External Hard Drive Firewire Problem
 

eMac 1.25 G4 with OS 10.4.11. External Seagate 250 Gb drive (ehd) with combo USB/Firewire 1394 connection. External disk mounts okay with USB, all contents visible in opening window.

External disk mounts with Firewire, disk icon on desktop shows the firewire symbol, but disk window will not open (although it did initially), nor can contents be accessed. All that shows is the spinning beach ball, which goes on interminably. The only resort is either to power off the eMac or the ehd.

Strangely, when one does the latter, the disk window immediately tries to open, followed by the standard warning from the Mac OS about wrongly disconnecting a peripheral device.

Disk Utility cannot be used because it cannot unmount the ehd. Firewire cable is brand new and all connections have been checked, swapped etc.

None of the above problems occur via the USB connection. A Disk Utility verification and repair check shows no problem with the ehd.

When the ehd was first used with the eMac, it was in a USB-only enclosure. It was then transferred to a combo USB/Firewire enclosure.

Solutions?? :confused:

The eMac has FireWire 400 ports. Is the cable and harddrive compatible?
Also, have you tried any other hardware with the ports?
I have heard of problems from users using different enclosures...

What messages appear in your logs when you try to mount the drive via FireWire? You can view logs using the Console app, in /Applications/Utilities. Notice that log entries are time and date stamped so that you can match up events in the real world, such as mounting a drive, with the log entries.

Can you try a different FireWire cable, even if the one you have is brand new? FireWire cables (and any cable) can be bad as shipped from the factory. I prefer and recommend Apple brand FireWire cables.

Have you tried other FireWire devices attached to this computer? That would rule out a problem with the FireWire port.

Trevor

Thank you to both Trevor and Soulwar for your responses.

Yes, I have tried switching cables (two of), also switching cable ends, using either or both the firewire ports, also daisy-chaining the two firewire peripherals (Yamaha CD-RW and a Devideon DVD-RW). Everything tests okay - except the Seagate ehd mounting/opening.

The firewire cables are 6-pin 1394 that both work okay with the peripherals mentioned. Remember too that the ehd does mount via either firewire cable, but it will not open or display the contents.

The cable vs Seagate hard drive compatibility *shouldn't* be a problem. The ICZ enclosure was bought ready-made, 2 x firewire ports, I simply put the Seagate 250 IDE drive in after removing it from a USB-only Welland enclosure.

Trevor - I will try the Console log and report back.

Re: External Drive Firewire Problem
 

Trevor

Connected ICZ 250 Gb ehd via firewire. This from Console system.log:

Volumes/EHD
Jan 22 15:04:53 Evan-Parrys-Computer kernel[0]: disk1s10: I/O error.
Jan 22 15:05:24 Evan-Parrys-Computer kernel[0]: disk1s10: I/O error.
Jan 22 15:05:24 Evan-Parrys-Computer kernel[0]: jnl: do_jnl_io: strategy err 0x5
Jan 22 15:05:24 Evan-Parrys-Computer kernel[0]: jnl: write_journal_header: error writing the journal header!

After 15 minutes of waiting the ehd window had listed 3 items (out of about 38, incl folders).

Incidentally, with other program windows open, I cannot return to the ehd window unless I use F9 to 'fit all' and then click in the ehd window (spinning beach ball); or shrink other windows to the Dock.

BTW, the ehd is formatted Journaled for Mac.

Hmmm. It's looking kinda like a hardware problem with the drive. You've implied that you think that this drive works in the USB case, let's test that by putting it back into the USB case. Can you access the data at that point? If so, make a good backup of anything on it of value to you.

If not, your last hope of retrieval would be either DiskWarrior http://alsoft.com to fix the filesystem, or Data Rescue II http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php if you're giving up on the hard drive, and just want to rescue some of the data.

Otherwise, you're looking at a data recovery service such as DriveSavers http://drivesavers.com or just writing off this hard drive and replacing it.

Trevor

External Drive Firewire Problem
 

Trevor

Thank you again for your helpful response. I should emphasis that this ICZ (alias Welland) is a combo ehd enclosure and that the USB connection is working just fine. I wanted Firewire for its speed, but can manage without it.

In due course I'll do as you suggest and transfer the material (only 40 Gb at this stage) to a temporary HD while I do something about the Seagate drive's firewire incompatibility. Incidentally, I no longer have the previous USB2-only Welland enclosure.

I have this same problem. I've tried numerous firewire cables, different hard drives. The firewire connection has worked for me before, but since I switched Hd's in the USB/firewire enclosure, only USB works. Which is a serious piss off because the only reason I bought this case was for the firewire. It seems like it only works sporadically. But when it does work, it worked until I switched the HD. grrr.

Hey Jeremy, I haven't dealt with the external combo Seagate drive firewire problem yet, but will do so once I've upgraded my eMac's hd to 250 Gb. That's been brought about by a hard disk fault which I think I'll cure with a new drive rather than repair.

I may be floundering here, but I think the external hd firewire problem is caused by the lead-in sector of the disk. That suggests a Seagate disk issue, but then not a lot of people seem to have difficulties with that brand. Me? I'm going for Hitachi, only slightly more expensive that Seagate, and I don't want a WD.

hey, I've got a 500gb and 250gb WD. The external case is TEAC. They've both worked via firewire before. USB always works. I've tried different HD's, different firewire cables. It seems completely random whether or not it will work. Once it does work though, it usually stays working, until I change the HD in it.

I used the USB connection for a while. I transfered over a few gigs of files (so slow). I came home 2 nights ago and tried the firewire connection. BAM! it works. I brought the external HD to work, it works on my intel 2.8 Xeon MacPro as well. strange.

There seems to me to be a significant number of fault/problem reports with MacOS and firewire peripherals. As FW was an Apple development, I'm left to wonder why there are difficulties, whereas USB seems to give far fewer problems. Sure, it's slower, but it's reliable. Pleased to note your FW is working, maybe my ehd will do so once I get back to it, riding on the good luck from yours :).

Any luck man?

My external FW drive had been working fine for a few months now. I threw some files on there, brought it to work, plugged it in, grabbed the files, everything seemed fine. Brought it back home, now it doesn't recognize it again. this is bullshit.

I'll just interject that usually people who own external drives that have an Oxford bridge chipset/firmware do not have these FireWire issues. People who use external drives with other brands of bridge chipset and firmware seem to often have these types of issues.

Oxford charges more for their bridge chipset than other companies like Prolific, but it's well worth it for the reliability, additional speed, etc.

hughvane and jeremyoliver, do your drives have Oxford bridge chipsets? Or something else?

Trevor

How can I tell which bridge chipset I have?

It's usually shown in System Profiler.

Trevor

Not in my case (no pun intended). Mine is a cheaper Ice (Welland) model. Oxford chipset enclosures are very hard to get in NZ. I've trotted along with USB, awaiting the day that my Am friends bring over a Mercury (Oxford) enclosure with them.

system profiler? gotchya. I'll mount it via usb, and check when I get home.

I have to agree with Trevor on this one. Buying cheap,no-name or generic external enclosures is just asking for trouble. A decent enclosure with the Oxford chipset is the best way to ensure your Mac will have trouble free access to your external drives.
Hugh , have you thought about getting one from here in Oz. I'm sure you could find someone who is holidaying here to pick one up for you. They wouldn't be as cheap as from the US but at least you could get one.
Or, postage to NZ from a reseller here would only be about $20 as an alternative.
Or #2 ebay.au and then post again.
I picked up a good enclosure off the MacTalk forums( USB2.0 , FW400 + FW800 ) + 300Gb drive for $80 just recently and it works a charm.
Edit : It was actually $80

Stewie

Thanks for the thought Stewie. Yeah, I have a couple of mates in Oz, one of whom is returning here to retire, but that's not until mid-09. My friends in Maine come and live over here for 5 months from Dec, and I use them as a courier service; also my bro who lives in MN, should he be trotting back to his native shores.

The NZ$ is slipping in value against the US$, so buying a combo from the US is not the attractive proposition it was a month ago.

Cheers ...... Hugh

I see Manufacturer: Prolific in my system profile. So I'm guessing this means it's not Oxford. Where can I get these cases? Best Buy? Is Oxford a brand name on the cases or will I need to look for those specs?

OWC http://eshop.macsales.com have what they call the Mercury http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...g/MEFW91UAL1K/ that should suit. The SATA one is $10 dearer.

Correct. Prolific is the largest bridge chipset maker. Most of the cheap cases uses Prolific chipsets, and Prolific chipsets don't really work very well. They also give slower disk throughput than the superior cases that use Oxford chipsets.

No, Oxford is not a brand on the case, they don't make cases. They just make the important part of the electronics--the bridge. Simply, because there are no native FireWire internal hard drives, just ATA and SATA (well...there are other types of hard drives, too, but not FireWire) the bridge changes the FireWire protocol to ATA or SATA protocol.

Best Buy is focussed on cheap products, and Oxford chipsets cost more. It's unlikely that any of the external cases at Best Buy will use an Oxford chipset.

As hughvane correctly mentions above, the cases with the Mercury branding that OWC sells use the Oxford chipset. Usually, Wiebetech cases use the Oxford chipset. Usually, the G-Tech cases use the Oxford chipset. There are others, too. Oxford chipsets are a feature, so when you look at the feature list, if they use Oxford they will usually mention that. If they don't tell you, they probably use Prolific, or one of the other smaller chipset makers.

Trevor

Dragging this thread up from the depths, could someone please help me understand w-t-h goes on here. I've connected the Seagate EHD via firewire to my G3 iMac and it shows up and transfers like a dream!!!

It just would not do that on the eMac. Aaaaaaargh! Of course I cannot utilise movies and such because the iMac/Panther is a bit old hat, but I am mightily irrigated that an older OS and hardware should recognise the EHD with firewire, when all my efforts with the ehd and eMac had to be satisfied with USB.

Update: for reasons best known to anyone but me, the external HD is now working flawlessly with the eMac as well. A mystery has been committed!

bump.

wow. this is $%#in' Bull^%#@!

So, I ordered a new Mercury External HD case with an Oxford Bridge chipset (934 i think) for another $100+ w/shipping. Firewire and USB. New 500gb western digital HD as well. Formatted it, it was working fine (à la Firewire) at home (g4), and at work (macpro). Now, all of a sudden firewire doesn't work again. USB works fine, but Firewire has stopped working, exactly like the last firewire external case I had.

What about the FireWire cable? Have you tried swapping it for a newly purchased FireWire cable?

yeah, it came with a new one. I have 3 or 4 others I've used as well.

Actually USB isn't working now either. The blue light on the front is flashing sporadically when I try to use USB. this is great.

I had the hard drive in a case previously (USB only of course) and it was working fine, it worked fine in the new case as well, until the no firewire antics started.

wait. I plugged USB and firewire in at the same time and USB worked... :S

Not usually a good idea

It sounds like you may have more than just an external case problem to me.
Are the cases you are using mains powered as well ?
I see lots of problems where cheap USB external cases are connected by the USB cable only.
These magically disappear ( well most of the time anyway ) when the external boxes are hitched up to mains power as well.

Stewie

mains powered? what does this mean? I've got numerous cases, 2 antecs (USB only) these work fine everytime. One AEC I've mentioned in this thread (USB and firwire) usb only works. And one new Mercury Elite from OWC (usb and firewire) usb only works now sometimes. Why would it work and then stop?


Again, firewire has worked before. I'm going to try these drives (firewire) on some other macs and a pc. I'll post the test results soon.

"mains powered" is a British term meaning "connected to the main electrical power" - i.e. with an electrical power cable being used to supply power to the device.
(as opposed to being powered over USB - which is often problematic)

Ah, ok. Yes, all my enclosures have their own power cables.

One reason I can't use USB (besides being painfully slow) is because on my g4 at home if I try to copy over any file bigger than let's say 4gb I'll get a "file cannot be read or written" error. It's not a hard drive or file issue though. I've checked, they all give me this message but copy back and forth just fine on my macpro.

Is this an apple firewire issue? Should I waste my time/money calling them?

What filesystem is the drive formatted in? Although I can't explain why files over 4 GB would work on the Mac Pro, usually when you have problems with files over 4 GB, it is because the drive is formatted in FAT32. One of FAT32's most irritating limitations (and it has several) is that it cannot handle files that are 4 GB and higher. The maximum file size is 4GB minus 1 byte.

Trevor

Yes I remember having to deal with that issue. They are all formatted for mac osx (not journaled).

I won't be able to test the drives on other macs (and hopefully a pc w/firewire) until after the weekend. I'll post the test results then. thanks everyone.

Ok, I tested both my External Firewire Drives on a pc and 3 different Macs. surprise surprise Firewire did not work at all on any of them. USB worked but sporadically. Only on some machines, sometimes.

this sucks.

Alright, I'll call apple when I get a chance and I'll post their diagnosis.

I called OWC. The had me test a few things (things we already went through on here). They said it needs to be returned and repaired. The shipping costs are more than the product. *sigh*