Firewire Drives constatnly being unmounted on their own…

[Matthew Brunn]

Witch Doctor!!!

[David Mcclellan]

WTF does that mean?

-DM

G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
OSX.3 FCP4.5HD

[Peter Mcauley]

I recently had the same problem and tracked it down to the top firewire connection on my Lacie 250 gig drive. I tried it on other systems with the same results. I haven’t fixed it yet but I’ve got the drive on the end of the chain just using the bottom connector. Is your problem always the same drive or different ones at different times?

Peter McAuley
Axyz Edit
Toronto
G5 dual 2.0
4 gigs ram
10.3.8
FCP 4.5 HD
QT 6.5.2
Kona 2 v1.0.5 with K Box
4 X 250 gig external F800 Lacie firewire drive
2 X 23″ Apple cinema display

[David Mcclellan]

Different drives – different brands – different days – diferent firewire ports, front and back, and diiferent OS versions (all 10.3 at least). I believe this is a hardware issue – especially since there have been quite a few other people with G5’s that have this same problem over at the Appel discussion boards. Whenever I get a break from editing I’m going to have to take my computer in to get serviced. I have done everything from reinstalling the OS clean to running several Apple tech tools all to no avail. The real clincher was re-cutting a film that I edited last year on hard drives that I know worked with no auto dismount – on my old Dual G4. When I booted up the hard drives to start the recut (had to change music on the film for Royalty issues) after about an hour of working – the drive automatically unmounted itself and I got the dreaded “you shouldn’t unmount your drives like that … ” message.

-DM

G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
OSX.3 FCP4.5HD

[Peter Ralph]

There is some flakiness with g5s and FWHDs – I’ve had a few spontaneous disappearances but more commonly the drives will fail to mount on reboot (although they always power up) one time in 4 or 5 they don’t appear on the desktop. I can always make them appear by powering up and down , sometimes unplugging – but its not solid – I keep expecting a firmware update from apple

[Tom Matthies]

You might try this too.
Go to System Preferences>Energy Saver.
Change the settings on the two sliders (computer to sleep & monitors to sleep) to “never”.
Uncheck the “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” box.

Not sure if this will help your case, but I have my computer set this way and I have 6 Firewire drives attached and have had no problems with them spinning down or unmounting.

worth a try…
Tom