External Firewire drive gone RAW?

Question

Level 1

8 points

External Firewire drive gone RAW?

My FW800 1TB OWC external drive suddenly stopped working on my iMac. The drive won't mount and may have gone RAW? as it states that it simultaneously has 0 bytes available and 0 bytes used when viewed in system information (it shows in the FW bus in system info found in second picture). The drive spins up fine and hasn't shown any major signs of dying although I have used it consistently for 3 years. Below is the only info I could get from Disk Utility:

And here is what my system info says regarding the FW bus:

I've also tried mounting it on my MBP, but I get the same result, so it seems to be the drive. I really need the information on this drive, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 30, 2016 1:31 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Rudegar

Level 10

170,748 points

Apr 30, 2016 4:06 AM in response to cmaki3

could be the exclosure which is the problem and the hd itself is ok

I took a wd external drive apart because it stopped working but the hd inside still work fine use it as backup

Reply

Answer 2

cmaki3 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 30, 2016 8:02 AM in response to Rudegar

So you're thinking the PCB to convert SATA connection to FW/USB might be gone? I'm currently running a scan with third-party software and it's located most of my files so far, so I'm not sure it would be the PCB. Any direct electrical misconnections/failures I imagine would not allow the drive to read/write properly at all.

Reply

Answer 3

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Apr 30, 2016 8:36 AM in response to cmaki3

May I suggest you contact OWC and ask about the chip being used on that enclosure if it is compatible with the Mac OS version. I had 2 FW OWC drives invoke very strange behavior on my iMac and first blamed Apple until I contacted OWC. On mine, it was the fact that Apple did indeed change something under the hood of the OS which, in turn, made the chip connection misbehave. As mine were under warranty, they replaced them and I've not had a problem since.

Reply