Firewire Drive Randomly Spins Up

I did a quick search and found that people were having issues with their external drives spinning down randomly, however, is anyone having the issue where the drive spins up?
I have a 500GB LaCie D2 connected via Firewire 800 to my Mac Pro. I currently have "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible," as I did in Tiger. I have 5 drives (4 internal, 1 external), and my computer gets rather loud if all drives are running at once. Anyway, after upgrading to Leopard, this external LaCie drive randomly spins up and since I think the drive is slowly giving up the ghost, it doesn't sound pretty.
Is there a way to prevent this spin up from occurring? I am planning on getting another external drive (not LaCie), but I was thinking of using my current external as an AirPort Disk once that works with Time Machine.
Thanks.

William Lloyd wrote:
Drives can spin up for any number of reasons. Often when you get a file->open dialog.
This didn't happen to me when I was using Tiger. The drive would only spin up when I actually double clicked on the desktop icon and actively accessed it. Getting a dialog box in Safari wouldn't cause it to spin up because Safari wasn't accessing anything on that drive.
After installing Leopard, the drive will spin up when I launch Mail, when a save dialog box pops up in Safari, but mostly it happens at random times when I'm not even on the computer.
You know it's easier on a drive to keep it running constantly than to select that it spin down.
The reason I have this specific drive spinning down is because it sounds like metal on a grinding wheel after spinning for a while. It's not a pleasant sound at all. Until I can get a new drive, I need it to not sound like I'm sharpening knives.
Also, I have 5 drives total (4 internal, 1 external), and that amounts for a lot of noise. Is there a way to control which drives spin down and which spin up? That would be extremely helpful.

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Firewire drives random unmount

I have 2 WD My Book external drives attached via Firewire to my 27" iMac, one is used for Time Machine backups the other is additional system storage
I had this config running under Snow Leopard on this system and my earlier 24" iMac with no issues.
Since upgrading the 27" iMac to Lion I am experiencing random unmounts of both Firewire drives with the result that the Time Machine backups are failing and I have to physiclly reset the external drives to get them to sucessfully mount again.
Both WD drives have the latest firmware and OS X is up to date - any thoughts how to resolve this problem and keep the Firewire drives mounted at all times ??

No, never solved the problem, I still get the Firewire drives randomly unmounting and I have to power then down to get them to remount - this never happened with Snow Leopard ( or prior OS versions on my previous 24" iMac ), only started after the Lion upgrade.
Alan

External firewire drive constant spin-down/up

I often connect an external Lacie firewire drive to my MacBook Pro for regular time machine backups. When the drive is connected and I'm using my Mac, the drive is constantly spinning and in an 'awake' state.
The drive remains in this state for as long as the display is on. As soon as the display enters sleep mode the external drive spins down, remains in sleep mode for 30 seconds, then spins-up for 20 seconds, only to enter sleep mode again. This cycle continues endlessly causing excessive noise and needless wear and tear.
I've unchecked put hard disk to sleep when possible in the energy saver preferences although this hasn't helped.
Any ideas?

Try un-checking the drive sleep box.
What model is the drive? Is it bus-powered or does it have its own AC power supply brick? What does LaCie have to say?

Firewire Drives Randomly dropping from Desktop

Is there something I don't know about bad Firewire ports on this Mac Pro 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon? I have 2 RocPro 850 1TB drives connected via FW800 (one in the front and one in the back). They just randomly disconnect and drop from my desktop. Any answers here?
The nightmare has officially begun!

Actually... There are numerous posts documenting a wide array of firewire issues in a thread I started more than a month ago:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136580&tstart=0
You are not alone.
Chris

Random daisychained Firewire drive disconnects under Snow Leopard

OK... so I thought this was specific to my hard drives. However, we're not starting to see the problem though out the studio.
Plugging a single firewire drive into a machine running Snow Leopard has no issues. However... if you daisy-chain firewire drives then they will randomly disconnect. The connection will last 2-5 minutes tops before it just drops the drives as if someone had unplugged them.
We finally verified this on a total of three machines using various hard drives.... ensuring that we were taking specific drives out of the mix.

Next time you plug in the drive, see if it shows up in
Disk Utility. Want to see if the OS is recognizing it
and just not mounting it. If it doesn't show up there,
try the command line version by using the following
command:
diskutil list

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
Now, admittedly, I have never daisy chained, so I don't know if I've made some bad mojo for myself by my device order, or by mixing brands or something, or if it's even possible that maybe one of the drives is faulty and it's screwing things up for me. I just don't know, and troubleshooting is challenging becuase I can't make the problem happen, it just happenes whenever it feels like it.
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.

Firewire drives won't spin down when I put iMac to sleep

I have three external hard drives connected to my iMac in a FW800 daisy chain. It used to be, when I put my iMac to sleep, all three of the external drives would spin down and go quiet. I replaced the drive in the middle of the chain with a new one (both LaCie), and now none of the three external drives spin down when my I sleep my iMac.
Does anyone know how to get them to spin down?

It's a known issue for many many brands of FW800 drives. I've been reporting this to apple for a while. With 10.9.2, my particular drives will spin down if they are mounted and unmounted but if my system wakes from sleep which will spin up all drives, they stay that way until I mount and unmount again. So....10.9.2 is a little better but FW is still borked.
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My firewire drive isn't mounting. The port is fine and the drive powers up and spins. Help anyone?

Hi, thanks in advance. My firewire drive isn't mounting. I have used this firewire drive for a few years and it has never had any problems at all. The port appears in the System Profiler and the drive is working fine. Do I need to update my firmware or something? I haven't dropped my drive or experienced any weird physical issues with either the firewire port or the drive (ie shocks from static, getting kicked accidentally, etc).
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Another interesting issue, is that when the firewire (800) drive is connected, the system takes forever to boot (about 4 minutes). Without the firewire drive connected, it boots up automatically.
I suspect the long boot times is because the boot process is trying hard to get the disk checked and mounted which of doesn't happen when it is not connected.
Disk Utility doesn't see the drive at all.
Well that isn't good. This disk may be (physically) damaged beyond repair or the format so corrupt that even DU doesn't know what to do with it. But on the subject of firmware, you shouldn't need that for FW400/800 connections but what kind of enclosure are you using? If there is a firmware update at all it would be from the maker of that enclosure for that enclosure.
Is it possible to remove the drive from the enclosure and put it into your mac pro?

Firewire drive no longer recognized after upgrade?

having an onset of problems the last 2 weeks.
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Cannot Boot from OSX on external firewire drive

I recently bought a seagate hardrive and installed it in an external firewire casing. I partitioned it into two partitions, and installed osx 10.4.10 on one of the partitions, the same as is running on my Ti Book.
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Any Solutions on this?
Many Thanks, Neptune.

Hi Dale,
Whoops- everythings not as smooth as i thought it was!
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the computer also came to a dead freeze twice in ten minutes, i had to hold the power button down to get it to shut off.
im sure there are other issues too which i havent yet noticed, but even these, i havent the faintest clue what could be causing them!
do you?

Is it possible to boot a G4 (pci graphics) from an external firewire drive?

I have a Lacie 250 gig bootable external firewire drive which is recognized on my Power PC G4 400 but I cannot get it to boot from this drive. The procedure works fine on my ibook... I looked into a possible firmware update but the apple site says no update is necessary for the G4 400/pci graphics...
Any suggestions?

There sure are some radically contradictory posts here! (This isn't typical, at least in this section of the Discussions, RMx2.)
Can anyone who has posted here (or might join in here) actually boot from a hard drive connected via USB? I just tested this with OS X and I can't. For some time now, the Discussions have been riddled with posts, whether 100% accurate or inaccurate, that Macs don't boot from USB drives, despite the seemingly conflicting info in the article that Don kindly referenced. (John Huber: Don't eat your words just yet, John!)
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My G3 running OS X 10.3.9 sees the USB-connected drives in the Startup Disk Preference Pane, but when I click to Restart after selecting the USB system folder there, I get a beachball (haven't seen that in awhile...) and have to Force Quit System Preferences. Console tells me that that it could not get open firmware information or set open firmware information, and that it can't touch or set System/Library/CoreServices/BootX, returning Error 1 running bless.
On the QS running Tiger, the USB OSs don't even appear in the Startup Disk Pane of Sys Prefs. I can see the USB drive(s) using the Startup Manager, but selecting them and restarting results in a hung startup to a spinning cog with a prohibitory sign on the screen...
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Gary
Message was edited by: Majordadusma

Can't import from camcorder to firewire drive

I'm having no luck importing video from a digital camcorder to an external firewire drive (using iMovie 6). The playback is OK, but when I try to import the screen quickly goes blue and the importing stops (I get about .5 second of video in a clip before it stops).
This only happens when I'm saving clips to the external drive. If I save the project on my internal hard drive, video imports fine. I've tried with the camcorder daisy-chained through the firewire drive (on my ibook), and plugged into a separate port (on an old iMac w/ dual firewire).
Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video? It's an Acomdata E5, 320gb 400 Mbps drive, formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).
I tried to measure the speed of the disk using Xbench, but not sure how to interpret the results:
Disk Test 34.78
Sequential 26.56
Uncached Write 11.57 7.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 55.80 31.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 31.14 9.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.67 35.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 50.36
Uncached Write 21.41 2.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 97.27 31.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.42 0.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.71 17.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?
Thanks for any pointers.
ibook dual-usb Mac OS X (10.2.x)

You don't say which camcorder you're using.
Many Canon camcorders will NOT work properly with anything else, e.g; an external disc, on the FireWire circuit. Sorry. For those, you'd need to import to the internal disc and then copy to the external, and continue editing with the external drive.
"..Could it be my firewire drive is too slow to record the video?.." No: all modern external FW drives are perfectly fast enough, and a 320gb is certainly a modern drive.
"..formatted Mac OS extended (journaled).." ..are you absolutely CERTAIN..? ..It needs to be, otherwise it'll do just as you describe. And even discs bought for Macs or from Mac stores generally come formatted as "PC Exchange", i.e; MS-DOS formatted. Check it again by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking it and use 'Get Info'. If it really says "Mac OS Extended" you're OK. If not, you'll need to use Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility, select the name of the disc and click the 'Erase' tab (after you've moved off the disc anything which you might want to keep) and then select 'Mac OS Extended'. CAUTION: be sure that you've selected the external drive: don't accidentally reformat and wipe your internal drive!
"..Are there any settings I can adjust or other things to try?.." No. However..
Some camcorders are not properly recognised by iMovie at first. It pays to open a project which already has some footage in it, play that and then attach the camcorder and try importing. Playing back some existing DV footage often - in my experience, anyway - 'kick starts' the program into accepting more footage from the attached device.
But that only works if (a) the drive DEFINITELY is formatted as Mac OS Extended, and (b) you're NOT using a Canon with an external disc..

Firewire drives are un-mounting

I have a fall 2008 imac - running 10.6.3, have two external firewire drives from g-technology.
all of my data is on the external firewire drives (itunes, documents and photos). the problem is that for the last three weeks - the drives have been un-mouting randomly
I have reviewed the console logs, reset the PR-RAM and no luck. Anyone have any suggestions on how i can research the root cause?

Just a very basic idea. Are your Firewire cables in good shape? Connections OK? Has your power supply been stable lately (any brownouts, etc)? Have you recently done any updates or software installs on your iMac?
Regards,
Steve M.

Firewire Drive to Thunderbolt via Apple adapter speed issues.

Hi,
My old MBP recently died (plastic at the back started to melt) while doing lots of editing so have bought a new MBP Retina display. As it only has USB3 and Thunderbolt ports, I purchased the apple Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt adpater to connect the powered G-Tech G Drive which contains my live FCPX project files. Anyway this drive is now really slow compared to how it used to run on the old MBP. Also it seems to be constantly spinning with multiple drive accessses. Sometime FCPX stalls as the drive is too busy. I contacted G-Tech and they say their drives do no support third party adapters and at present they have not come back with a solution. I have heard that unpowered FIrewire drives using the Apple adapter won't work as the Thunderbolt port does not supply enough power (only 7W).
Does anyone have a solution to how to get more speed out of the G-Drive (It has Firewire 800, eSATA and USB2 ports) b) why it's constantly active. G-Tech thought that "It is possible that this adapter is constantly sending a signal causing the drive to keep spinning." c) I have never used eSATA, has any one had any experience with eSATA to Thunderbolt / USB3 adpaters?
I don't really want to invest in a new and very expensive Thunderbolt drive having just outlayed the expense to make this emergency purchase of my new MBP but if there are no solutions then I'll have no choice. Any suggestions greatfully recieved.

I believe this issue is caused by bad ground coupling between the two devices, some of the induced charge can spark between connectors in the thunderbolt port causing computer to basicly freeze.
To solve this issue try touching the connectors outside metal part to your macbooks body first to discharge it, then while plugging int the connector do it at slight angle so the metal of the connector touches Mac's body.
This method has been working for me.

Trouble with installing 10.5 from an external firewire drive

I have a family pack of 10.5 and installed it just fine on my macbook. But, I'm having trouble getting my imac DVD player to read the DVD. It just spins and spits it out, and spins and spits it out. The imac is not covered under applecare so spending money to get the DVD drive fixed (which I barely use) is not something I want to do right now.
Anyway, I followed instructions on a this website to install 10.5 from an external firewire drive. (http://iuseapple.com/blog/apple-how-to/advanced-os-x/2007/10/29/how-to-install-l eopard-from-external-firewire-hard-drive/)
But I get stuck and am not able to actually get my imac to boot from the installer. Basically, I am able to use disk utility to create a copy of the disk image on my macbook. That resulting file ends in ".cdr" and it mounts when I double click it.
And I partitioned my firewire hard drive without problems.
I think I'm messing up when it comes to doing the restore. If I try to drag the .dmg mounted file in to the "source" it doesn't work (is greyed out). If I try to drag the mounted .dmg there than it works, but I get an error when I click "restore" (something about scans and images not being found). I tried physically copying the .dmg file onto the partition, but then when I plugged the HD into my imac, I wasn't able to get the imac to boot from the installer.
What am I doing wrong? If someone could walk me through these last steps I'd appreciate it!

Okay I finally got around to creating the bootable disk image of 10.5 using Carbon Copy Cloner. Still my iMac is not booting from the firewire drive!
Here's a recap of everything I've tried. I'm at a complete loss now!
- I partitioned the HD into 2 partitions-- a 10gig one for the 10.5 install, the then the rest for Time Machine. I make the partition in Disk Utility on my MacBook.
- I've partitioned the drive a few times-- always partitioning it in APM format (b/c it needs to boot my non-intel iMac).
- I've created the disk image using "restore" in disk utility. I've again tried this a few times.
- I am able to boot my MacBook from the disk image I create! So I know the FW drive is able to be used to boot from!
- Here's what I've tried in terms of getting the iMac to boot from the FW drive. It always just boots to my internal drive instead. Sometimes I briefly see a folder and question mark. I've tried all 3 FW ports. I've selected the install partition at start up in preferences. I've also held down the option key at start up (only my internal drive shows) and I've held down command-option-shift-delete and again I get the question mark and it boots to my internal drive.
- And I installed Carbon Copy Cloner and made the disk image that way on my macbook. Still, I tried everything and the iMac is not able to boot from the firewire drive!
Since my DVD drive is broken, this is the only way for me to install 10.5! Help!

Firewire Drive Randomly Spins Up

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