WiebeTech Super Desktop Drive not mounting in Tiger

Question

Hello,
I have a wiebetech super desktop GB external firewire drive. Originally, I used it with OSX 10.2. That was a few years ago. It worked well then.
It worked much the same with 10.3, except that when we tried to mount it, nothing worked, except it you plugged the firewire cable into the back of the iMac at just the right time: when the drive made a 'ba ba' noise.
And now with 10.4 tiger, nothing seems to make it work. Here is wiebetech's advice (note: I inserted a little note next to the steps I've tried):
2004-11-09
Mac OS Updates
A new OS update was released and you installed it. As with nearly every OS update
Apple does, some external drives are not recognized after the update. The incidence
is fairly uncommon and the most common symptom is that the device will not mount
but the volume is visible and greyed out in Disk Utility. This means that the
device is working properly, but the OS does not recognize the volume as mountable.
Sometimes the drive does not show up at all. Now this happens to every drive
manufacturer but not to every drive. There is no discernable way to prepare for
this and no one thinks about it unless it happens to them. So now what?
The first thing to do is to see if repairing Disk Permissions with Apples Disk
Utility First Aid feature solves the problem [tried this]. If not, try Repairing the disk
with First Aid. Another possible solution is to ZAP the PRAM [tried this too]. For the older Mac
users, this is the same from the days when we manually rebuilt the Desktop and
is done with a keyboard command while rebooting. Restart your computer and hold
down the Command, Option, P and R keys. Consult the Apple web site for details.
If this does not work, then try pushing the PMMU reset button on the logic board [say what?].
Consult the Apple web site for locations of the button for your Mac. If the drive
still does not show up, shutdown, disconnect all peripheral devices and boot
from the Mac OS Installation CD. The later the OS version, the better. Do not
reinstall the OS, but when the Installer is loaded up and ready to begin, go
to the File menu and use the Disk Utility program. Connect the drive that is
having problems, then start the Disk Utility application. If you see the external
drive and it is not grayed out, you know the drive is okay. But run Disk First
Aid on it anyway. Then run it on your internal boot drive while you are at it.
When done, unmount the external drive and UNPLUG it! Then restart the Mac.
When the Mac has restarted and is running on the internal boot drive, reconnect
the external drive.
As you can see, I'm having some trouble here. Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
ben

Answer 1

Forget this enclosure:
Vantec Nexstar LX 3.5 Network Attached Storage NAS Enclosure
Do not bother to buy it. Waste of money and time. When I looked at it I thought that someone is copying someone elses ideas because even electonics seem to be the same as in NewerTech units. Anyway it has more problems and defective pieces are common on the market. It is also noisy as it runs fun. Why they cannot figure out that plastic enclosures will always have cooling problem while one decent piece of thic aliuminium like in MadDog, LaCie or even some cheaper enclosure may be better and not always require noisy fan. I run MadDog enclosure now with up 500GB drives in them 24x7 no fans (do not stack them and leave gaps between them if you want to do this!). Also some could figure out that radiators have their shape for reason and the idea can be implemted to some degree in enclosures too.
Message was edited by: Maciej Samsel