Firewire 800 disk on my G4?

Through a series of misfortunes, I've ended up with a Firewire 800 disk drive. My G4 Powerbook only has a single Firewire 400 port. Is it possible to use my new disk with the Powerbook somehow?
I've seen a cable that has a Firewire 400 connector on one end and a Firewire 800 connector on the other. Is THAT a possibility?
I don't care about the added speed or features that Firewire 800 offers. I'd just like to use the drive.
Gary

I've seen a cable that has a Firewire 400 connector on one end and a Firewire 800 connector on the other. Is THAT a possibility?
Yes.
(52869)

Similar Messages

External firewire 800 disk: Raid or non Raid?

Hi all,
I am currently about to by a new external firwire 800 hard disk to replace my firewire 400 200GB Maxtor. I mainly use this disk for timemachine backups and all my final cut express scratch area and work area. I am working with AVCHD video and looking to expand the storage and speed of this disk. I have narrowed my options down to two. They are both high quality options. I will be buying the enclosure and hard disks seperatly to ensure I get a good enclosure and good quality hard disk drive.
Enclosure options:
1. http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/pleiades/pd_scombo.
Pleiades Super S-Combo, FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0, and eSATA interfaces. This enclosure uses Oxford 934DSb or Oxford 924DSb chipset. This is a single drive enclosure and non Raid. I would put a 1TB disk in this enclosure.
2. http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hddmulti/taurus/pdd_raid2
Taurus Raid II enclosure. FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0 and USB 1.0 interfaces. This enclosure uses Oxford 934DSb or Oxford 924DSb chipset. This is a dual drive enclosure and Raid 0 and 1. I would put a two 500GB disks in this enclosure. But will use with mirroring such that a copy of data will reside on each disk. Whilst this will reduce the overal capacity to 500GB I will have the extra redundancy should a drive fail. From which I can just replace the failed drive.
I am aware that using Raid mirroring will slow down the data transfer to the disk enclosure but I think this should be ok for AVCHD editing for my purposes. Cost wise there is not much difference between the two options. In both options I will go for either Seagate Baracuda drive or Samsung Spinpoint.
Would like to know what your thoughts are?
Which options would you go for?
Message was edited by: Just-Karma

Hi all,
Ok so I decided to not go done the raid mirriring route. Instead I finally made a decision and boughts a Macpower FW800 enclousre which uses the Oxford 934 chipset and a Samsung HD103UJ 1TB Serial ATA 3.0 Gbps
buffer memory32 MB hard disk.
The enclosure is excellent quality and the disk access is very quick via FW800. The disk itself is very quiet and also great for Final Cut with my HD editing. Only noise the disk makes is upon power up other than that it is very quiet.
I have partitioned th disk into two 500GB's. One partition is used for time machine backups and the other is the Final Cut scratch space.
I plan to buy another enclosure and 1TB disk and parition into two 500GB's also. I plan to use one of the 500GB's for Super Duper clone of iMac system hard disk and the second for cloning/backing up the scratch Final Cut space. This second disk and enclosure will be my offline backup system and will not be powered all the time.
Details of the elcousre and hard disk are provided below. I purchased them in the UK. Enclosure was purchased from www.span.com and hard disk from www.ebuyer.com. Whilst span can sell disks in the enclosure you can save yourself a little money and buy seperatly from ebuyer and install yourself.
Enclosure:
http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/pleiades/pd_scombo
Hard disk:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?group=72&type=61&subt ype=63&model_cd=249&tab=fea

External firewire 800 Iomega HD too slow since Lion Upgrade

Hi all,
Since my upgrade to OSX Lion im having the issue that my external Iomega HD is too slow to even playback my song (only audio files, About 9 Tracks of them). I removed all 3rd party plugins but the issue still occurs.
Is anyone experiencing the same issue? Any ideas on how to resolve it?
System:
iMac Middle of 2010
4GB 1333 Mhz DDR 3 Ram
External Harddrive is a iomega 1TB firewire 800 disk.
With Snow leopard it worked well... Maybe i was too fast with updating this time...
Cheers

Sorry little addition:
It s about an external fw hd working with Logic- not in general slow performance.

I currently have a MAC Mini, which has 1 Firewire 800 port. I have a 1TB external hard disk that runs at Firewire 400. Can I insert another external hard drive that runs at Firewire 800?

Here's the deal. Currently running SL 10.6.8 on a MAC Mini. Planning for eventual upgrade to ML. Have a 1TB external hard drive partitioned into two volumes, one volume for Time Machine and one volume for SL which I periodically update using Superduper. Thus I always have a point-in-time bootable backup on the external hard drive.
The MAC Mini supports Firewire 800. However, booting from my current external hard disk is pretty slow, since it only supports Firewire 400. I am considering buying an Iomega MiniMax which supports Firewire 800. Then, I would use the MiniMax as my bootable backup volume, and relegate the older hard drive to Time Machine.
So, question #1 is, can I daisychain the new MiniMax between the MAC Mini and my existing external hard drive? My expectation is that the new Mini Max would run using Firewire 800 and that the existing hard drive would run at Firewire 400 speed as it does today. If it doesn't (e.g., daisychaining in the Firewire 400 external disk with the MiniMax Firewire 800 external disk ends up running the whole leg at 400), my resolution will be to run the existing hard disk off an available USB port and have just the MiniMax running at Firewire 800.
Why am I going to all this trouble? That's question #2. I don't trust upgrades; they always break something. When I upgraded from 10.5.x to 10.6.x, the web directories got renamed, and all of my web apps 403'd until I figured out what happened. Plus, I have accounts for other family members, and in order to ensure their ability to use the computer during my upgrade process, I need to have the ability to fall-back quickly to a known-stable version of OSX. So what I'm trying to do is insulate myself from problems by partitioning the MiniMax into two volumes, taking a Superduper image of my current installation on the Mac Mini to MiniMax external drive volume 1, then upgrading to ML on the MAC Mini, and take a SuperDuper image of that to MiniMax external drive volume 2. Then, if the upgrade results in problems I can't resolve immediately, I can simply reimage the MAC Mini from MiniMax volume 1. BUT ...
... I've read that the ML installation creates a "service and support" partition that is different than the startup disk. I'm concerned that I won't be able to reimage the hard disk in the MAC Mini once I upgrade it to ML because of the partitioning changes it introduces on the startup disk. Theoretically, I +should+ be able to use the disk utility on my SL system to repartition the disk in the MAC Mini prior to reimaging it from my backup, but I'm considering the possibility that the new partition may be of a type that the SL disk utility cannot identify, and might therefore be unable to delete or even detect. So I'm hoping someone else has been down this road and can advise me. Even at Firewire 800 speeds, booting from an external disk is still going to be slow, so I want to be able to restore my SL image to the MAC Mini hard disk.
A little background on me. I work for a major disaster recovery provider. I used to have a Mac PRO G5, which I got used, and the first thing I did with it was install a second hard disk, SuperDupe an image from the first disk to the second, and made sure I could boot from the second. THEN I started using and customizing the MAC. I really feel vulnerable with the MAC Mini, since it only has the single internal hard drive - sort of like going out in public dressed only in a long T-shirt. So my whole thing is, I ABSOLUTELY MUST BE ABLE TO PUT THINGS BACK THE WAY THEY WERE before I do the migration to ML.
Obsessive-cumpulsive? Yep. Anal? You got it. That's why I'm in the DR business.

You may have overloaded the port, following the instructions below it should reset:
+1. Shut down the computer.+
+2. Disconnect all devices and all other cables, except the keyboard and mouse cable(s).+
+3. Disconnect the computer from the power outlet and wait for 3 to 5 minutes.+
+4. Plug the computer back in and turn it on.+
+5. Reconnect the device(s) (one at a time if there is more than one) and test. Test with each port if you have more than one.+
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US

Firewire 800 keeps ejecting my disk

Thought it was a fluke, but it keeps happening. My LaCie drive keeps disconnecting and I get an error message that it was improperly disconnected. I've tried two different firewire cables. I'm not touching the cord. It just suddenly loses the connection. Is it possible that I have a bad firewire port? I just bought the MacBook today. Should I return it for a replacement?

Hi,
I am encountering a similar eject disk problem. When attempting to clone (with CCC) iMac's internal HD to external firewire 800 connected HD, the cloning stops fairly quickly and Firewire HD is ejected with an error message stating disk has not been properly ejected. The result is that the cloning partition becomes corrupted and can't be repaired by disk utility.
Since I am using a quad interface HD NewerTech Voyager Q ''toaster'' for internal drives, I managed to make a functional clone the iMac HD with usb connection.
But if I attempt to boot with firewire connection the corruption problem is recreated > Backup screwed.
I was wondering if my firewire port could be dead ? I tried multiple times formatting the HD and start the process again but firewire connection and cloning leads to failure at each trial.
Any idea ? (Note: everything in my setup seems up to date)

Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u knocked

I have a Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme + Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u , which I have been using with an emac ( 1ghz power pc 4 , macos 10.5.8 ) for past few years.
A couple of days ago The drive was hit rather hard on side while on and up , the computer hung as the computer was up on a mac os 10.5.8 partition on this drive . Computer was rebooted and comes up on internal drive, lacie drive just made beep and click sounds ( i am actually deaf and this was what I was told ) every couple of seconds. Attempt was made to boot on CD to use latest available disk utility ( Macos 10.5). Lacie still does not show up. 15-20 minutes into this, I powered lacie down. This is when I started noticing a burned circuitry smell.I powered lacie down and disconnected it at this point.
Most Folks just suggest data recovery which can cost as much as $3000 or more which I really don't have .
I figured I open and examine the internalsof drive . I did so. The circuitry smells
like burned near the point where power comes in and the death diode is located, otherwise circuitry looks fine. One of the two drives , when taken out did not have a burnt smell and the other had a burnt smell towards the center but it dissipated in about an hour after it was taken out. There also was one loose screw inside drives chasing which ended up being one of the 4 screws that holds the disk drive's circuitry. I dont know but I don't think this could have shorted anything out but even though slim it is possible that such happened.
While I have Three DC voltmeters, I could not find the one that would accurately measure the voltage on the external power suppy to see if the output voltage on the 4 pins is accurate . I am still looking for the one meter that can do this.
I figured if I can find the exact drive in like new condition and swap the disks, if the disks are not damaged and if the culprit is actually burnt circuitry, then the drives should come up as they were as though nothing had happened.
I talked to a friend that suggested getting other cases and swapping disks but I guess that is not possible because the two disks are raided? ( raid 0 ) . I am also not even sure if the drives are raided the way they were put into use ( only through firewire 400) as the documentation suggests that only firewire 800 denotes use of built in raid0 but I am not sure. So again assumption is made that the drives are raided .
I contacted dealership of the drive which again suggest that Unfortunately it is not possible to obtain another drive like this one because it has been obsolete and out of manufacture for a long time. It is also a risky idea because if the problem is not with the drive enclosure hardware, there is a genuine risk of making the recovery process more difficult, or impossible.
This though does not follow logically. I have been able to see the exact drive with the same sku number offered as new or excellent condition more than 1/2 dozen times in the past few weeks so I guess drive can be acquired and tested before any such swap. If drives are not the culprit , I figure after a swap with a new enclosure and everything other than drives, the thing should not even be noticed and all should work as they did before the accident. If the drives are the cause , then the thing has been on 1/2 hour after the accident so the swap should not do any more damage or cause future recovery attempts any more issues than already might be there.
Any sound advice is greatly appreciated.

I tried the two good disks in the main chasis with new cables and power supply , and I could not get them to come on or show.
I put the good disks back in the second chasis with new cable and power suppy and it again shows ( prompts telling you that it sees a readable MAc OS disk and asks if you want to Initialize it ).
I put the first set together again with new cable and power supply and the light does not come on anymore . being hearing impaired , i put my head on the drive and hear this clicking sound every one or two seconds. The fan operates . The drive does not show when rebooting and it does not show on the disk utility. The drive does not smoke but smell of burned mica ( circuitry ) is still in my throat after a couple of hours.
From what I have learned the possibility exists that each drive is calibrated and the calibration is added to the control board , So like chances are that even if the two original drives are good and connected properly and everything else is good, they might and probably just wont work with a control board of another even exact drive. There are three tables / charts marked on each drive and specific locations marked on each chart which differ between drives . These I think are from calibrating the drives.
So I guess its data recovery...
Lacie Data Recovery wants $600 ( $300 x 2 drives ) if they recover data without need for a clean room , $3000 ( $1500 x 2 drives ) if there is need for clean room. If they don't recover , you dont pay , if they recover and you do not want to pay, then they just send you the damaged disk ( or perhaps keep it , or smash it then return it to you) .
There are many other data recovery services so I guess a few days to sift through them but I guess the maker reference should be the best way ( I think its actually a sub-company that lacie forwards data recovery to.
Too many factors are involved. One that will such be a secure thing to do or 6 months later you find out that someone opened 10 accounts under your name , or emptied your bank account ( thats actually not a problem because there is almost never any money in my bank account) . So security is a concern. I have encountered individuals that make it their business stealing peoples stuff from their disks. Once I even had one Tech guy which was refered to solve a problem I had , copying disks contents right in front of me for absolutely no reason. So I ask him what are you doing, and he says , I am copying everything just to make sure they are safe ( : ) )
Then there is the dalai lama , everything happens for a reason scenario. In which case I guess I have to consider the whole thing as Good Omen. and just forget about it and go on with my life ( maybe I go work in Mc Donalds : ) )
The bottom line is I can't believe that I am such an idiot not to have a proper backup system in place .
Thank you for the links, I will check them out.

FireWire 800 / Can't eject disk

First I was having issues with my external hard drive arbitrarily disconnecting and giving me the message that it was improperly disconnected. (When I hadn't touched it.) I read here on the forums and disconnected everything to reset the fuse. Waited 10 minutes and rebooted, then connected. It seemed to work, but now I cannot properly eject it. I get a message that it wasn't ejected "because one or more programs may be using it." But I'm not using it. What gives? Do I force eject it?

I just had the disconnect problem again. Any idea what's causing it? I have two firewire 800 cables, and I've tried them both...just in case one had a kink or a short in it. I just connected the drive, it came up, and I got the message asking if I wanted to back up to the disk using Time Machine. I said "decide later," and it suddenly disconnected and gave me an error message that the disk was improperly disconnected.

IMac G4/800 in FireWire Target Disk Mode shuts down, hard drive hopeless?

I have found myself in possession of a 12 year-old iMac G4/800. The machine looks stock and was nice and full of dust when I took it apart, so I'm going to assume nothing has been upgraded on it. The person who the computer belongs to has had issues booting the machine and when it does boot, the machine will throw up the "grey screen of death" after a few seconds, I suspect when the hard drive starts to get hit.
I've attempted to start the machine in FireWire Target Disk Mode and the machine will mount on my 2011 MacBook Pro, however once I begin to copy files the machine will abruptly shut off.
I have also attempted to remove the hard drive from the machine and connect it to my MacBook Pro via an OWC Drive Adapter, but it won't mount from the adapter in Disk Utility, Terminal or Disk Warrior. I've connected other (non-IDE) drives with the adapter before, but no luck with this one. Perhaps the IDE connector is faulty on the adapter?
I may look for another drive adapter and I've made an Apple Genius app't for later this afternoon, but I'm curious if anyone has any further advice. Is it more likely that it's a motherboard issue that's causing the machine to shut of in FTDM or a hard drive issue? In any case, this may be one for the Data Rescue Experts. I imagine I may get a few looks at the Apple store with such an old machine.

Another contributory issue to booting in an older PPC Mac is the PRAM battery.
If the battery is more than four years old, it would likely be a partial cause of odd
startup issues and some settings that are required for the computer to start &
run correctly would not be available. The battery is a 3.6V. 1/2AA Lithium cell.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAA36VPRAM/
A few companies such as macsales.com show them on their web site... sounds
like your old iMac G4 800MHz could use one. Note there are takeapart instruction
pages online such as one from XLR8Yourmac from years ago. The 800MHz is
similar to the later models with faster G4 processors of the same appearance.
The hard drive type utilized is the older ATA/IDE or PATA; uses older formatting.
Tools, thermal paste, and some other tedious details need to be attended to...
•iMac G4 Take-apart for Drive and RAM upgrades:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/imac_g4/imacg4_takeapart.html
And another fairly good page w/ larger images:
•Mr Totes' iMac G4 -- taken apart:
http://www.mrtotes.co.uk/page1/page1.html
Sometimes the power supplies and other components can be the cause of issues
in these iMac G4 models, you can test the power output by using the test ports
that are located in the same compartment as the upgrade RAM slot & wi-fi card.
You may be able to find a copy of an original Apple service manual for that iMac.
Those are harder to get, and used to be available to Apple trained technicians.
Good luck & happy computing!

External Firewire 800 hard disk kills internet connection

Hi,
I am having the following problem:
1. Plug Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB drive into Macbook Pro via Firewire 800
2. Internet connection dies. By "dies", I mean I disconnect from the wifi network. The degree of death varies from complete lack of visibility of the wifi network, to visibility but cannot connect ("connection timeout" when entering the password (which I should not have to enter anyway, as it's cached in my keychain)), to connection but no IP address given by the router via DHCP, to sometimes getting an IP but being unable to ping any other IP address on the network apart from my own.
3. Ejecting then disconnecting the drive physically, fixes the problem.
4. Connecting the drive via USB instead of FW800, does not reproduce the problem.
5. Connecting any my 500GB Lacie rugged drive via FW800 does not produce the problem.
Like the guy in this discussion (http://discussions.apple.com/message/15615649#15615649), this is only happening with my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB drive and only when I connect it via Firewire800. With any other drive, OR if I connect the Seagate via USB, all is OK. Note that I'm re-posting this discussion because that other guy accidentally marked the problem as "fixed", but it was never solved.

When the firewire card is not connected, I get the following screen in system profiler:
FireWire Bus: powerbook's built-in FireWire bus
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
OXFORD IDE Device 1:
Manufacturer: OWC Mercury Elite Pro AL
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0x1D2020092025F
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
OXFORD IDE Device 1 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x102
Product Revision Level: 3.AA
Sub-units:
OXFORD IDE Device 1 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 232.89 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
250 Gb:
Capacity: 232.76 GB
Available: 203 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
Mount Point: /Volumes/250 Gb
Notice that the connection speed of the hard disk is 400Mb/s in the first, and 800Mb/s in the second.
The reason I'm fussing about this is because I'm using the hard drive with Pro tools, which officially supports Firewire 800 hard disks with the Oxford 912 chipset (which is what this one's got). And I've had a lot of problems bouncing to disk, even with just a stereo mix (96KHz 24 bit) Where Pro Tools (M-Powered) says that it can't read data from the hard disk fast enough!
I just want the hard disk to run at 800Mb/s and the audio interface to run at 400. Am I asking too much?
Someone must know how to do it.
Thanks for your help!

Disk on firewire 800 not recognised until disk on firewire 400 powered up? Any solutions?

I have a Seagate Freeagent connected to firewire 800 and a Maxwell Onetouch connected to the firewire 400. The Seagate is not recognised until I power up the Maxwell but if I power up the Maxwell during before the power up of the seagate the Seagate again is not recognised. The Seagate is the designated Time Machine disk. Also when sleeping (but not always) the Seagate is dropped and I get a "dosk not demounted " message on waking. Any solutions known to these mounting problems with the firewire connections? Thank you.

I am answering my own problem. Install Lion! Problem has been solved. I always thought it was an OS problem. Good news.

Does Target Disk Mode work between FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports?

Can I mount one as an external volume for the other Mac and vice versa? The one with FireWire 400 port runs on OS X 10.5, and FireWire 800 one has OS X 10.6 installed. If it works, I am thinking of buying an 800-400 adapter.

Can I mount one as an external volume for the other Mac and vice versa?
Yes.
(47103)

Can I power an external ST91000640NS using FireWire 800?

Hi,
I am going to buy a new 17" MacBook Pro soon and I've been doing research on how to customize it when I get it. I want to install my own SLC SSD as the internal drive because it's cheaper and has a longer life expectancy. Because of the limited capacity of SSDs these days, I am also going to be getting an external HDD to keep all my data that would not benefit greatly from SSD speeds, as well as for backups of everything on the internal SSD.
I wanted this external HDD to meet three criteria:
1TB capacity
7200rpm speed
2.5" size, so that I can use it without needing to plug it into a power socket
There aren't many options to choose from that meet those requirements. In fact, I only found one candidate, the “Seagate Constellation.2”. It looks like a good set of specs and Seagate is a reputable hard disk maker I've read, so I'm just about ready to buy one. My only point of concern is whether it can be powered and operated solely over FireWire, or if I would have to use a power adapter.
So my question is, can the 17" MBP (Late 2011) supply enough watts/volts/amps over FireWire 800 in order to power this Seagate disk? (Sorry for rambling too much)
I have looked at the spec sheet and read up on IEEE 1394, i.e. FireWire, and I wasn't able to come up with a definitive answer, and I'm not even confident about how these electronics operate (specifically if the watt/volt/ampere requirements have to be met precisely or if they can go over or under a little, or a lot). I hope someone helps me out here.
Now here are the relevant specs, from the ST91000640NS product page:
12V start max current
0.85A
5V start max current
0.51A
Average idle power
2.95W
Average operating power
5.43W
According to Wikipedia's article on IEEE 1394, FireWire can supply a maximum of 45W and 30V.
Apple's FireWire Ports Specifications article says:
Input voltage range
8 to 33 V
Input power
0.3 W
Output voltage range
12 V to 30 V (varies by product)
Output power
minimum of 7 W per port
The disk will be put in an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini enclosure, by the way. (Though I don't think that matters.)

Kappy may be right — he most often is. But the Constellation is an enterprise drive designed for continuous use in servers, not for bus-powered use as an external drive. Among currently-available 1TB notebook drives, the kind that are normally used in bus-powered portable external enclosures, there are none that run at 7200 RPM, so I assume that's why you've settled on the Constellation. My concern about your plan is twofold: first, the drive is 15mm high. Will it fit in the enclosure you've selected? Ask OWC. And second, because the Constellation is normally run on AC power without any amperage ceiling that it's likely to exceed, I wonder whether during spinup or heavy usage it will occasionally draw more power than your FireWire bus can supply, causing it to be automatically powered off. I'm not conversant enough with electrical specs to be able to tell whether that's a possibility. Perhaps Kappy is.

New Firewire 800 External Hard Drive and how to use old External USB Drive

Hi All,
I have a new LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk hard drive 500 GB - FireWire / FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB / eSATA-300 on the way, when it arrives I plan to use it as my Time Machine Backup drive with the FireWire 800 connection. I am currently using a Seagate Free Agent USB 2.0 320 GB external drive as my Time Machine disk. The reason for upgrading is the USB drive is slow slow slow! I am not concerned about the data on my old drive and will just wipe it clean using Disk Utility. What I would like to do is use the old drive to archive iTunes 7.7.1 and Aperture 2.0 music and photographs. Can someone give me an idea how to go about doing this?
Thanks!

Hi, yes that will copy the whole iTunes..including everything in iTunes..BUT, as you add to your iTunes on the Main HD, with the ext HD I think you will have to manually update anything added. Or dragNdrop the whole thing again.. You could also locate you iTunes music Library & just copy that across..With images once again find your iPhoto library & just copy that across..L

Can't boot from clone on external firewire 800 drive

Hello,
I have a 24" mid-2007 iMac 7,1 running Snow Leopard. I recently changed my set up to put a clean install of OS X 10.9.1 on a partition of an external SSD. I also moved the 10.6.8 start up system to a partition on the SSD. My internal iMac hard drive now has no system folder, only my data files. I have additional firewire drives for Time Machine, other data and media drives. Finally, I just bought a pair of 3TB drives that I partitioned into enough partitions to be able to clone both operating systems and all my data files for a rotating pair of offsite backups. All moving/cloning of drives was done with version 3.5.4 (Mavericks-compatible) of Carbon Copy Cloner.
I can boot from my external SSD (either Mavericks or Snow Leopard) fine and all external drives mount correctly in either case. After cloning all the partitions onto the backup drives, I tried to test the clones but I am not able to start up using either the Mavericks or the Snow Leopard clones when the backup external drive is connected via firewire 800. This is true whether I select the clone volumes in the Startup Disk preferences pane or hold down the option key during start up (note that the external drive with the clone partitions does not appear in the list of disk choices with the option key method). I get the "question mark in the folder" sign that the start up system is not being found.
I have changed the order in which the external drives are connected (normally the SSD is first in the chain), including trying when only the backup drive is connected directly to the iMac. I get the same result no matter what.
Curiously, the Mavericks and Snow Leopard boot clones start up via firewire 800 when the external backup drive is connected to my wife's 2009 13" Macbook Pro, indicating that the clones and the enclosure (an OWC Mercury Elite Pro quad interface, newer version with USB3) both support booting. Furthermore, if I connect the backup drive to my iMac using USB, the boot clones both work to start up the iMac.
This all points to an issue with the firewire bus failing to recognize the boot clones somehow during my iMac's start up process. I am rather puzzled about how to fix this.
I can get by booting via USB in an emergency but because my system is old, this is of course USB2 so its slow. If I had to use the clones to recover I'd rather be able to operate and restore at FW800 speeds.
If anyone has any ideas what might be going on, I'd appreciate hearing them.
Thanks in advance.
Greg

Did you ever get this resolved, Greg?

Recording to external hard drives - Firewire 800 problems

Ok so i did post a similar thread on this in the "mac mini" part of the website so im very sorry for double posting but I thought since this problems pertains mostly to recording and specifically recording on garageband, that I would try posting here as well. Heres my deal:
I am a musician working with garageband and I have always been recording to my internal drive until recently. I was unaware until I read some posts here from the good people like you guys, that that is not a good idea to record to your internal drive. So, I got an external firewire 800 drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DGZ05A) and this cable (http://www.amazon.com/2M-Firewire-800-9PIN-Cable/dp/B000XQILWK/ref=pdbxgy_e_imgb). When I received it, I first used disk utility and reformatted it for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Then I proceeded to move a couple sample libraries and my entire "Garageband" folder (with my saved songs in it) to the external. I instantly knew something was wrong. The files were taking forever to get written over. It took about 15 mins for a 5GB folder to be moved over. I was already discouraged. Anyway, I plugged in the USB cable that came with the external (the drive has hook ups for both USB 2 and firewire 400/800) and tried moving the same files and it was MUCH faster. The same 5GB file was moved over in a matter of minutes.
I then tried recording to the drive (using firewire again) and it would hardly even PLAY the song without stopping every couple seconds (too many effects error, and yes ALL the tracks were locked). Tried to record as well and i'd get even less time before garageband would stop the song with the same error. So I disconnected firewire and went USB. Thru USB the song didnt stop once, not on playback OR recording. Then I moved the songs back to my internal and played them (and recorded) with no problem either.
I ran a couple tests on the drive using AJA system test and came back with these results:
Basic test of read/write speed using firewire 800:
write - 14/mb sec
read - 21/mb sec
then, using usb 2.0
write - 18/mb sec
read - 37/mb sec
both these connections seemed to be running slower then they should ..but at least the USB connection would actually let me play a song and record to it without stopping
I manually copied over a 2.04GB file and via firewire 800 connection it took 2 mins and 20 secs. Via the USB 2 connection it was 55 seconds! ..also, while i transfered the files i noticed that the USB transfer was nice and steady with tiny increments of the file being transferred. Firewire, however, was speedy then slow, speedy then slow. Very inconsistant transfer speed throughout the process. kind of choppy
So what gives? I cant figure out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my external HD is bad? Or the cable is bad? Or maybe the firewire port on my mac mini is bad (i've never used it before for anything other than this external drive). Or i'm thinking maybe my processor isnt strong/fast enough to record to the external firewire drive? Im working with a mac mini 120GB internal HD and the 2ghz intel core 2 duo with only 2GB ram (i know thats not ideal for recording and im planning to upgrade at some point, but i have been recording to the internal just fine with the RAM i have now and never had a problem until trying to record to the firewire drive). I was going to go out today and get a new cable and see if that was the cause of it. Anyway sorry for the book-length post! But PLEASE SOMEBODY help me here! ..as i said, im not very computer literate and only just started producing music using computers so please use dummy terms lol ..thanks in advance

Strictly my opinion, and more than happy to be educated with facts and convinced otherwise... but, there are no dangers.
Bottom line is this... does your specific computer setup encounter ANY problems during recording or editing with your chosen software and current workflow? If not, then there is nothing wrong. Simple as that. Further, if you are having problems, then its more than likely dealt with by upgrading RAM amount and internal HDD speed and size. If you have a slightly older machine that is pre FW800, you will find by bench marking your HDD's that an upgraded internal system HDD will significantly outperform any external HDD read/write spec's. Even with FW800, comparing apples with apples, your system HDD will more than likely have better spec's. Please however, do not take my word for this, but try it out for yourself. Make sure you have facts about your own system rather than believing my claims or anyone else's claims. I used Intech's Quickbench http://www.speedtools.com/QuickBench.html to get some facts about my machine.
There will be an argument made that you will be putting strain on your hard drive by recording to the system drive because it not only has to deal with this function but also with other functions related to your audio programs and OS. Apparently you may be working it on the 'hard' side and shorten its life span. Probably technically correct but practically speaking you will more than likely never even notice any such strain. If you are worried about a system HDD crash or death because you are working it too hard then the answer to this is a well planned back up regime. You should have one anyway, regardless of setup.

Firewire 800 disk on my G4?

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