firewire 800 crashes win 7 on bootcamp

It works. No more lock-ups for me with the legacy driver.

Here are the instructions (taken from the link above):

Windows 7's built-in FireWire (called IEEE 1394) drivers do not work properly. External devices connected via FireWire will either fail to be recognized properly, or lock up when initiating file transfers of any appreciable size. Luckily there is a relatively simple fix for this issue. Windows 7 includes the older Vista drivers, which work just fine. You simply need to roll back the drivers on your 1394 host adapter by doing the following: Open Device Manager, expand your IEEE 1394 Host Bus Controllers and right-click on your 1394 device, then choose "Update Driver Software". In the new window, click on "Browse my computer for driver software", then choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", then select the driver with the word "legacy" in brackets.

Don't forget to restart after you do this.

I'm having this exact same issue on an early 2011 MBP. Did you find a solution?

I just bought a LaCie Quadra 3 TB external HDD with FW800 support because of the very limited connections on my late 2011 15' MBPro.

Transferring files seems to run fine for a few minutes, then MBPro freezes as well !

Win7 via Bootcamp.

Unfortunately I can confirm that problem over here on a MBP (17", mid 2010). On OS X everything just runs fine but on Windows 7 it causes freezes. I can create folders and copy some (smaller) files but at some point (at least when I try to record something with Fraps) it freezes at the same moment as I hit the record button / try to write something onto the disk.

Any idea is appreciated (I'll try to find another driver in the meantime).

I am having the same problem with an early-2011 MBP running Windows 7. Coping large files to and from my Lacie Quadra D2 3TB drive, over FW800, eventually results in a hard freeze. Thinking it might be a problem with the LaCie, I was able to replicate the same freeze with a Western Digital hard drive too. The problem does not seem to occur when I use USB 2.0.

For all it is the Apple Supplied FW driver for Win 7. Try finding one elsewhere and it should clear up the problem.

But then it has been my experience that FW on the Mac OS X side is just as flaky with constant disconnects with no reason. This is with a Seagate FW 800 docking station that also has USB 2. The USB side works OK.

It's kinda weird but this seems to solve my problem for some reason. I formatted the disk with HFS+ instead of NTFS because I needed that disk on my Mac. Then, bothered of the fact that I now can't mount the disk under Windows, I looked for a HFS rw driver for Windows and downloaded the trial version of Paragon HFS and it worked (be aware that this program DOES NOT deactivate the Bootcamp HFS readonly driver automatically but you really should deactivate it -> google)!

I don't know why this is solving the problem as I thought it was related to the FW driver. My other theory is that the problem is related to the disk spindown but I don't really have any evidence for that.

It's not the best solution but I now have sort of HFS support under Windows (including dmgs) and no freezes anymore. Downside is that the software is not free and the trial period is horribly short!

Here is the definitive solution:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/displayFAQDetails.cfm?ID=634

I have yet to try it.