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

I've read throught this more than once (after every other kernel panic) and my most recent research makes me ask:

Could the problem with the LaCie drive be the Kernel Extensions (com.LaCie.ScsiType00 (1.2.12 - SDK 10.5)?

It is afterall being inserted into the core (shaken-not-stired) and giggling it around. Seems likely to be causing instability.

I ran EtreCheck and after removing some errant internet plug-ins and Launch Agents I'm, this included discovering the Wacom needed and update, I ran fine without the daisy chained drives (d2 800 for TM and Aperture valts, one with data), then added them one my one and another few weeks went by and last night I had another kernel panic.

It could be the notorious Nvida GT130 but it also might be bad coding from LaCie. (Ya Tink?!)

Looks like there's a Seagate 3T in my future (graditude for that post), now if only I could get a relative to buy it for Christmas that would mean less debt for me.

Well all I can say is thank you for this thread. I am glad to see this is a known issue (sorry that it's occurring to others), and that while I do like the look and apparent performance of my LaCie d2 3TB, it's days are numbered. I have had intermittent issues with this thing since I got it, very much what people have said here. Just now I came back to find my computer locked up, and (as I have discovered before), unplugging the LaCie frees everything back up again.

Not sure I'll have any luck getting LaCie to replace an out of warranty device, but I think I'll try.

Well this is interesting. I have been trying to find the source of my problem.

I am working with a 2008 model Mac Pro, with 8 various LaCie d2 Quadra drives of various vintages daisychained using Firewire 800, ranging in size frm 500GB to 2TB, and occasionally a G-Tech drive added on the end of the daisy chain (too noisy to get any more!). I have built up this system over the last few years, and have had basically no problems.

A couple or so months ago I added a 2TB d2 v3 (the one with USB3). I now realise it was only four days later that I started to get random spontaneous shutdowns of the Mac Pro. At first this occurred when the machine was under some stress - video transcoding - but later it could be while writing a simple email, and later again when the machine was not working at all and was in screen saver mode.

I took the Mac Pro to the Apple Genius Bar, where they triaged it and put it on soak test. This was without any external drives. They could not reproduce the fault. I collected the machine, replaced it in my system, and neither could I. Then a couple of weeks later the fault re-appeared. I had now matched the date of the initial shutdown problem to the date of the connection of the latest laCie drive, and I returned the MacPro to the Apple Genius Bar, this time with the LaCie drive. However, once more, the fault could not be replicated with their testing.

Again, I brought the machine home, reconnected all the drives, and hey, spontaneous shutdown within three hours.

Following reading this thread, I have now removed the new d2 v3 drive from my system, and up to now (only an hour or so), there has been no shutdown. Could it be that it's the LaCie drive after all, but only when connected with the older drives?

I have two older smaller d2 drives and used to disconnect as well. Currently I've been turning on my iMac booting up completely before turning on my d2's one by one, proceeding from the nearest drive out. Then I don't let them sleep, always spinning. This seems to be more stable but my Early 2009 iMac still occationally freezes. I'm still convinced that if on turns on the d2 too soon during the boot up that the LaCie Kernel extension (mentioned above) is doing something to make the OS unstable. With this mac there's also the geforec GT 130 graphics card which is flacky as well. There might be a Lenovo in my future. I won't be paying radsom to compute any more. It's dumb Amerrrican stuff.

"God bless you Mrs Kalibash, where ever your are"--Jimmy Durante

Here's my update, in case it could help anyone sometime.

With the machine at home, when all my LaCie drives were connected, I was able to repeatedly induce shutdown. I disconnected each of the ten daisy-chained drives, one at a time, until there were no drives connected, and the problem replicated itself each time. So I deduced it's not the hard drives, but something else going wrong when the machine was demanding a processor intensive procedure. Maybe there's a clue there. I removed memory sticks two at a time, switched slots, and still the fault occurred. I was now at a situation where the fault clearly lay in the MacPro itself.

So my machine went back to Apple for the third time, they booted from different system software, but still the machine shutdown - not every time, but sometimes. Then they got to internal hardware issues.

Cutting to the chase - it was a faulty power supply. Not a hard drive issue at all. LaCie is off the hook.

A valuable lesson has come from this. Let's say I noticed that the fault only occurred when I had a cup of coffee next to the machine - well, maybe that coffee was the cause of the problem. Yes, sometimes the fault didn't happen, but you know, that cup of coffee seems pretty suspect, it's almost always there when I get trouble. I complained to the coffee supplier, and even got a free cup of coffee as a goodwill gesture, but the problem persisted. It's got to be that coffee. I'm never going to get coffee from that place again. You get the idea.

I am impressed by Apple's service charges and their strategy. Although it took them three attempts to find the problem, and frustrated me by having to make the trip to the store six separate times, there was only one final fixed labor charge of £24 (~US$36), which they would only apply if and when they remedied the problem, and if I wished to go ahead with it. If I deemed the expense was uneconomic, there would be no charge. As a comparison, the local independent Apple agent quoted £70 for an initial assessment. The power supply part cost £113, so repair was the obvious answer.

Thanks so much for this thread! I bought one of these lovely LaCie drives last week. It worked "fine" for a solid week on FireWire 800. I had replaced a 3 year old iOmega that simply did what hard drives do - it died. Bad sectors, etc. Anyhow, the LaCie was working fine until yesterday when I get intermittent lock-ups of Finder or whatever is trying to use the drive. Resetting the connection or rebooting the drive fixes it temporarily.

Today, I connected the drive USB (2.0 because this is the last of the previous gen iMacs mid 2011). It's working fine.

So, it's going back to Amazon for refund. I'm going to buy a cheap USB drive and live with slower speeds (it's only for backup).

This is pathetic for a company that has been heralded as a "Mac" accessory supplier for all these years. Sad. My first and last LaCie product. When the new drive comes, I will clone the LaCie to the cheap drive, wipe LaCie, and toss it in UPS to Amazon.

So happy to find this thread. I know I'm not crazy now. Thanks to all.

Tom