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Level 1

8 points

Daisy chained Firewire 800 LaCie d2 Quadras - iMac Finder Locks up

Has anyone successfully connected multiple 3TB LaCie d2 Quadra drives using daily chained Firewire 800 to a 2011-model 27" iMac?

Has anyone else had process lockups when connecting multiple 3TB LaCie d2 Quadra drives using daisy chained Firewire 800? How was this problem resolved?

New 27" iMac (2,7GHz i5, 2TB internal disk, 8GB RAM, OS Lion 10.7.3)). I connected two LaCie 3TB d2 Quadra external drives, daisy chained to a single Firewire 800 port. (Yes, I performed LaCie's software update to the d2 Quadras.) The finder locks up every day or two; Aperture locks up every few days. the iMac sometimes doesn't go to sleep as specified in the power saver settings. Emptying a few GB from the trash can take DAYS. Copying a 60 GB Aperture library within the internal hard drive can take many hours. Forcing a Quit of Finder or Aperture doesn't allow them to be correctly restarted. The iMac will not shut down from the menu. It must be powered off by holding power button for 6-10 seconds. VMWare Fusion 4 and MS Office 2010 are the only non-Apple software on this computer.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on May 7, 2012 12:28 PM

38 replies

RRFS

Level 5

4,522 points

Aug 9, 2012 3:32 PM in response to ewb55

No problem the answer is

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167227/two_new_thunderbolt_cables_join_parade_o f_apple_releases.html

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,976 points

Aug 9, 2012 5:56 PM in response to ewb55

The drives you will be receiving, the Ones without USB 3 should work just fine. Those are what I use and have had great luck with for 5 years.

Aug 13, 2012 9:43 PM in response to ewb55

I have been going back and forth with LaCie for several days now. Have a 1TB hooked to my iMac; working fine the last year. Bought a 3TB intending to gang them together. Have done so with FW800 cable. Finder does not show an increase in storage volume so I suppose this means the new drive is not being recognized. Tried everything I can think of, but no luck.

LaCie answers promptly, but offers nothing useful.

Without resolution I will have to connect the new drive direct to the iMac and use it that way?

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 14, 2012 11:54 AM in response to tmikeporter

Dear tmikeporter,

What version of Mac do you have? Which 3TB LaCie drive are you attempting to connect? I have had exceptional bad experiences with the current LaCie (version 3) 3TB d2 Quadra drives. You can spot that they are version 3.0 and support USB 3.0 by the presence of the "stacked" USB 3.0 jack and lack of a Firewire 400 jack. I have had these spontaneously disconnect from my 27" iMac (which I got in April of 2012). I have had them lock up the finder. If your iMac does not support USB 3.0, I would avoid ANY external drive that supports USB 3.0 - LaCie, Western Digital, ANYBODY.... Even if you're connecting with Firewire.

Possible options: 1) Ask LaCie to exchange the version 3 drive for a version 2 drive; 2) Buy a version 2 drive on ebay and swap the internal disks. The version 2 drives are usually 500 GB or 750 GB, but apparently can accommodate 3TB drives; 3) Get a Mac that supports USB 3.0 natively. Currently the only Macs that support USB 3.0 are the new retina display 15" MacBook Pro and the current MacBook Airs. Rumor has it that the next Minis and iMacs will also support USB 3.0.

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 14, 2012 11:58 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Dear rkaufmann87,

I'm very glad to hear that you have had good experience with the USB 2.0 only (version 2.1) LaCie d2 Quadra drives. Are yours 3TB? I am very much looking forward to no longer having to fear finder lockups and lost/corrupted data every few days!

Aug 14, 2012 12:01 PM in response to ewb55

iMac 27 inch purchased Sept 2011. It's a d2 Quadra 3TB. It has 2-FW800, USB 2.0 and eSATA.

From LaCie I was finally instructed to plug the 3TB direct into the Mac, then connect the old 1TB to the 3TB. Turned both on and it worked; both were recognized by the computer. Time Machine still backs up normally to the 1TB even though it is ganged to the 3TB.

What I don't know is, will Time Machine, now that it has more room accessbile to it, use the additional 3TB of space and save more backups. I asked LaCie this and no reply as yet. Do you know how to make the 3TB second in line?

Anything else I should know?

I could always return this 3TB to the Apple Store...one option. Do you know anthing about the LaCie Porsche drives?

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 14, 2012 12:41 PM in response to tmikeporter

Dear tmikeporter,

I believe that TimeMachine can only save to one external disk drive at a time. There is a selection box in the Time Machine Preferences from which you select which drive will be your Time Machine backup drive. (On my MacBook Air, I change this regularly, as I keep a backup drive at my office and another one at home.) I take it that your 1TB drive is full or almost full. And, that you'd like to now start using the 3TB drive. You have a couple of choices: 1) Using Time Machine Preferences, change the Time Machine drive from the current 1TB drive to the new 3TB drive. The first backup will take quite a while, as it will copy everything to the new 3TB drive. At this point, you might as well disconnect the 1TB drive, unless you want it to be handy to go back and retrieve things from the time machine archives on it; 2) You can copy all of the time machine data from your 1TB drive to your 3TB drive and then continue using the 3TB drive for Time Machine. This frees up the 1TB drive for other purposes, like those thousands of photos of your kids or vacations.

Now, before you do either of those things, return the version 3 LaCie d2 Quadra and get a drive that is NOT USB 3.0 capable. You can skip this step if you are feeling lucky. By this, I mean that there is a posibility that your new LaCie drive will lock up the finder while doing a backup. This may take weeks before the problem surfaces - long after the usual return period. But when the lockup happens, you'll have to turn the drive off (corrupting any files that were open) and then turn it back on to get the finder to start working again. If you're lucky, and your iMac has the lucky external drive interface chip, you won't get this lockup problem. I was unlucky and it drove absolutely nuts.

Anyway, back to option 2: You can move all of your backups from ther 1TB drive to the 3TB drive, if you want to free up the 1TB drive. This can be done with the drive utility. Click Applications (or other wise navigate to Applications) then Utilities, then Disk Utility. Click on the new drive (which must be formatted for Mac OS Journaled) and then click on Restore. Read VERY CAREFULLY all of the options on the Drive Utility window. You want to copy * * FROM * * your 1TB existing Time Machine drive * * TO * *.the new 3TB drive. Make absolutely certain that you have the from and to drives selected correctly, and then start the restore. You will be warned that this will completely erase the target disk. This will take many hours to complete. There is a progress bar near the bottom of the disk utility window. Once this has been completed, verify that the new 3TB drive will have the SAME NAME as the 1TB drive. Eject both drives (drag them to the trash) and plug in only the new drive. Rename it to clear up any future ambiguities. Verify that it is still 3TB and didn't get re-partitioned as a 1 TB drive and a big, empty partition. Now, bring up the Time Machine Preferences and choose the new 3TB drive as the Time Machine drive. You are now free to either erase your original Time Machine drive and use it for other stuff. But, I'd recommend that you keep it, or take it someplace other than where your Mac is, like a friend or relative's hours. Leave it there just for a backup in case something very bad happens to your Mac, like a natural disaster or theft, etc.

Aug 14, 2012 12:46 PM in response to ewb55

Wow! What a thorough reply. Thanks for taking the time to write all this. I'm thinking why risk it and return the drive citing the incompatiblity issues on the Apple Support Forum. Then investigate a different 3 or larger TB drive as my new backup drive.

As a photographer, I will likely use the 1TB for critical photo storage.

Thanks again.

I'm going to also investigate the LaCie Porsche drives.

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 7, 2012 8:15 AM in response to tmikeporter

Someone named "Mo" posted the following, but I somehow cannot view it or reply directly. My advice to Mo is to get rid of the version 3 LaCie d2 Quadra drive as fast as possible. I would avoid any external drive that is USB 3.0 capable, regardless of any claims by the manufacturer that it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. My experience has clearly demonstrated that they are incompatible with my two 2011/2012 iMacs, and likely others. I have also found that the HFS file systems can be easily damaged if a drive is not ejected properly. If it won't eject (it goes gray, but doesn't eject) then shut down the Mac. As long as you're copying data to back it up, I'd just re-format the drive and start over.

I am reading your post and the replies with dread. I am having very strange problems with my new 3TB LaCie d2 Quadras in combination with a late 2009 iMac of similiar description. Here is my situation:

System: I have a brand new 3TB LaCie D2 Quadra drive (format = Mac OS Extended (Journaled) that I am connecting via FW 800 to my iMac27 inch (2009) and my MacBook Pro. The iMac is running on OSX Lion 10.7.4 and the MacBook Pro is running on OSX 10.6.7.

Problem: This morning I backed up about 120G of media files from another drive to LaCie. I saw them transferred onto the LaCie and they were part of a folder named "2012 media files" Then, without warning, the entire folder disappeared and I haven't been able to find it since. The LaCie shows that only 1.37 TB is available which would suggest that the files are still on the drive. But where?

I've read elsewhere on the forum that others have had this problem at times with LaCie (and probably other) drives and that it can be a problem with the catalog that can sometimes be repaired with some sort of disk utility or software like Diskwarrier for Mac. Can anyone advise what next steps I should take to trouble shoot and whether I need outside help at this point. I am fairly new to resolving these kinds of problems. Oddly, though, this is the second drive IN A WEEK to fail (the other one was a G-Tech Mini 1 TB). So, I'm wondering if my iMac may have some virus causing the problem???

Any help appreciated.

Sep 26, 2012 2:21 PM in response to ewb55

As a former Mac IT admin I just want to chime in. There has been some good advice here. Especially by the guy who was suggesting getting the older non USB 3 drives and then swapping TM drives. Good work.

I just want to add this.

1), GET DiskWarrior (latest version always). Of all the disc repair tools I used in my 15 year IT career (including working at Apple) DiskWarrior was the single best disc tool available. I've tried them all. Sometimes one brand will fix a particular issue that another one won't (Drive Genius was horrible at fixing disc errors but ok at other tasks. Apple's Disk Utility only goes so far and is just a "first option" utility). However DiskWarrior NEVER failed to fix a corrupted disk problem that was fixable without the need for sending the disk in for a emergency compete low level disk recovery (only happened once and even that was only partially successful due to a head chrash).

DiskWarrior is deceptively simple to use and a little scary because it will just rebuild the directory, not repair it. But it still has to read the old directory (which means it fixes it and then reads and writes a new one - scary because it's WRITING to an already troubled drive in which the issue is not exactly known). However this turns out to be a non-issue as it's the BEST solution. I believe newer versions allow you to repair, not just replace but I'm not sure. Regardless, BUY IT, keep it updated, and have some kind of a redundant safety boot volumes (DVD, USB drive, old spare hard drive, etc..) for times when you may not have an optical drive or when the OS that comes with DiskWarrior won't boot your Mac. It will save your *** when you think you've lost the drive. It's the best! Trust me on this. Never lost a single file with DiskWarrior on the job and I've feared for my job a few times let me tell you. Whew. :)

2), Sorry, but don't buy LaCie drives. Yes I know, they're sexy and Mac-like. I know all about it. And it's true that Apple may have some chipset incompatibilities but that's NOT Apple's problem to worry about. Anyway, I have had many many problems over a dozen years with thier products. Their chipsets can be incompatible with Macs and this daisy chaining drive problem has been going on for years with LaCie drives going back many years. I still have a pair of old 2001ish LaCie drives that cause the exact same issues you all mention and more.

DO THIS: Either buy a Seagate 3TB bare drive from Newegg (they have them today for $139. And then buy a case from OWC. Put it together and save yourself a lot of money and a lot of hassle. OWC has "pretty" cases too and they work. And their support BLOWS LaCie away (who recently got bought out BTW).

That's how the pros do it. Ask any Mac IT person. They'll have an OWC case and DiskWarrior.

Nov 13, 2012 9:28 PM in response to vibration888

Thanks for the sage advise vibration888. I'm sure DiskWarrior is as good as you say but what good is it if it's a hardware compatibility issue? I will heed your advise on buying different brands in the future but as I own both a 2TB and a 3TB v3 d2 quadra I'd like to get them working. The thought of swapping hard drives from one case to another honestly freaks me out a little because I'm not a techie guy with computers. Thats why I like Apple products...they usually just work.

Anyway, my issues are a bit different and I was hoping someone might be able help as LaCie and Apple haven't.

I'm running a mid 2010 Mac Pro with dual 2.4 quads, OS 10.7.5

I bought the 3TB d2 to backup raw video files from P2 cards but soon after I started using it the FW800 transfers usually failed with an error stating the "file **** was in use" after which the drive would get really buggy and unresponsive. If the d2 was off prior to the transfer it would usually work ok but if it'd been on for say an hour already then it would always fail. I don't ever freeze or hangup but sometimes the Mac won't shut down properly and I need to kill it with the power button.

I contacted Lacie and they told me to back it up and reformat it so I bought the 2TB d2. The first time I plugged it into the Mac Pro via FW800 it wouldn't mount. I took it back and exchanged it for a different drive and had the same result so I plugged it into my 2004 iMac with a FW800 to FW400 converter cable I fortunately had and it mounted right away. I reformatted the 2TB d2 with disc uitlity, plugged it into the Mac Pro and it mounted.

While transferring the many of gigs of files from the 3TB to the 2TB I kept getting the same "file **** in use" error/failure so I unplugged the FW800 and used the USB 3 cables that came with the d2's and plugged it into the USB2 port on the Mac Pro. Everything transferred fine via USB so I reformatted the 3TB and repatched both the drives to FW800 thinking my problems were solved but still the same error occured while transferring to or from the d2's, "file****in use"

Following Lacies advice I tested the drives on a friends new iMac with FW800 and they worked fine so I called Apple. After running the standard trouble shooting procedures over the phone they booked me an Apple Store appointment where it was decided the easiest thing to do was to replace the backplane board. Great I'm thinking, that should solve everything. Ha, apparently I'm too optimistic because nothing changed with the FW800 issue.

That was a couple of weeks ago and I've been using the drives with USB until I had time and energy to revisit this craziness. Tonight I dusted off my old Power Mac G5 with a single FW800 port and daisy chained the d2's together and copied one 152GB folder and one 114GB folder from the 3TB to the 2TB with no issues.

I know LaCie is going to say it's an Apple issue since the drives work on another Mac, but from what I've read in this thread Apple hasn't recognized this publicly and there is no solution on the horizon.

So if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. If not maybe I can find a YouTube video that illustrates how to swap the d2 hard drives into new cases.

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2012 1:25 PM in response to Pixelvideo

Dear PixelVideo,

I'm very sorry to hear that you're having what is essentially the same LaCie/Apple problem that I suffered through for months. I was able to convince LaCie to exchange four 3TB d2 Quadras for two Thunderbolt dual-drive units. They work very nicely. I avoid using any LaCie Firewire drives with my Macs. If you value your sanity {and your data} I would STRONGLY encourage you to do likewise. Return, exchange, sell, or burn those d2 Quadras! They'll do nothing but cause you headaches!

I have a pair of 3TB Western Digital "Studio Series" aluminum-looking Firewire 800 drives that behave quite reasonably. I currently have them daisy-chained together and then on a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire dongle that is connected to the second Thunderbolt port on the big LaCie Thunderbold double drive. So far, so good.

Best of luck getting rod of those d2 Quadras!

Nov 21, 2012 9:06 AM in response to ewb55

I'm happy to hear Lacie was willing to work with you. Sadly I'm not having the same luck as the last suggestion was to contact Apple again since the drives seem to work fine on every other Mac I've tested it with. You wouldn't happen to still have your Lacie support ticket number would you? I'd like to submit it to the Lacie support tech I've been working with to show him there really is an issue between the d2 and the Mac.

Thanks!

ewb55 Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 23, 2012 2:26 PM in response to Pixelvideo

Dear PixelVideo,

The main LaCie ticket that documents the problems that I had with the 3TB version 3 d2 Quadras and my Oct 2011 24" iMac are:

102103355 - the whole mess, but associated with just SN 13931109139052EHB

When It came time to send these four drives in for replacement, three more tickets were created for the other three drives:

102145676 - set up to return 13931109139053EHB. This includes the silliness about the v2 drive formatting as an 800 GB drive and LaCie denying it.

102145680 - sett up to return 13931107100280E - This includes some of the 800GB stuff.

102145682 - set up to return 13931107100064E - This include my mentioning how Gary from LaCie said that this is a know issue with some iMacs.

LaCie first replaced the 3TB d2 Quadras with identical units. These didn't work any better than the first set. Then, they sent me version 2 units that lack the USB 3.0 port. But, strangely enough, they were not 3TB drives, but 800GB drives. LaCie claims that they never made such things, so I sent them screen snaps from three different operating systems showing the capacity of these drives. I never actually tested them. The support people agreed to replace my four d2 Quadras with an identical amount of storage in Thunderbolt drives. This means just two drives. But, they have worked much better. If are welcome to tell them about my tickets. Perhaps they can do this for you, too.

-ewb55

mikejay1

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2012 7:55 PM in response to ewb55

I was wondering if any of you have the daisey chained devices powered because the firewire cable does not supply power to the devices through their ports so the more you daisey chain the worse the problem. Do the Lacie have their own external power? Im not that familar with them

Daisy chained Firewire 800 LaCie d2 Quadras - iMac Finder Locks up