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*