Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 external drive problems

Question

Level 1

32 points

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 external drive problems

I recently upgraded from a MacBook Pro 17" early 2011 to a MacBook Pro Retina 15" (early 2013). I have a Drobo and two Seagate 4TB external drives, all connected via Firewire 800. So, I added a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter and, it seemed, life was good.

I keep my large iTunes Movie and TV show collection on the Drobo. Since transitioning to the new MacBook, I have had a number of issue with watching movies on my Apple TV 3. Randomly, and periodically, the movie appears to be corrupted - the audio track skips/loops and the image is horrible macroblocked, as if the file is damaged. When I check the movies on the Drobo, opening it with Quicktime on the MBP, it plays just fine at the same spot it appeared damaged on the Apple TV 3.

A second symptom is this: I can no longer re-encode video with Handbrake with the source and target files on the Drobo - it gets some portion of the way through and it just stops, leaving the video partially encoded; again, at random locations/offsets into the video and not the same spot twice.

My initial thought is that connection to the Drobo is dropping out and coming back, on its own, but long enough to cause the above problems.

Is anyone else seeing this issue or something related when using the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter with large drives?

Thanks, in advance.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Opulence, I Has It...

Posted on Jun 2, 2013 3:00 PM

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Answer 1

jjinak

Level 1

8 points

Oct 29, 2017 4:33 PM in response to Paulo Apolonia

Did you ever get an answer or support from Apple on this? I have a Drobo also with FW 800 to a thunderbolt adapter and I constantly have to restart the Drobo to get it to work. I looked in system profiler and the thunderbolt adapter along with my drobo are detected however it doesn't get mounted.

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Answer 2

Krutsch Author

Level 1

32 points

Jun 12, 2013 10:05 PM in response to Krutsch

Well, after a lot of testing, it is definitely a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter issue with external hard drives. I have moved files onto a separate USB 3.0 drive and everything works. Using the external Firewire 800 drives with the Thunderbolt adapter, sporadic issues (i.e. corrupted playback from Apple TV and inability to execute long running programs like Handbrake with the Firewire drives in the mix).

I have little faith that Apple will ever (a) become aware of or (b) fix these issues, so I will start the process of moving all of my storage over to USB 3.0 devices (and will stay away from Thunderbolt for everything).

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Answer 3

Oct 24, 2013 7:10 AM in response to Krutsch

I am having the same issue.

It took me a while but I began to suspect the adapter as well.

If I restart the computer, the issue will cease, temporarily.

Or, if I disconnect and reconnect the adapter.

I hope this is just a defect and not something inherent to the design.

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Answer 4

Krutsch Author

Level 1

32 points

Oct 24, 2013 8:21 AM in response to Frederick Karayan

Since then, I've purchased a new adapter and applied a number of Mac OS X updates (I am now on Mavericks), so who knows what was happening, but I seem to be OK now.

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Answer 5

Nov 4, 2013 1:26 PM in response to Frederick Karayan

Update: I exchanged the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and the issue persists. I have a Drobo that I used with my previous system, a PowerMac G5, and never had any issues like this.

It does not matter what software I use. But at some point video playback will suddenly become garbled. If I start the video from the beginning, sometimes the garbled video will start sooner but never later. A restart temporarily resolves the issue. If I copy the file to the local hard drive the video will play back garbled. This is indeed a very strange issue. The issue behaves like a bandwidth bottleneck.

I was having this issue prior to upgrading to Mavericks.

Fred K

iMac (Late 2012), 3.4 GHz i7, GTX 680MX, Fusion Drive, 24 GB RAM, Drobo (Firewire via Thunderbolt)

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Answer 6

Nov 10, 2013 11:58 PM in response to Frederick Karayan

Welcome to the club... I have just recently opened a thread about the same issue, but for me is not data transfer and movie picture and sound, but studio recording with Firewire interface using the same adpter. But the simptoms are the same. stopping, skiping etc....

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5076922?answerId=23498381022#23498381022

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Answer 7

Dec 17, 2013 8:32 AM in response to Krutsch

I am also having issues with my Dorbo connected via Firewire/Thunderbolt Adapter. Mine are more with mounting the disk. About 50% of the time, the disk will not mount when I plug the cable into my brand new (Late 2013) MacBookPro 15". The only solution I've found is to power cycle the Drobo. It appears the Drobo does not "wake up" when the cable is plugged in. This never happened when I plugged the Fireware 800 directly into my old (2009) MacBookPro.

Preformance seems to have taken a hit as well...

Very frustrating, as I have 2.24TB of data on my Drobo, and I do not want to spend money on a new, multi disk solution.

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Answer 8

Krutsch Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 17, 2013 9:26 AM in response to NeilBakker

Make sure you are not daisy-chaining another FW800 drive with the Drobo. I used to have a Seagate FW800 3TB drive plugged into the Drobo and I had the same issue you describe above. After removing the second FW800 drive my problems went away with the Drobo.

Clearly, starting with Lion and Mountain Lion, there are issues with Mac OS X and chained FW drives - especially via the Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter.

Frankly, I am finished with both interfaces and have been replacing my drives with USB 3.0, which always works great (and they are much cheaper).

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Answer 9

hands4

Level 4

2,246 points

Dec 17, 2013 11:11 AM in response to Krutsch

FYI, FW connected drives run about 65% the speed of USB 3.0 connected drives. USB 3.0 drives run about the same speed at TB connected drives (except for SSDs).

R/W disk speeds:

USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt about equal at ~110 MB/s

Firewire about 65% at ~60 to ~70 MB/s

USB 2.0 about a third at ~35 to ~40 MB/s

R/W SSD speeds:

Thunderbolt fastest at ~355 to ~370 MB/s

USB 3.0 second at ~165 to ~195 MB/s

Firewire third at ~60 to ~70 MB/s

USB 2.0 fourth at ~40 MB/s

http://www.macworld.com/article/2039427/how-fast-is-usb-3-0-really-.html

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Answer 10

Krutsch Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 17, 2013 11:13 AM in response to hands4

Exactly... as described the link you provide. Basically, the interfaces are exceeding the drive performance characteristics, so might as well use USB. With SSD it does change, but it that really a practical concern? Who is going to pay big bucks for large, external SSDs?

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Answer 11

Jan 3, 2014 12:08 PM in response to Krutsch

Update:

I erased and installed 10.9 and restored from AirPort Time Capsule backup, no change.

What has me totally baffled about this issue is that when the problems arises, a restart will resolve it. I don't know what triggers the behavior. There is nothing else other than a restart that will resolve it (granted, I have not gone through every process running in Activity Monitor either :-)

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Answer 12

TNSF

Level 1

0 points

Jan 27, 2014 9:07 AM in response to Krutsch

I have the exact same problem. Brand new iMac, Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire adaptor, Drobo. The only thing that consistenly fixes the issue for me is restarting my Drobo, which takes a long time. Not only is this inconvenient, but i'm worried about the impact of constantly rebooting Drobo by unplugging it. This can't be a good thing.

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Answer 13

jtsnyc47

Level 1

4 points

Jul 25, 2015 6:24 AM in response to NeilBakker

Yes. New Mac Mini, older Drobo. Wake from sleep with sever the connection to the drive and only powering down the drive will solve it. It's a shame a $600+ peripheral is now a doorstop due to Apple's (or Drobo's) inability to make their devices work together.

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Answer 14

oxmox11

Level 1

35 points

Aug 10, 2015 5:45 PM in response to Krutsch

same issue here new MacPro and Drobo connected via Thunderbolt to Fire Wire adapter constantly seems to disconnect can't use it for time machine anymore it's now a door stopper

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Answer 15

Trip35

Level 1

8 points

Aug 22, 2015 2:07 AM in response to oxmox11

This is my first question ever posed so I ask a degree of latitude from the community who are far more technically advanced than I.

I've just bought a mid-2012 MacBook Pro A1398 from a relative which came with a Firewire-to-Thunderbolt adaptor of Apple manufacture. I have a 2TB Iomega RDHD-C2 external drive with 2 X FW800 and 1 X USB ports which I used as a Time Machine back-up drive for my previous 17" Intel MB Pro.

Try as I might, the A1398 just can't see the Iomega drive via the Thunderbolt adaptor when powering up; it just freezes one-third along the progress bar. The USB port, however, works just fine. I've tried two FW800 cables in turn without success.

Is there likely to be any solution should I take the whole setup to visit an Apple Genius?

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