWC Mercury Elite Pro. Strangely, when the rack comes back, one of the Mercury Elite Pro (the other 2 are fine) just dissapears and I have to power off/on all drives on the chain to get it back.

Anyone knows what it means?

I just bought a Lacie d2 Quadra external drive becuase of its many connections, and lucky me, the FireWire doesn't work. A little internet research and here I am. I am using a late 2009 iMac with OS 10.7.2. I haven't tried the resetting procedure, but I will now.

Apple, if you EVER read these forums, which it seems like you never do, for God's sake fix the FireWire!!!

asb1230 wrote:

I just bought a Lacie d2 Quadra external drive becuase of its many connections, and lucky me, the FireWire doesn't work. A little internet research and here I am. I am using a late 2009 iMac with OS 10.7.2. I haven't tried the resetting procedure, but I will now.

Apple, if you EVER read these forums, which it seems like you never do, for God's sake fix the FireWire!!!

1) Apple doesn't read these forums in that manner, not officially. Have you contacted AppleCare and LaCie?

2) I have an older LaCie d2 Quadra that works just fine on FW 800.

3) The fix will likely have to come from LaCie, not Apple, as it appears to be a firmware issue, not a Lion one.

4) A d2 Quadra has multiple interfaces, so you can use USB2 instead with a negligible loss in speed.

I just realized about this problem today.

I am using an external FireWire HDD for storage, and after copying significant amount of data during the day and shutting down the Mac and powering off the HDD the drive, left for some errands.

A couple of hours later I turned them on and to my surprise the HDD was not mounting.

Tried re-booting several times, changing the cable on both FireWire 800 ports, as well as with the HDD FireWire 400 port to the Mac's 800, none of them worked to mount the HDD.

Resetting the SMC didn't help either.

Only when using the USB port it is now working.

This is very frustrating.

Now I understand why many other long time Mac users are continually complaining about Lion, and stating that it was not ready for showtime, many called it a beta version of Mac OS X.

Anyway, I am currently doing a backup, after that I will give it a try in Snow Leopard to see if my Mac sees the HDD with the FireWire connection.

McGIO wrote:

Now I understand why many other long time Mac users are continually complaining about Lion, and stating that it was not ready for showtime, many called it a beta version of Mac OS X.

1) Are you running 10.7.2?

2) Have you contacted AppleCare?

1) Yes, my MacBook Pro is running 10.7.2

2) No I haven't as my Mac is not covered by AppleCare. It is a late 2008 MBP. The logic board failed during the 2nd year and it was replaced by a Depot repair center via the local Genius Bar.

Are you suggesting that this mght be a hardware issue?

For my understanding, it seems like a software issue.

All Apple products come with 90 days of phone support through AppleCare - and that includes software like Mac OS X Lion.

AppleCare is for all Apple products (except the iTunes Music Store,) not just hardware.

No problem here with FW 800 on a MBPro 15" unibody 2010 since two WD MyBook work as always...

Just one suspect about the different behaviours on variuos Mac models:

may it be related to the 32/64 bit support on the different machines?

Lion is 64 bit native but I am not sure that on older machine (despite they are supported) starts the 64 or 32 bit kernel...

Orso

Well, that would have potential.. with the exception that the two machines I'm having this issue on (yep, now two.. identical issue) are an early 2011 mbp and later 2011 iMac. Both of which are running Lion in 64bit mode.

I CAN mount the drive manually by the way, using mount. Diskutil fails as seen below. I think the problem lies in either in diskutil, or that FW800 doesn't return the status fast enough for diskutil.

iMac:~ mike$ mount

/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)

devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)

map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)

map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/export 1 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

iMac:~ mike$ diskutil mount /dev/disk1s3

Volume on disk1s3 timed out waiting to mount

iMac:~ mike$ mount -t msdos /dev/disk1s3 /Volumes/EXT/ <--- functional mount method.

iMac:~ mike$ mount

/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)

devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)

map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)

map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/export 1 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk1s3 on /Volumes/EXT (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners, mounted by mike)

iMac:~ mike$

At the risk of exposing ignorance: What is mount. I don't see it in Applications.

2007 iMac