Buslink External Drive 300 GB Firewire Problem

I purchased a Buslink 300 GB external drive that has both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 connection. I use the drive to hold dv files that I have downloaded from my video camera. I formatted the drive for mac because the dv files are larger than the 4gb limit for FAT32. Everthing was fine using the firewire connection until I got to about 140 gb of data on the drive. No further files would copy to the drive. I now have to use the USB connection, and have gone up to 250GB without problem. I like the performance of the firewire connection better than the USB connection.
I formatted the external drive Mac OS Extended into one 279 GB partition. I found nothing on BUSLINK's web site about a driver, is there a fix for this? Is anyone using another external drive with firewire that will work properly to the limit of the drive?
Thank you
G5 Dual 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.9) 3.5GB ram

I have 2 external firewire HDs - both worked prefectly until recently... I am getting Error -36... I have used the Disk Utility - no errors founds. Despite this conclusion, I decided to reformat them both.... and still getting the same error -36... any suggestions?

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No. The Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters only work to connect a Firewire drive to a Thunderbolt port. They do not work in reverse, to connect a Thunderbolt-only drive to a Firewire port. If the only port your drive has is a Thunderbolt port and all you have on the Mac is Firewire, you can't use that drive with that computer.
Regards.

Connect 2 external drives to 1 firewire port?

MacBook Pro 5 4 Mid-2009 15"
has 1 firewire port
1 USB 2.0 port with 2 more USB 2.0 ports on an external monitor
I've been running Time Machine on a 500 GB LaCie d2 quadra external drive and need to upgrade, probably to a 3 TB drive.
To transfer my backups from the old drive to the new one, I need to connect both to the MacBook. Can I connect both in a daisy chain to the FireWire port? Or do I have to connect one via USB and the other via FireWire?
Thanks.

You can either use a FireWire hub or connect one device through USB. If either drive has two or more FireWire ports, it can act as a hub.
(121173)

USB external drive vs. Firewire

Do I understand correctly that I cannot store my movies and edit them in iMovie when they reside on an external drive via USB connection? Is it possible that I can use the USB hard drive as long as I format the drive for Mac (not FAT format)? Or must I use a firewire hard drive? Anyone? Thanks in advance for anyone who knows the 411. -Jeff

I am sorry, it has been a while since I looked into this. I believe it goes something like this...
I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong. Also, if you have a Fat32 drive, plug it in and try it. If it doesn't work it is easy to reformat using disk utility.
NTFS - Good for Windows, but Read Only for Mac, Bootable for Windows
Fat 32 - Works for Both (read/write), not bootable for Mac, 4GB-1 maximum file size, Bootable for Windows
HFS+ - Works for Mac, bootable for Mac, no Windows
The issues with Fat 32 for video applications: 4GB file size limit frequently will not be enough, disk fragmentation can be a big issue for large file sizes.
I haven't been able to find anything saying it absolutely wont work, and I dont have time to test it tonight.
Also, drives have come way down in price. You can get a new firewire drive and format to hfs+ for video applications and keep your current USB drive for sharing.
One more piece of data, I have a firewire drive (HFS+) for my nightly backups with SuperDuper. I bought my daughter an inexpensive USB drive (HFS+) for backups using SuperDuper. The Firewire drive is much faster for the nightly backup, and it is much faster when I boot from it than booting from the USB drive (SuperDuper creates bootable backups).
One last thing, I bought a USB 4GB flashdrive for about $30. It easily handles most of my needs for transferring files to a PC or other Macs.
Sorry to ramble, but that is my brain dump on this subject. Hopefully others will point out my glaring mistakes and omissions.

External Drive Backup and Partition Problems

I'd like to setup Time Machine to back up a smaller external drive (250 gigs) onto a larger external drive (1 TB). This is all I want to backup, nothing on the internal drive.
However, when I go to the exclude list, my smaller 250 gig hard drive is listed by default and I cannot remove it as it is "greyed out". Could this possible be because it's FAT32 formatted?
Additionally, I'd ideally like to format the 1 TB drive into 2 partitions - 1 to backup the 250 drive (so maybe like 400 gigs) and 1 to use for other things (600 gigs). I tried to do that with Disk Utility, but it keeps giving me an error and telling me to "try reducing the amount of change in the partition size".
If not that, is there any way to cap Time Machine's backup size otherwise? Sorry for the multipart question, let me know if you have any other ideas of how to make this work. Thanks!

Could this possible be because it's FAT32 formatted?
Yes. Time Machine can't back up a FAT32 drive.
(50585)

Internal drive installed in as as external drive in an enclosure problems

I removed my internal hard drive from my graphite iMac, encased it in an Adaptec USB 2 hard drive enclosure, plugged it in, restarted my computer (already with a new internal hard drive with Tiger MacOS working) but could not see the icon of the new external hard drive on the screen. The external drive is set to be a slave. Whart have I done wrong? The disc utility won't recognize its presence either. I would appreciate help.
Ella from Indianapolis

Ella Hurrell...
"I mean that the only ocon missing from the sedktop is the wone for the external hard drive...everything else is as it should be."
Now you are confusing me a bit here. It works otherwise but it doesn't show up on the Desktop <OR> nothing works?
The Desktop Icon setting is a Finders Preference, so does CDs show up on the Desktop?
At first, I thought it needed the Hard Drive checked till I mounted my USB drive. I can check and uncheck "CD,DVD, and iPod" and it will show and disappear accordingly. (so long as Apple did not change this from our Mac OS 10 versions)
Now if nothing is working beyond this point, something went bad, if everything is properly connected.
...Ron

Backing up client to server external drive with Time Machine - problems...

Hi,
I'm running 10.5.2 server on a MacMini (G4 1.25GHz/1GB) which has an external firewire drive that has been set as a sharepoint for Time Machine backups. The problem is that from the client MacBook (10.5.2 - connected on a wireless g network) I can select the drive in the Time Machine preferences but when I accept the changes it resets to the 'off' position.
Hmmm? Any ideas?

The server wasn't set up in Advanced. I'm not trying to back up the server itself but the client.
Can anyone offer any ideas!?

Transfer files to MacBook from external drives & MacPro without FireWire

I just realized my Macbook (13 inch aluminum) doesn't have a FireWire port. WHY? I can't believe I didn't notice when I bought the thing. I assumed that a FireWrire port was standard like USB. I know that I can transfer files from my MacPro Desktop using migration assistant. However, it doesn't let me pick and choose which files to transfer. Is the best plan to transfer everything all at once and then delete what I don't want from the MacBook? I've also got a lot of individual files & folders on external FireWire drives that I'd like to copy to my MacBook. Is there a way to hook up an external FireWire hard drive to my MacBook? Are there FireWire to USB adapters? Am I going to have to transfer these files via USB memory sticks, CD-R's & DVD-R's? Or maybe it would be a better idea to dump them on my MacPro, use Migration assistant to copy it all at once and then pick and choose what to keep on my MacBook.
I know I've got a lot of questions. Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I assumed that a FireWrire port was standard like USB.
It is, just not on the aluminum Macbook.
It can be done with USB, but it is slower and less reliable.
The hard drive is fairly easy to remove on the aluminum Macbook. I would remove it and install it in an external Firewire enclosure temporarily to transfer your files quickly and reliably, then put the drive back in the Macbook.
Firewire allows two operating modes. One is asynchronous, like USB which suffers from latency, bus contention and collisions.
The other is isochronous mode, and it lets a device carve out a certain dedicated amount of bandwidth that other devices can't touch. It gets a certain number of time slices each second all its own. The advantages for audio/video should be obvious: that stream of data can just keep on flowing, and as long as there isn't more bandwidth demand than the wire can handle, nothing will interfere with it. No collisions, no glitches.

Time machine problem. Switching from one external drive to another. Problem started when upgrading to Mavrics, and changing to a WD drive

I am a long time Mac user, running my business on an apple platform since 1984. I currently use a 17" MacBook Pro as my primary computer for work. when it is at work it is plugged in via thunderbolt to my monitor and a one tb back up drive. I use time machine to back up the laptop to the one tb drive. When I go home, I take the laptop with me and use another drive at home as a back up. This way I have redundant back ups, in two separate locations. I have been doing this for years, and Time machine has worked flawlessly, automaticity switching from one drive to another.
I recently switched to Maverics, and got a new drive for home. Now whether I am at home or at work, time machine fails to automatically back up. It will alert me every hour that backups cannot be completed, and I must go to the time machine control panel and manually select a drive and click, "back up now". I also see an alert that says "waiting to complete first back up" even though each backup has been completed.
This is quite annoying, and sometimes embarrassing. When giving lectures in large venues, the backup failure alert appears and shuts down my keynote presentation (again, something new since switching to Maverics and the new WD drive.
I have reformatted the WD drive, and also spent time trying to change parameters in the time machine control panel, but so far no luck.
Any advice out there?

Time machine requires a GUID partion scheme, as well as a Mac OS X extended, journaled Volume.
It needs these to correctly:
1) copy the files
2) run a modified spotlight index pass on the files
Both are required to complete a abckup, and most new drives do not conme this way from the factory.

External Drive Problem - Rampant Issue?

I've been searching the Internet for a day now and I see postings all over the place with the same questions and no real answers. I have a 1st Gen iMac G5 running 10.4.6. I have an external drive (the original HD in a SATA->Firewire enclosure) that has worked flawlessley since I had my logic board replaced under the extended Apple warrenty debacle regarding bad capacitors. Just 2 days ago, the drive become unmountable and all of the data disappeared. Drive Utilities won't recognize it, DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro 4 similarly won't help. Figuring the drive had just upped and died, I picked up a Maxtor 300GB drive and put it in the enclosure. Same thing. It mounts, but drops whenever I try to write to it. Neither Backup nor Retrospect can complete a backup to the drive. Other Firewire devices (iSight, 2nd Gen iPod) work fine and System Profiler says the FireWire ports are functional. I tried using Backup and the drive in question (the Maxtor) to backup my G4 PowerBook Ti and it worked flawlessly. Clearly it's an issue with the iMac. I've seen similar postings here, on MacFixit, MacOSXHints, etc. and have yet to see a plausible explanation. I'm open to ideas. I'm not comfortable having this iMac, which has most of my important files, unprotected by backup as it has proved flaky in the past.
matt

Matt,
These problems have been cropping up long before the iMac G5. Read this short post by member Donna Thomas to avoid getting too negative about the situation.
For some users, the use of more than one firewire port at a time can initiate the problem. Something to do with power draw vs the limits of the power supply, I think. I'd recommend trying a PRAM reset, and also a SMU reset (this is performed differently for your model G5 than it is done for the other iMacs): SMU reset instructions (just ignore the title of the article).
While you're booting from your install disc to access Disk Utility to perform Disk Repair, or using the Disk Utility from your Applications/Utilities folder to perform Permissions Repair, or whatever other utilities you're using, at least once shut down and then cold start rather than restart. It used to be, and I think still is, that these are different processes for a Mac, and it just might contribute to recovering the use of the external drive on your Firewire port.

Firewire ports not responding to external drives.

I have a LaCie 250 gig and it was working fine until I plugged a power book into one of the firewire ports. Not only did my G4 not recognize the power book, it also stopped recognizing my external drive.
The .mac site said to unplug everything and restart the computer to reset the firewire ports. Which I did and nothing changed. Figured it was a lost cause so I used the USB instead.
Then, one day, I tried it again to see what would happen and it worked. The firewire went back to normal and everything was fine.
The other day, I plugged my Canon XL2 into the firewire port and it shut everything down again. So, now I'm without firewire and back to USB for my external drive.
The firewire DOES turn on the drive, it just doesn't recognize that there's anything plugged in.
Thoughts?

1. Shut-down your Mac, and unplug the power cord
2. Turn the power off on your external FireWire devices
3. Unplug the FireWire devices from the Mac
4. Wait for 5 min.
5. Plug the power cord to your Mac only
6. For PPC Macs: Restart the Mac while holding the Option-Apple-O-F, and keep holding until you get the ">" prompt, then release the keys
7. At the ">" prompt type:
      reset-nvram and hit the Return key
      set-defaults and hit the Return key
      reset-all and hit the Return key
the last command will restart your mac
8. Shut down your Mac
9. Connect all your FireWire devices to the Mac and turn them on
10. Restart your Mac.
All your FireWire devices should reapear, if not repeat the procedure
How to avoid the issue :
The only really proven way to avoid burning up a FireWire port is to connect all devices and to turn them on PRIOR turning on the Mac. Likely, one must unplug them and turn them off AFTER the Mac has been turned off. If you need to connect another device, then you're on for a shutdown of your machine...  It's a tad annoying but it guarantees that the FW ports won't be damaged.  Be careful when using self powered devices such as webcams, iPods, hard drives or hubs, as they can destroy the port pretty easily. Another thing is to avoid daisy-chaining hard drives.
When the FW port doesn't respond anymore :
In this case, peripherals won't be mounted upon plugging, and won't be displayed in Apple's System Profiler. The self powered devices will still be fed by the port, but won't respond either.  It happens that the PHY just hangs after a surge or a random problem. Once hung, the port will not respond any longer, it is possible to reset the component by going through the following steps :
1° boot the PPC mac in Open Firmware by holding [ Apple key - Option - O - F ] after the startup chime.  2° you'll get to a command prompt. the keyboard mapping will be QWERTY, so pay attention when you type the following :  RESET-NVRAM (enter)  RESET-ALL (enter)  3° Now the mac should restart itself and the port should function properly again.  If it still doesn't work, then it means that the PHY is damaged.
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/16/
From Kappy post:
922 is only used in dual drive cases to provide a "build-in firmware RAID support"
912 or 912+ is FW800, the "+" means USB2
911 is FW400
924 adds eSATA support along with FW400/800
MacSales, OWC Tech Support library is where I would go first, as they do tend to have or links to, firmware updates for Oxford.
From Wiebetech:
I just upgraded my Mac OS, and now I'm having trouble with my FireWire device. What can I do?
A: With nearly every OS update Apple releases, some external drives are not recognized after the update. The typical symptom is that the device will not mount but the volume is visible and grayed 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.
The first thing to do is to see if repairing Permissions with Apple's Disk Utility First Aid feature solves the problem. If not, try repairing the disk with First Aid. Another possible solution is to zap the PRAM. This 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. Consult the Apple web site for locations of the button for your Mac. If the drive still does not show up, shut down, 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. 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.

Firewire 800 external drives

Do external drive enclosures supporting Firewire 800 and 1TB drives require a brick power supply or can they be powered via Firewire 800 by the Mac Pro?
Thanks!
MikeR

Get a dual or 5-drive hot swap SATA case. Unlimited storage. $24 sled for each drive.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard102.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2EEN4TR/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2SEN2E/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA5PM/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2EN2/
One case, one brick, but 2-5 drives.

My external drive won't copy using firewire

I'm trying to copy a large folder (90GB) from my internal drive to a Glyph 2 TB external drive using the Firewire port. I get a variety of error messages and a failure. When I use USB, copy is successful. Any ideas why this is happening?
Thanks. Jim

Having a failure copying large folders from one Glyph (500MB) to another (1TB) when they're directly connected with a FW800 cable. When I plug the 1TB Glyph into the computer with USB, it seems to work OK.
Format for both Glyph drives is Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Firewire and external drive

I bought an additional hard drive. I daisy chained it to existing external hard drive which is connect to my mac via firewire. My mac now doesn't see either drive. If I plug original external to USB my mac finds. How can I get my mac to find my external drive again via firewire? Thanks.

If your FireWire drive is one that has USB and FireWire interfaces, you can't connect another drive on a different type of bus than the one used to connect to the host computer. If I'm reading what you're saying, it sounds like the new drive is USB and you're trying to daisy-chain that with the FW drive. Not going to work.
-Douggo

Don't see the external drive

So I just installed Tiger. I still have OS 9 with Classic.
Two problems but I will separate them and post only one here.
1) I have an external drive, OWC Neptune firewire 300 GB with 20 folders or so. But now, after installing Tiger, when I click on the external drive (the icon is visible in OS X but not in Classic) I see only the Hard Disk Speed Tools (1 folder with 7 files that are technical). I don't see any of my folders and files I saved-- about 1 GB more or less)
Please tell me it's not gone !
Why is it that the external drive icon is visible in OS X but not in Classic ?
Also I tried to see how much GB I have on the external drive but it doesn't give me any indication. When I click ->Get info it shows size : 3.2 MB

Hi eew, Thank you for your answer.
When Classic is running, OS X is controlling the computer, and your access to external drives is the same as when Classic is turned off. Are you confusing Classic operation in OS X with booting the computer into OS 9 (OS X is not running at all)? The difference may seem to be purely a matter of semantics, but it isn't.
1) No, when I turn on my computer it runs on OS X but Classic is also available (I turned the option to turn on both) but what appears on the screen is OS X.
2) > Are you confusing Classic operation in OS X with booting the computer into OS 9 (OS X is not running at all)?
I think I must put an OS 9 disk to boot into OS 9 don't I ? (I mean now that I have Tiger) The OS 9.0.4 disc is sitting comfy in a disc holder.
OS X is always present. When I shot down/wake up it is OS X. Then I see a file (I guess you can call it that) with the title "Classic starting up using "system folder" on "MacIntosh HD" and see the bar in progress. but nothing else. Then the Classic logo (the 9 in a square) is on the top bar. But the desktop doesn't show anything. If I click on the Classic logo and - -> "Start Classic" then, and only then do I see the familiar (and lovable) OS 9.2.2 on the blue background with the 2 faces loading.
3) >When you start your computer up in OS 9, you aren't using Classic you're running OS 9.
Hum, same as above, this is IF I put a OS 9 disc.
I installed OS X so I don't have OS 9 anymore to start. It start on Tiger with OS Classic also available.
So it is not completely true when they say in the installation option "Tiger will load (in single partition) on top of OS 9" since in fact it uses something new which is Classic. So I install OS X therefore OS 9 is not used anymore. And OS X contains a folder with this idea of a OS 9 substitute called Classic. It is not OS 9 and it is not OS X it's something in between.
4) >Under those circumstances, you won't be able to see any unpartitioned 300GB hard drive, internal or external, even if OS 9 drivers are installed.
Huh ? I installed the external drive when I still had OS 9.0.4 using the firewire connection.
The external drive came with a disc. The installation/set up said :
"Mac OS X : -Drivers not required. Proceed to hardware installation.
Mac OS 8.6-9.2.2- Firewire :
Insert the HDST CD (they mean by that the Hard Drive Speed Tools) and follow the instructions provided by the installer. You may need to install Apple's Firewire drivers, see the tech center for details"
I put the disc, followed the instructions and it says installation succesfull.
I did not install or open any other files /folders present on the external drive.
I saw the external drive logo on my desktop, I copied 20 files or so in it. I opened them to check if everything is OK before I trash the original so I don't understand you saying I won't be able to see any unpartitioned 300GB hard drive.
I didn't partition the external drive. I just installed it, open it and start copy files on it.
5) As for the
"You may need to install Apple's Firewire drivers, see the tech center for details"
I didn't see any warning about that and as I said, I started using the exter. drive. "You may need" and You must" are 2 different things. I assumed everything is OK since I used the external drive without problem. Wrong assumption ?
Days later I upgraded incremently to 9.2.2. (first 9.1 then 9.2 etc) and I still used the external drive to copy files hours before installing Tiger (to make room for Tiger).
Now I have Tiger.
And they said Mac OS X : -Drivers not required.
Beside I see it on OS X so that's not a problem
Actually I just tried right now to see if the external drive works by dragging a file on it and nothing happened. With OS 9.0.4 it immediately started to copy and I could see a bar showing me the progress.
I open the Drive and see that the Hard Disc Tool files folder (which has 7 files) has at least 3 files that has a connection with Classic: One is called "Integrity Classic" the other "Quick bench Classic" and another "Disk Defrag Classic HDST" Not sure if it has any connection with OS 9 Classic ? I guess yes because
When I click to see what it is I get a message
"Sorry, this program is not compatible with OS X or OS X Classic mode. Please reboot your computer into Mac OS 9 to run this software."
6) Will that solve the problem ? But if I reboot using OS 9 (the disk) wouldn't that jeopardize Tiger ? And a need to re-instal Tiger ? Maybe it won't erase it (or will it ?) but I will have to work (erggh!) on re-doing stuff ? That is why I want to install OS 9 on the external drive.
7) I'm thinking of installing OS 904 (from the disk that came with the computer 5 years ago) on the external drive (and then I will upgrade to 9.2.2 ) so I will have the real OS 9, the one I like, the one I'm used to (Not the pale Classic) and which I prefer to Tiger.
Is that a good idea ?
I will have Tiger on my internal HD and I will have OS on the external. Then I can forget about Classic which is confusing ; It is not OS 9 and it is not OS X it's something in between. (I will not bother to erase Classic or reinstall OS X alone or anything like that it's there, it will stay there but I will not use it.)
Although I will use Tiger 90% of the time.
I feel guilty for being so long.
But reading is good

Buslink External Drive 300 GB Firewire Problem

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