firewire freakout

[Don Greening]

The constant flashing of the blue light means the drive wasn’t shut down properly to begin with. A common reason for this to happen is if your computer crashed and you had to do a hard boot. Try shutting down the drive and the computer first. If it’s a relatively new LaCie drive it should shut down automatically with the computer. Then just start everything up again.

– Don

[Hamish Boyd]

thanks for your response. Unfortunately nothing has changed. still flashing. What will happen if I hold down the blue button? I’m going carefully here as I’m not on my own gear.
As far as I’m aware, firewire is plug and go and there is no off on like switch. So when I shut down the computer, I pulled the power from the drive and replugged it in before restart. Was that right?

Thanks for the help.

[Peter Ralph]

it is not necessary to unplug. The blue light is the on/off switch. I have this same problem when I have several lacie drives daisychained. If it is not on the desktop then I just switch it off (press the blue light) and then back on again and it normally appears.

[Hamish Boyd]

pressing blue button does nothing. Held it down for about 10sec but still on flashing.
I’m getting worried here.
Thanks for your help

[Don Greening]

Seamus,

Not that I’ve ever done it, but I’ve heard that the proper way to disconnect a FW drive before shutdown is to “eject it”. That is, dragging the drive’s desktop icon to the trash, then shutting down your Mac and restarting. Unless someone has a better plan. If that fails I would try your drive on another Mac if possible to see if it does the same thing.

You always try contacting LaCie to find out what they recommend you do. Also make sure the FW cable you’re using is connected properly and is actually working.

– Don

[Peter Ralph]

Yes Don is right. You should drag the disc to the trash before disconnecting it. The disc should power itself off and on as you power the computer off and on.

Don’t panic – I think your drive is just stuck in a loop. Power down the computer. Power down the drive – unplug the power cord if you have to if you have to. Disconnect the drive from the computer. Power up the computer – connect the drive – if it doesn’t power up automatically then press the blue button to power it up.