I could really use some help with this situation. I'm running a Powerbook Titanium 1g mhz w/ OS 10.3.9:

the other day I backed up an external firewire drive (music drive) to another external fw all connected to my powerbook. The next day, I took the music drive to the studio and it wouldn't be recognized by any mac system there. Took it back and it won't be recognized on my powerbook anymore.

Next, my internal hard drive stopped being recognized. My powerbook could run fine through another hard drive, but no matter what I did I can't get my internal hard drive to mount.

Then I send my powerbook away to be fixed. Now I'm using my older powerbook 500mhz - and another firewire drive won't be recognized. So that's two firewire drives (unrelated and different brands) which won't be recognized and DiskUtility and other programs act as though they are not even connected.

it seems like too much of a coincidence that 3 different drives would fail all within a few days of each other. Does anyone have any suggestions on what could be going on - and how I could retrieve data from these drives that won't even be recognized by disk utilites? Thanks very much in advance!

I don't have any ideas on what might be causing the problems. Are you doing something different than usual? Did you recently update some software?
Have you checked with the manufacturers for updates to the firewire drives firmware?

You could try fixing the filesystems with Disk Utility or if that doesn't work, with DiskWarrior.
If nothing can fix the filesystems, then you are in data rescue mode. There is a good chance that you can recover some of the files by using a 3rd-party utility like "Data Rescue" or "FileSalvage" or "Virtual Lab" (google to find them).

I'd strongly suspect that you've got a bad FireWire cable. In some cases, bad cables can blow out the FireWire PHY on drives, in other cases, it just appears that you have a problem, but when you swap for another cable everything works again. Let's hope you have the second problem, not the first.

Trevor

thanks for your responses. To answer both posts - I can't use disk warrior or anything along those lines because these drives won't even be recognized. They won't mount and they won't appear in disk utility or any other software program.

I suspected something along the lines of the firewire port being blown.
If that is the case, how could I tell and is there any way to fix that?

Thanks again.

I hope it's the cable, that will be a lot cheaper.

Anyway, you might be interested by this article

http://hardmac.com/articles/16/

There's also a french version if you prefer...

It is important that you first swap cables for a brand new high quality one. If you don't do this, and you have the 'right' kind of bad FireWire cable, you could continue blowing out PHYs left and right.

As many FireWire cables are actually wired wrong, I'd also advise that you buy an Apple FireWire cable, as I've had an electrical engineer verify that Apple wires their cables right. Some other brands of FireWire cable, including large companies known for their many cables, do it wrong, and should not be used.

Second, plug a known-good FireWire device with the new cable into the FireWire port and see if it works.

Well, if you can do board level soldering, and have a source of PHY chips, you can certainly replace the PHY. Voldenuit has linked to one set of directions above.

Board-level soldering is not easy, however.

Trevor

thanks again for the response - based on your suggestions, I tried some things and have a little more info now.

1) I got a reliable fire-wire cable and was able to read my working firewire drive with no problem at all.
2) on one of the drives that doesn't work - there is also a USB2 output. I tried this and it still wouldn't mount or be recognized in "system profiler"
3) I just noticed that when I plug either of the two non-working FW Drives in to my computer and use "system profiler" - the Firewire link says "no information found" - but when I unplug the bad drive and have nothing plugged in my FW port - it says "FireWire Bus:Speed:400 Mb/sec Speed"
4) related to this...I noticed when I daisy chain one of the non-working drives to the working one - none will mount and again system profiler says No information found in the firewire link. So it seems that if one of the bad drives is in any way connected to my computer - it makes my computer think I don't have a firewire port??

Does this make sense to anybody? Once again your help is appreciated.
Thanks.

OK, on the non-working drives there is a hardware problem. The most likely explanation (but not the only possible explanation) is that the PHY on the non-working drives are blown. If you used the same cable for those non-working drives immediately before they stopped working, I'd strongly advise you to throw it away and never use it again.

If you don't want to (or can't) do the hardware surgery outlined in the article that voldenuit linked to above, you may want to remove the actual hard drives from those FireWire cases and put those hard drives into other cases. In all likelihood, the hard drives and their valuable data is fine, it is just a single chip in the cases that is now destroyed.

Trevor

In the article I linked, there's also a first step to revive FW ports not involving the use of a soldering iron:

"It happens that the PHY just hangs after a surge or a random problem. Once hung, the port will not respond any longer, it is possible to reset the component by going through the following steps :

1° boot the mac in Open Firmware by holding [ Apple key - Option - O - F ] after the startup chime.
2° you'll get to a command prompt. the keyboard mapping will be QWERTY, so pay attention when you type the following :
RESET-NVRAM (enter)
RESET-ALL (enter)
3° Now the mac should restart itself and the port should function properly again.
If it still doesn't work, then it means that the PHY is damaged."

Trevor, could you elaborate on your statement that "...many FireWire cables are actually wired wrong..." ?

I'm having a hard time to believe that even the most stupid guys in the cabling industry have trouble to get six wires sorted according to a well-known standard.

But +damaged+ FW cables can indeed fry PHYs, no doubt about that.

Sure I'll try, although I personally am not an electrical engineer.

I believe, if memory serves, that the most common miswiring of FireWire cables is that pin 2, which is supposed to be the ground, is often tied to the outer shield, and to the shell of the FireWire connector. (Tieing it to the drain wire--the inner shield IS acceptable. There is also a dedicated black ground wire.) Tieing pin 2 to the outer shield should not be done, as it degrades signal. Apple are in the minority among FireWire cable manufacturers in NOT doing this. (I just checked some old notes to find diagrams, and Granite also wires their FireWire cables correctly.)

And (as you would expect), the IEEE 1394 clearly explains that this should not be done. I don't have the spec, but attached are some helpful diagrams and tables with the correct cable assignments.

Believe it. It's not a matter of stupidity, it's a matter of the first guy in China who needs to make a FireWire cable not wanting to pay the couple of thousands of dollars to buy the IEEE 1394 spec, so he wires up something that mostly works, makes a datasheet for it, then everybody copies his datasheet's wiring diagram and continues wiring it wrong. Buying the 1394 spec would show the mistake, but why would anybody want to spend a couple of thousand dollars when they can just crib off the last guy's datasheet?

And therefore almost everybody gets miswired FireWire cables that mostly work.

Trevor

The Wikipedia article on Firewire gives this as a reference for the pinouts:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_C..._Firewire.html

I'm going to try putting the drives in new cases and see if I can retreive the data. But first, voldenuit, my powerbook's FW port is fine, as I can use other firewire devices with it. If I plug one of the bad drives into it - are you saying that it may fix the ports on my external drives by going through the process you outlined? Thanks for your help!

No, if the PHY is fried on the disk side, unfortunately the enclosure is toast unless you want to go for some SMD-soldering...

And make sure your cables are ok, Firewire is pretty robust in general, there's something really fishy with your setup if you managed to fry three FW-enclosures.

Were those self-powered (2,5") ?

neither is self-powered. One is a Buslink 40g (inside is a 3.5 seagate). The other is another 3.5 - Edge 80g. The other drive that got fried was my internal harddrive on my powerbook. (seems like if it were PHY related - it couldn't have messed up my internal drive - but maybe they are unrelated?)

UPDATE:

Here's an update. I took all the drives and put them in new enclosures. The 2 external drives worked perfectly as if there were no problem. My internal drive still won't be recognized, but I was able to rescue most of the data from it using Prosoft's Data Rescue. thanks for everyone's help!!
:o