another lacie prob

[Don Greening]

seamus,

Open up your Mac and reset the PMU switch. That should also reset the firewire BUS on your machine. Consult your Mac’s owner’s manual for the PMU switch’s location and how to reset. I’ve never done it myself but I understand this is a known fix for FW. Since your LaCie drive works fine an another Mac we now know it’s your machine that’s the problem. If the reset doesn’t work then I would suspect it’s a hardware thing……unless you have other FW drives that do indeed work on your Mac. You never mentioned anything about that. If the problem turns out to be a hardware issue then you’ll need to take it in for service. Wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.

– Don

[Hamish Boyd]

Thanks for reply,
I finally got to the bottom of it. A dodgy power lead!!!! Couldn’t believe it. The one thing I hadn’t changed. I figured if it turns on, it turns on. But swapping over the lead helped. Weird isn’t it? It was still getting power as far as I understand (the blue light was on) but it was the dodgy link in the chain.
Anyway, thanks for your help. Is it me, or do people have more problems with these drives than other hardware. I’ve had drives completely die on me before, there seems to be a number of posts about these things too,

[Don Greening]

FW drives continue to be prone to more problems than others. Since these drives are built to be used between computers I think most people don’t realize the importance of shutting them down properly before disconnecting them. Often times I think the internal FW bridge chips are being damaged in the process. Then there’s the wear and tear on the connections themselves from being repeatedly connected/disconnected. Your power lead problems could be the result of something like that.

I’ve got FW drives myself but never use them on anything but this one Mac. They turn on and off with the machine automatically and I’ve never had even a hint of a problem with any of them.

– Don

[Chris Newman]

i’ve had similar problems with firewire drives. i have a dual 2ghz G5. sometimes, even after ejecting the drive, having it’s icon dissappear from the desktop, when i disconnect the cable from the port, i’ll get this message on my monitor that a peripheral was removed incorrectly and the machine needs to be restarted. i don’t know how else to correctly remove a HD other than ejecting the icon, then disconnecting. the problem is intermittent.

i am curious, how do you get your external HD to power down when your computer does? i’m assuming you’re not doing it manually. does it then power up automatically when you turn the computer on? i have a maxtor one touch that gets very hot after awhile but i don’t want to risk getting that error on the screen by disconnecting it. i rarely use it on another computer. i’d be interested in knowing how you set up that automation.

thanks