Firewire 800 front port problem

I'm using an RME Fireface 800 audio interface, which is a Firewire 800 device. When I hook it up to the front FW800 port on my Mac Pro, it is periodically disconnecting while in use (using Logic, Final Cut Pro, etc.). To be clear, I don't mean that the cable is physically disconnecting, but rather that the interface disappears from the operating system while still attached and powered up.
When I use the rear FW800 port I'm not having this problem, at all.
Can anyone think of an explanation other than perhaps my front FW 800 port is screwed up? Has anyone else had this issue?
Thanks...

Hi John,
Yep, exactly the same problem I had with my Mac Pro's front FW800 connection and the FF800. The problem in the end turned out to be because I had my SSL Duende mini plugged into the rear FW400 port. Have you got any other firewire devices plugged in? The FF800 really dislikes sharing a bus with anything else, which is why I went out and bought a PCIe FW400 card and now all my devices have their own bus and all works just as you'd expect. Hope that helps, cheers.

Similar Messages

Trouble installing SIIG Firewire 800 3-port PCIe card

I bought a Siig Firewire 800 3-port PCIe card. I am unable to install it on my G5 Quad 2.5 ghz dual 500 GIG HD PCIe because there isn't a power port to plug into. I called Apple & they said no can do. Siig support said I could plug into my "DVD drive". I rechecked the super drive & confirmed that there is not a forr pin in line power port. I have read postings of other G5 (dual processor) owners using this card. Is my problem unique to the G5 quad or is there a solution? Please help John

Most of the time if a card or something requires power, the vendor should have included a "Y-splitter" with it so that you can run DVD and card.
I thought PCIe would have more than enough, too. I tend to avoid SIIG though, having seen too many issues on various cards. They use to use ACard but seem to be branching out on their own.
There are some other FW800 PCIe. I think www.barefeats.com either did or was going to review a few. And of course OWC would have a list.
Not sure it will help, can't hurt, but I have seen and heard where a drive wouldn't mount but did after reset nvram was done. Something that ATTO recommends when changing PCI cards (like UL5D).
Oh -one thing - does the LaCie show up connected to native FW800 port okay?

Firewire 800 (Front & Back)

Does anyone know if the Firewire 800 ports on the front and back are on the same bus? This is an issue when copying movies from a camera and saving it to an external HDD on the same bus.
On a related question, what is Apple's recommended PCI Firewire of choice and what is the groups choice(s)?
Best!

OK, just to prove the point here are XBench bencmarks of a FW400 drive and a FW800 drive connected to the front ports of my Mac Pro:
FW400 Drive
Results 35.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6 (10A190)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00
Disk Test 35.60
Sequential 59.88
Uncached Write 61.24 37.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 59.56 33.70 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 52.48 15.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.37 34.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 25.33
Uncached Write 8.64 0.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 51.35 16.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 84.34 0.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 91.49 16.98 MB/sec [256K blocks]
FW800 Drive
Results 51.48
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6 (10A190)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type ST325082 4AS P
Disk Test 51.48
Sequential 90.18
Uncached Write 97.23 59.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 101.94 57.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 63.94 18.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 115.99 58.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 36.02
Uncached Write 12.34 1.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 93.93 30.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 89.15 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.15 22.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
I believe it's quite clear that the FW400 drive has no effect on the FW800 drive.

FireWire 800 Daisy Chain Problem

Hello everyone, I have three firewire drives. Two 2TB 3.5" drives and one 2.5" 1TB drive. All three are connected to my MacBook Pro 13" via the one firewire port in a daisy chain. I usually always have the 3.5" disk connected. When I add the portable drive to the daisy chain, it crashes the desktop drive, and I get the "do not disconnect drives without ejecting" message. Is this normal? I am thinking of purchasing the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter, only to avoid the crashes of the other drives in the Daisy chain.
My Mac is an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro i5 2.3GHz with 16GB RAM.
Thank you for your help in advance

Sorry for my late answer.
The disc has 2 FW800 and 1 USB2.
If you buy a TB to FW800 you should give to the disc more power from the TB port.
If you connect the disc with USB you could use a special cable with 2 plugs on one side and one smal USB plug on the other. This cable is designed to give to one disc the pover grom 2 USB ports but one of the 2 can also be connected to an USB power supply, so ytou will give to the disc more power.... of copurse with USB you have a lower speed.
If you have Thunderbolt you should try to use TB discs. I know they are expensive but there is a trick which I like to use... have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aa3BXmQVpc

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 external drive problems

I recently upgraded from a MacBook Pro 17" early 2011 to a MacBook Pro Retina 15" (early 2013). I have a Drobo and two Seagate 4TB external drives, all connected via Firewire 800. So, I added a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter and, it seemed, life was good.
I keep my large iTunes Movie and TV show collection on the Drobo. Since transitioning to the new MacBook, I have had a number of issue with watching movies on my Apple TV 3. Randomly, and periodically, the movie appears to be corrupted - the audio track skips/loops and the image is horrible macroblocked, as if the file is damaged. When I check the movies on the Drobo, opening it with Quicktime on the MBP, it plays just fine at the same spot it appeared damaged on the Apple TV 3.
A second symptom is this: I can no longer re-encode video with Handbrake with the source and target files on the Drobo - it gets some portion of the way through and it just stops, leaving the video partially encoded; again, at random locations/offsets into the video and not the same spot twice.
My initial thought is that connection to the Drobo is dropping out and coming back, on its own, but long enough to cause the above problems.
Is anyone else seeing this issue or something related when using the Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter with large drives?
Thanks, in advance.

Update: I exchanged the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and the issue persists. I have a Drobo that I used with my previous system, a PowerMac G5, and never had any issues like this.
It does not matter what software I use. But at some point video playback will suddenly become garbled. If I start the video from the beginning, sometimes the garbled video will start sooner but never later. A restart temporarily resolves the issue. If I copy the file to the local hard drive the video will play back garbled. This is indeed a very strange issue. The issue behaves like a bandwidth bottleneck.
I was having this issue prior to upgrading to Mavericks.
Fred K
iMac (Late 2012), 3.4 GHz i7, GTX 680MX, Fusion Drive, 24 GB RAM, Drobo (Firewire via Thunderbolt)

Firewire 800 & 400 ports

HI,
I have an iMac 24" which has two Firewire ports in the rear (and 800 & a 400).
I have an external LaCie 250gb drive connected to the 400 port. I also have a Panasonic miniDV camera which successfully connects via this port, however at the expense of unplugging the LaCie.
I wish to use both at the smae time via FCE.
Wikipedia seems to suggest that the 800 format is backwards compatible with 400.
So my question is, will my LaCie drive & Panasonic camcorder operate through the 800 port using the correct cable (assuming these come with the 4 pin end for the camcorder).
Thanks
Eric
macbook Mac OS X (10.4.8) white & shiny & brandnew

Hi Eric,
Ian is correct.
I have a MBP w/1 FW 400 port and 1 FW 800 port, and I use a 400->800 converter.
I think the converter was my first purchase after I got the MBP. I couldn't find info at the time if there was any advantage to use the camera or HD with either port, so I figured a converter would give me max flexibility to check it out for myself.
My experience now is that it doesn't make any difference. That matches what I've read that if two or more FW devices plugged into the Mac, the data flows at the speed of the slowest device; it doesn't make any difference which port it's connected to.
To do it again, I would just buy a cable with the 800 plug on one end, and a 400 plug (either 4-pin or 6-pin) on the other end. Reason is the converter is just one more thing to keep track of, and, because it's about 1.5 inches long, I think it puts a bit more strain on the Mac's 800 port.
MBP 17" w/max memory; and a G4 that's considering retirement Mac OS X (10.4.8) FCS, CS2 pkg

Leopard -Firewire -camcorder- G-5 PROBLEMS

This is rather a lengthy post so get a cup of coffee & pull up a chair.
I have a year old G-5 Tower with dual core processors 2 gigs of ram & 2- 250 hard drives ordered from Apple.
It all started after I loaded Leopard, everything was fine till I tried to use I Movie HD 6.0.3 with a Camcorder. A Cannon ZR 850 camcorder I bought new last summer.
When I plugged in my Camcorder to Firewire 400 front port, it could not read the camcorder. Tried rear port same thing. Then my two external 400 & 800 drives would unmount when I plugged in the camera.
I then plugged in the camera without I Movie HD, went to the system profiler and clicked on firewire devices and got a red error message saying no fire wire detected!
I tried several times to get the camera to read, It actually read once, but then after that my firewire ports would not read ANY FIR WIRE 800/400 Device of any kind. It would read the drives connected USB!
Called Apple they said reinstall leopard with an archived install. Did that, still nothing.
Called a tech in and he tried to boot from an external drive and would not read on restart with option, in profiler anywhere. Ran tech disc aid and said again error no firewire devices.
called Apple back and they said I needed a new logic board, as the reinstall of Leopard would have fixed it if it was a software issue.
Under warranty they replaced the logic board and front Firewire port module.
After that it still wont read any drives! no firewire detection!
The tech suggests re-installing Tiger (archived install) as he thinks it's a Leopard issue.
Re installed original Tiger OS 10, as an archived install- Everything works, reads all fire wire devices including camcorders. Everything seems to work fine, but will not access old Leopard Users/ files-
I need to use all my previous User files so I had to tried a clean install of Leopard on G-5
DID CLEAN INSTALL OF LEOPARD on G-5 & did all updates– Now Reads fire wire 800 & 400 drives, both front & back ports, but still not a camcorder- When camcorder plugged in, other drives dismount- system profiler says- error no fire wire devices located, unplug camcorder, run profiler again and the drives re-mount and show up in profiler with no error message.
Also in profiler shows a unknown firewire device on front port with nothing plugged in firewire ports?
Tried Panasonic 3CCD camcorder on G-5 computer - could not read
Used a backup Drive, loading Leopard only, without any updates to bypass Users/G-5 Hard drive, to boot up, from the G-5 FIRE WIRE 400 port.
Tried camera- would not read again.
I Movie HD can't find any camera connected and freezes up. Wont force quite, need to restart.
Thought I would try I life 08 on the external drive to see if it could help
Loaded I Life 08 on boot up backup test drive
I movie 08 crashes and will not open- error message reads
Termination App due to uncaught Exception
Creating more than one application
Performed all updates on external drive for both Leopard & I life 08-
I Movie 08 then recognized Panasonic camera, but program freezes up when trying to download any clips. Force quit will not work , need to restart computer. Tried Camera again, reads Panasonic, then tried a Cannon ZR850 Camcorder- wont recognize it. Tried Panasonic and now I Movie 08 & computer will not recognize either camcorders, Still recognizes & mounts external drives both 400 & 800 firewire ports
Tried HD I Movie but the program froze up and force quit would not work. On restart of back up drive, computer froze up twice during restart and needed to be manually re-started during start up, giving the error message-
Panic Dart Entry Exception Hyper Transport
Kernel error Mac OS Version Not set
Sent ACCD file (Capture Data application) to Apple tech- will call after reviewing
Apple has no clue yet as to what is going on. They are looking at it from the file I sent
Sorry for the lengthy post

No help ... sorry. But I have a Dual 2.3 GHz G5 with Leopard that won't find either of my dv cameras either (both iMovie 6 and FCE 4). I get the same red firewire warning but so far no other problems.
I am going to try in on a couple of Tiger machines later...

LaCie 500GB External Firewire 800 causes crash every time its plugged in???

My LaCie 500GB Firewire External hard drive causes the computer to freeze every time I plug it in.
I just switched back to Mac from Win XP, where the LaCie was used for almost a year without a single problem. Supposedly, since it is formatted for XP use, it can simply be plugged in to my G5 (dual 2.3, 4BG RAM) and work just fine.
I've upgraded to 10.4.4 and still have issues. I've read this is a 'kernal panic' issue, etc.
What is the solution? I can't even plug it in and reformat it - as soon as it's plugged in the Mac collapses; the screen goes 'grey tinted' and an error message appears telling me to hold down the restart button and restart the computer. If I leave the drive plugged in, as soon as I've signed in on the restart, it crashes/freezes/collapses again, same error (i.e. it's circular).
There seems to be no solution. Any help MUCH appreciated!
Thanks,
Sarge

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
First find out if this is a Firewire 800 or 400 problem. Try connecting a Firewire 400 cable to the drive if it supports it. If it only has Firewire 800 ports, you may want to get a Firewire 400 drive to experiment to see if that's all the problem is.
After a forced reboot, it is also always wise to repair the directory if you are backed up:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
If it detects issues on your source drive that it can't repair, and you are backed up, then I would use Alsoft Disk Warrior.
If it detects no issues, then the problem probably resides in either the cable or the drive you are connecting to. Try a little process of elimination.

Will a Firewire 800 hard drive work on my MacBook with Firewire 400?

Hi, I have a MacBook I bought in 2008. The FireWire specs say " Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec"
I am considering a new external hard drive (the Iomega MiniMax) and want to use Firewire for this one. The specs for the hard drive say: "The MiniMax includes 2 fast FireWire 800 interfaces, a USB 2.0 hub, plus a FireWire 400 to 800 cable."
Will this FireWire 400 to 800 cable allow me to plug my FireWire 400 laptop port to this FireWire 800 harddrive port? It sounds like it will but I wanted a sanity check before I order it.
Thanks.

Yes, that should work just fine.
Matt

Daisy-chaining firewire 400 and firewire 800?

I would like to daisy-chain two Western Digital MyBook Pros to a Macbook:
- FW 400 from Macbook to first drive
- FW 800 between the drives
Would this work or not? I have one of those, they have 2 x FW 800, 1 x FW 400, 1 x USB at back.
(If not, I'll buy a 'Premium' which has 2 x FW 400, and 1 x USB..)

JoeyR wrote:
I'm not sure if the hardware in the first drive, that's connected by firewire 400 is "smart" enough to jump the data over to the FW800 connectors for daisy chaining.
Just pulled this from the WD site. I would say this indicates it would work. You won't get more speed but they should work daisy chained. This indicates the drive is smart enough to do this.
+Question: Will Western Digital FireWire 400 (1394a) external hard drives work connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port?+
+Answer: The FireWire 800 Specification (1394b) states that FireWire 400 devices will work while connected to a FireWire 800 (1394b) port. The FireWire 400 cable (4-6 pin or 6-6 pin) will not connect to a FireWire 800 port (9 pin) therefore you will need to connect the hard drive using a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable (1394a to 1394b cable). These cables are available at most computer stores.+

DVCPro HD transfer through FireWire 800

Hi there,
I'm planning on connecting an external DVCProHD tape deck to capture footage using Final Cut Pro through the 800 port, then chaining a LaCie drive via an adapter to catpure the footage on to this external drive. So essentially, a FireWire 800 2-port adapter plugged into the single 800 connection in the MBP.
Do any of you know what impact this amount of data will have on the drive? I'm obviously keen to avoid frame drop-out and want to maximise the speed of the drive, although I'm wary of connecting both inputs via the 800 adapter through the single port.
Thanks, Mark

Hi Robert,
Thank you for your response.
I probably wasn't clear enough sorry! I am hoping to hook in a FireWire 800 adapter, maybe something like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Port-FireWire-800-Repeater-Hub/dp/B000OZ68KW/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1279624822&sr=1-1
Into this, I will connect both the DVCPro HD deck and the external LaCie drive. My main concern is running both these devices through the adapter, as it's essentially using one 800 port for both data streams.
Is this something that is feasible? Am I right in saying that this will data stream will be quicker than hooking the drive in via USB?
Thanks,
Mark

Confused! LaCie FireWire 800 PC Card

Greetings!
I purchased an Iomega 250 GB external hard drive. Because my notebook doesn't have an 800 Mbps port I also purchased a LaCie FireWire 800 PC card. I was aleady to hook all of this up today, when I discovered that the LaCie card has 2 FireWire 800 bilingual ports compatible with FireWire 400/1394a products. It also has 1 FireWire 400 6-pin port. The Iomega ext. hard drive has 2 FireWire 800 (1394b) ports and 1 FireWire 400 port and a USB 2.0 port.
Does a "bilingual" port on the LaCie mean that both a 1394a and a 1394b cable will work in the same port? If not, then how do you get the LaCie FireWire 800 PC card to work at 800Mbps?
Thank you in advance!!!
tenntooter (back again after a long time out of town.)

The information provided was helpful. I purchased the iomega external hard drive and an Lacie card, but I haven't been able to get these working properly. I only worked on this for a short time though, and I now have time to work on this some more. I'm sure that I've overlooked something. I'll get it to work I'm certain.
Thank you!

Firewire 800 PIC ards

After much searching I Receieved this message from LaCie
"Thank you for contacting LaCie Technical Support. This device was
designed for PCI-X slots. It will work with a regular PCI slot, but this
does not seem to affect you."
he device being Laci Firewire 800 3 port PCI card.
I hope this may help peaple with simillar apprehensions as mine
Power Mac Dual 2.5 Mac OS X (10.4) PCI-X expansion slots

Nice note for everyone's benefit.
My LaCie FW800 PCI card is working beautifully in my G5...has since day one.

Adding Firewire 800 PCI Express Card to G5

I wanted to add a Siig Firewire 800 3-Port PCI-express card to my G5. One of the requirements was connecting a 4 pin power y cord to an available 4 pin power connector for reliable power output. I can't locate an available 4 pin power connector in my G5. Is there one available? Where is it? Which slot is best for the installation?

#1 zapping PRAM/NVRAM has to be from a cold start, and done thru 2 reboots (don't need to go crAZy with 3-5).
#2 Open Firmware is thorough, efficient, and can be done on any type of startup.
#3 "reset-nvram" - as I mentioned above, should be first step in hardware troubleshooting or anytime after changing hardware and getting a kernel panic on first restart.
(whoops)

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 front port problem

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