What should I consider when purchasing a FireWire hard drive?

[Ric Christoferson]

These rules are always important to remember when dealing with firewire drives..

They have kept me out of a lot of trouble…

Golden Rule: Only ONE Firewire device can be supplying power when disconnecting or connecting a Firewire cable.

AFTER dismounting an external device that has been mounted in the Finder:

1. Your computer is the ONLY device that can be powered up when disconnecting or connecting a Firewire device. The only exception is if the computer is off and the external device is powered up before you start your computer.

2. ALWAYS power down external Firewire devices before disconnecting or connecting a Firewire cable from ANY DEVICE. This includes scanners and cameras using the non-powered mini iLink plug! In theory there is no power in the link, but there is power at the computer end and it seems to have the ability to screw things up if the device is on. The only exception is if the external device is Firewire powered by your computer (i.e. having no external device power or when there is no power switch such as an iPod or Memory Stick).

3. NEVER connect/disconnect any self powered Firewire devices in a chain when ANY device in the chain is powered-up. You MUST turn off all devices in a chain before removing or adding a device. This again includes scanners and cameras.

4. After dismounting an external drive, count to three before turning it off and disconnecting a Firewire cable. Sometimes, even though the disk icon is gone from the Finder, it seems the CPU is still in the process of dismounting the external drive. This may change with different versions of OS X, but you can see this in action sometimes when dismounting an iPod. There will be a beat difference between when the Finder thinks it’s dismounted and when the iPod thinks it’s dismounted. This gray area is when you get the warnings about not having removed a device properly, even when you did.

5. Do a VISUAL check of all devices before connecting/disconnecting a Firewire cable to double check the power status of all devices that might be in a chain.

6. If you get a warning about not having removed a device properly, reconnect it. If it acts sluggish (telltale sign is slowly displaying the contents of a folder), back it up immediately and reinitialize the drive. DO NOT write any more data to the drive. That can precipitate a complete drive failure.

7. The more critical the data is on the external Firewire drive, the more likely it is you will accidentally break one of the rules above. If you have critical data, become fanatical to not be in a hurry, not to become distracted, and to say a silent prayer to the Firewire gods while your hand is still on the connector.

[Howie Young]

Your rules are great and much appreciated.

What do you do if you have to restart or reboot the computer, or start from a new start-up drive? Should a FireWire Drive be ejected, or dragged to the trash before a restart?

What happens if the computer locks up and you need to hit the power or restart button, do you turn off the FW drive or just reboot?

Thanks.