Nightmare Scenario!!!!

[Mitchji]

[Kevin Monahan] “Do you spin them up prior to launching your Mac?”

Hi Kevin,

Why is this important? Is it a FW issue?

I have some external SATA and I always dismount before shutdown but I often power them up when my G5 is already running and this has never caused a problem.

Thanks,

Mitch

[Kevin Monahan]

Unmount, then power down the drives, then power down the Mac.

Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com

[Kevin Monahan]

I’ve always spun up drives prior to launch. Everything I do with drives stems from my extensive training program with Avid. An ACSR taught me to always spin up drives prior to launch, so that’s what I do. Why?
A) I blindly follow the advice of the purple gods.
B) I have never fried a media drive’s directory.

Glad to see you’ve had no trouble old chum. The spec does indicate that you can hot swap drives – I don’t do that because I’m just too conservative/paranoid coming from the world of SCSI and 4GB drive sleds. I handle FireWire drives the way I handled those old sleds, and you better believe we spun those babies up before boothing and unmounted before shut down. 😉

Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com

[Sean Davison]

MMMmmm…..Wouldnt it be a good Idea if drive manufacturers put the words SPIN UP DRIVES BEFORE USE and ALWAYS LEAVE A THIRD OF DRIVE EMPTY in Large Friendly letters on their drives so people like me dont get into these problems and the company I’m working for dont have to shell out over

[Mike Mihalik]

This is not a drive restriction, but rather an OS and application restriction.

It is the applications and OS that do not properly handle nearly full drive conditions.

Same thing will happen to internal boot drives and media drives that get nearly full. This is not something unique to FireWire or USB drives. Same thing will happen to SCSI, IDE, and SATA drives.

As someone earlier in the thread sated, it is best to be conservative with all aspects of the system. Proper precautions, and conservative use will lead to more successful efforts.

Mike