FireWire Drive Permissions

Hello and thanks in advance for the support.
I'm sharing my home computer with my 3 year old daughter and have set up a user account for her.
From her account, I changed the permissions of my firewire drives to NONE so she could not delete any files. I assumed this would affect only her user.
I was wrong, and now when I start up, no fire wire drives appear. No icon is apparent so I can't go back and change the permissions back.
The drives appear in the disk utility but I can't change permissions from there.
How can I change the permissions of my drives back to normal?
Any help much appreciated.
Yes, I've learned the simple finder option for her user is a better approach:)

Let us assume the drive's name is "My Nice Drive" (You will have to substitute whatever name you gave it). Do as follows
connect your drive
Open Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/)
In Terminal type the text in the grey zone (or copy and paste it) and hit return
ls -l /Volumes
You should see a line that reads somehow like
d---rwxr-t 48 root admin 1734 Sep 22 14:34 My Nice Drive
If that line does not appear, post back for more info... If it appears read on
Still in Terminal, type (don't forget to substitute your drive name for "My Nice Drive" and put it inside quotes if it contains spaces like the example) hit enter and give your password when needed
sudo chmod ug+rwx /Volumes/"My Nice Drive"
sudo chmod o+r /Volumes/"My Nice Drive"
Normally your drive should appear on the desktop. If it does not, logout and then back in
In case of doubts, write back...

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I have a couple of external firewire hard drives attached to my mac which contain all my work files.
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20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)
20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Yes, I didn't think it was very good either!
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This is really great because I have all my data and images back which were my biggest concern.
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Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work!
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that did'nt work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try. Hers should be the 10.2.8 Combo update. Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still did'nt get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good!
Good Luck!
Cheers!
DALE

Computer randomly locks up when firewire drives are connected?

Here's what I have:
- 2011 27" iMac i7
- 2011 15" MacBook Pro i7
I recently replaced all of my USB hard drives with Firewire drives, mostly as a speed and simplification measure. Under USB, I had to have a series of hubs which seemed to slow things down pretty dramatically, as well as cause a lot of weird behavior, like randomly ejecting. And, of course, there was the inevitable birds nest of wires. So, since there was no way to add USB ports to the iMac, except for hubs, I decided to move FireWire and daisy chain them.
This was all connected to a dedicated iMac workstation, the MacBook was never connected to the drives.
The drives were added a few days before a complete system overhaul was done. The system had been acting funny. We're little things here and there (finder often had to be relaunched after a restart, wifi was not able to automatically connect, etc.), and the system was starting to lock up on a somewhat regular basis. So, Lion was installed fresh and nothing was restored from Time Machine except for a few applications here and there (nothing system related). Once the system was all freshly installed, the little quirks were gone, but the random locking up was not. And it was getting worse.
So, I did some of the trouble shooting I had done in the past; created a new user, repaired permissions, repaired the disk, etc. It wasn't fixing anything, just getting worse. I finally did an extended Apple Hardware Test and got the error: 4M0T/4/40000003: HDD-1285
I couldn't find anything on the web about it. So I called AppleCare, they didn't know what it was either. So I took the computer into the Apple Store. They eventually got back to me saying the hard drive and the fan had failed and that they were in the process of fixing it.
However, in the mean time, I moved the MacBook Pro over to the workstation where the iMac had been. Low and behold, within a few hours, I was seeing exactly the same symptoms I'd seen on the iMac. If the Firewire drives were plugged in, the computer would randomly lock up, and again, not even necessarily when the drives were reading or writing. It appears to be completely random. Sometimes specific applications will lock up, like Mail, VLC or System Preferences. Force quitting the application has no effect. The window won't disappear, even if I attempt to log out or shut the computer down. The screen will change to the grey background, but the window will never go away. It'll just sit there with the pin wheel forever. The only option at this point is to force the system to shut down with the power button.
This only happens when Firewire is connected.
I've tried swapping out the cable with no luck, the same problem is true. I have five drives daisy chained like this:
WD MyBook 2TB --> WD MyBook 2TB --> WD MyBook 2TB --> LaCie d2 Quadra v3 2TB --> LaCie d2 Quadra v3 2TB
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I have to get this issue resolved. I could switch back to USB, but I'd hate to do that because I spent a substantial amount of money on the drives specifically to avoid using USB
Insight into this would really be appreciated.

I am having the exact same problem. Th eone difference is that on occasion, iTunes downloads my playlists yet not the associated songs in the playlist.

External Firewire Drives Don't Mount.... i need a guru.

Warning!!!!!
i'm going to ramble....
2 much sake .. heh heh
i just got a brand butt spanking new iBook G4 14" 1.42 GHz
Tiger pre-installed.
I ran Software Update. As you can tell by my info, i'm at 10.4.2 now.
In a minute i'll tell ya how i got BACK to 10.4.2 from 10.4.5
When i got my iBook I didn't plug my external firewire drives in until (about 2 days) after my update. So when i did get around to building my iTunes library, well, no luck.
My firewire drives would and do NOT mount!
By the way these particular peripherals are Western Digital firewire
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=694&pcreated=1036793224
and AcomData Combo USB 2.0/Firewire
http://www.acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html
drives.
With a little exploration you'll find (at least i did) that they do not have firmware or driver updates for Mac. ( if you find them i'll give ya praise!)
The AcomData drive mounts with USB but not with firewire. The thing that
creeps me out is that my 3rd Gen firewire enabled iPod mounts right up no prob!
Another thing that ties me in knots is that these drives WILL MOUNT on my iBook12" running 10.3.9, as well as my old 5cH00L iMac DV 10.3.9!!!!
I thought it might be the Update so i did a clean install with the dvd provided by Apple and now i'm back to 10.4.2 but still no luck.
I've tried repairing permissions, starting, restarting, rebooting, plugging, unplugging, Updating, Downgrading, standing on my bloody head, looking all over the dotcom.
i swear i did all this with my peripherals unplugged.
i caught wind that though these companies may not provide updates for Mac, if i were to find out the companies that make the "chipsets?" within these drives that i might have luck.
i can't figure out what kind of "chipsets" (Oxford?) are in these drives or what to do if i knew anyway!
exhale
i still believe i have the best machine on the planet right now but .......
i need a guru.
help.
much obliged,
Clive
 G4 iBooks. iMac DV (graphite). gen 2,3,5 iPods Linux on the Pod too! Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Hi, Clive.
Here is some general troubleshooting advice that may help:
(1) Review the AppleCare Knowledge Base document "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device".
(2) If this problem occurred after installing a recent Mac OS X Update, and you are also unable to mount CDs, DVDs, or disk images perform the steps in this Mac OS X Hints article.
(3) The following additional steps will often help resolve problems with FireWire devices, particularly hard drives:(a) Power-on the FireWire drive before starting up (booting) your Mac.
(b) Reset PRAM and NVRAM.
(c) Reset the PMU or SMU: In the case of your iBook, I believe the article you want is "Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)." You can also check the manual that came with your new iBook.
(d) Try a different FireWire port. James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech, has published FireWire Port Failures in Host Computers and Peripheral Devices, a white paper providing backgroud information and technical analysis concerning the causes of failure for FireWire ports. This may provide additional diagnostic information.Note that some of the information above is from the "FireWire Problems" chapter of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X.
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Firewire drive not functioning properly (goofy icon)

It's been appearing as that off and on since I updated to 10.4.9 (Had been working fine before). Typically I can dismount it, repair permissions and reboot. When I log back in and turn the drive on, it used to show up normal. Now though that doesn't even appear to work.
Normally I wouldn't mind the goofy icon, but the thing of it is is that osx apparently doesn't recognize it as a removable drive. It does not shut the drive down after 30 minutes of being idle nor when I dismount it. The drive just keeps spinning. I'm not worried about the icon, but I am worried about the drive spinning more than it needs to. The other 3 drives there work fine and spin down when idle as normal.
When I was able to repair the permissions and get the drive to appear normally, it also spun down and dismounted properly too.
It is a firewire drive the chain goes mac > incoming > backup > tv. I tried swapping the cable, position on the chain and port on the drive, none of which work.
Any ideas? (I haven't tried formatting it... obviously trying to avoid that)
24" 2.33ghz Intel iMac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Good thinking! Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem
I wonder though, is it safe for me to roll back to 10.4.8 and see what I get? Can I just install the 10.4.8 combo update and then the 10.4.9 if it turns out to be the same?
I'm a recent mac switcher (well, switched in 2003. Just never had a tough problem like this) and in windows rolling back the os is typically a mess :P

I just reinstalled tiger and Now my firewire drives won't mount

Here's the deal:
I just reinstalled Tiger 10.4.2 on my G4 sawtooth and now my firewire ports are gone. When I look at the Firewire bus in System Profiler, I just see the words: "Firewire Bus:" An that's it.
I have seriously searched thes forums and have tried everything Ihave found so far.
I have tried:
1 - Unpluging everyhting, waiting 20 minutes, and rebooting
2 - Resetting PRAM
3 - Resetting Open Firmware
4 - disk utility disk repair on main volume when booted from install DVD (firewire drive does not show up disk Utility)
5 - Repaired permissions
I'm pretty much dead in hte water without my Firewire Drive.
Any Suggestions?
Thanks - Dustin

Which OS? Post indicates 10.4.2 and configuration indicates 10.4.3 and 10.4.4. Try this. Disconnect all FW peripherals, shutdown, restart, reinstall 10.4.4 combo update, restart, launch Disk Utility, repair permissions, restart, open SysProfiler, click on Firewire, and ensure that it shows something like this for all your FW ports:
Unknown Device:
Manufacturer: Unknown
Model: Unknown Device
GUID: 0x0
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
If so, then rehook the FWHD cable and turn the power on. Relaunch SysProfiler and you should be good to go.

Firewire drive not visible on desktop

Firewire drive not visible on desktop
System profiler knows it's there.
Disk Utility indicates that it can be un-mounted (only a generic 'turned down page' for volume icon however), Disk has full Hard Drive logo...
But I cannot access it on this machine, but plug it into another and it's ok...

(only a generic 'turned down page' for volume icon however), Disk has full Hard Drive logo...
You can see that appearance in Disk Utility if the volume permissions are such that the current user has "No Access."
Since it can be accessed normally from another machine, connect it there and do a Get Info from Finder, looking at the Ownership and Permission Details at the bottom. Assuming this is not a startup disk, if any of the permissions is set to "No Access", change it to "Read and Write". Don't click "Apply to enclosed items" however.

Vanishing Firewire drive - anyone know what happened?

The power went out for a moment earlier today, and when it went back on (and I rebooted) my external firewire drive did not mount.
I turned everything off, waited a couple of hours - same thing. I repaired permissions - nothing. Finally, I moved the input into the other firewire port, and the drive mounted and everything works again.
Anyone have any idea what happened here? I'd like to think the machine just got confused somehow and wouldn't mount rather than something nasty happening to the firewire port. Thanks

So have you tested the Firewire port to which the drive was originally connected? Is it OK now? Or is it dead?
You posted a similar story about a "disappearing" firewire drive back on 4 MAY 2006. Is this the same drive? Did you resolve the previous problem? Have you spoken with Tech Support?

FireWire Drive Permissions

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