imacination

Q: After years of stability, FW800 drives now randomly disappearing

I have a Mac Mini circa-2009 with 6 2TB G-Drives attached via FireWire 800 and configured as a 6 TB mirrored RAID volume. My system has been configured this way for about 4 years.

 

About three months ago I began to have problems with the volume randomly disappearing (improper disk eject). It happens when the drives are idle and when there is heavy i/o activity - makes no difference. When this problem started, the volume was configured with AppleRAID and the drives were daisy-chained, one to another, off the back of my Mac Mini. I have since turned off all energy management features, replaced cables, moved from AppleRAID to SoftRAID, reset the Mac Mini, reinstalled OS X, done a partial drive swap, turned off Spotlight, put a fan on the drives to lower their operating temps, and installed a powered Nitro AV hub to eliminate the daisy chain. No substantive change - they don’t drop out as much, but it still happens regularly (every 24-48 hours).

 

Interestingly, not all 6 drives disappear. Sometimes times it is just one, or maybe two or three, or even five of six. I cannot decipher a pattern. I find it odd that only some drives drop out and which ones are different each time. Sometimes rebooting will bring them back, but not always. The only sure method to bring the drive back on line is to cycle the power on the drive.

 

The one constant I have observed more recently is there is always this FireWire error a few seconds to a minute before the drives drop out “Lucent ID 5901 built-in: handleUnrecoverableErrorInt.” I’ve done some research and not found much - more about audio issues than drives.

 

Before I moved to SoftRAID, which has a proprietary driver limiting me to one PC, I moved the disks to another circa-2009 machine (a MBP). The problem was still present but not as bad. Maybe an obscure issue with some interaction between El Capitan and my older hardware?

 

This problem has led to significant data corruption issues and too many hours of troubleshooting headaches and so I am finished with FW and moving to a Synology NAS. I thought I would check here though to see if there is new thinking on this old topic or anything obvious I may have missed in my troubleshooting.

 

Thanks.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), null

Posted on Aug 15, 2016 8:48 AM

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Q: After years of stability, FW800 drives now randomly disappearing

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  • by Rudegar,

    Rudegar Rudegar Aug 15, 2016 1:10 PM in response to imacination
    Level 7 (28,371 points)
    Wireless
    Aug 15, 2016 1:10 PM in response to imacination

    Tried to reset pram?

  • by imacination,

    imacination imacination Aug 15, 2016 1:26 PM in response to Rudegar
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 15, 2016 1:26 PM in response to Rudegar

    Oh yeah, reset PRAM and SMC to no avail.

     

    Cheers

  • by Recycled Hoosier,Helpful

    Recycled Hoosier Recycled Hoosier Aug 16, 2016 11:29 AM in response to imacination
    Level 1 (51 points)
    Aug 16, 2016 11:29 AM in response to imacination

    You've done a lot of troubleshooting already, but here are a few thoughts:

     

    Bug Reports:

    Have you submitted bug reports to Apple?

    Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 are newer and faster and Apple is always looking ahead, so it's possible that backward compatibility with Firewire isn't getting tested extensively in beta with older hardware before releasing new OS versions to the public. Maybe no one ever reported any Firewire issues?

     

    OS X versions:

    A 2009 Mac mini probably came with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 installed.

    El Capitan 10.11 was only released in the fall of 2015, about a year ago.

    What OS were you running when you originally configured the system this way?

    What OS were you running when this problem first began to occur?

    Did you test the system for reliability before fully upgrading to El Capitan?

     

    Power:

    Do you have your Mac mini and all connected drives on the same building wiring circuit?

    Is everything in question attached to power strips, surge supressors, power conditioners, or uninterruptable power supplies? More than one outlet? Have you tried swapping one/all of them out?

    Any recent additions or changes to building wiring, heating/cooling systems, or new major appliances?

    Have you done a simple check of the building wiring to be certain all outlets are wired and connected (earthed/grounded) properly? (e.g. not polarity-reversed or neutral tied to earth-ground)

    No need to call an electrician first: One of those low-cost plug-in 3-prong circuit testers with LED's similar to this is sufficient to determine if the wiring is suspect.

  • by imacination,

    imacination imacination Aug 16, 2016 11:40 AM in response to Recycled Hoosier
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 16, 2016 11:40 AM in response to Recycled Hoosier

    There were no issues after upgrading OS X last fall, and it was pretty stable on El Capitan (October to May). I believe there was some sort of OS update around the time my issues began, however. I didn't suppose Apple would even look at the problem considering the age of my stuff. I will pursue that angle.

     

    Thanks for the electrical tips as well. I've tried multiple strips just by needing to move the drives while troubleshooting but not different outlets.