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.

Similar Messages

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    Firewire drive will not mount on PowerBooks
    Posted: May 2, 2006 8:09 AM
    Reply Email
    Hi All,
    A friend of mine has a Titanium Powerbook G4 500's with 640mb ram and OS 10.2. She has purchased a Fantom Drive 120gb Firewire drive to back up her work. The drive will not mount on her machine. It will mount on my G5 running 10.3.9. I went to the Fantom Site, and all I could find was a link to Apple's site on Tiger.
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  • 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
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    exhale
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     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 drives don't mount after 10.4.3 update

    G3 B&W
    OS 10.4.2
    Everything working fine with 10.4.2. Two 3rd party external firewire drives mounted and working. Had not installed any 3rd party drivers. Updated to 10.4.3 and neither will mount. Don't show in System Profiler either. Is fix to "back up" to 10.4.2? Help?
    Bill Bevan
    Offline: [email protected]

    Matthew,
    Thanks for the tip but the disconnect/power down didn't work. I also zapped the PRAM. Additional information: Firewire drives do mount when running OS 9.2.2 alone. Under OS 10.4.3 System Profiler does not show any Firewire devices. Of course, I could boot up Classic in 10.4.3 but that seems like the long way around, and I am in the process of weaning myself off of OS 9.
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  • FireWire drives won't mount

    Neither of my FireWire drives will mount on either my iMac 20" G5 or my iBook G4...I have a 500GB WD MyBook and a La Cie 80G. I've gone through all the suggested tips, and still nothing. I've reset the PRAM several times, reset the firewire bus by turning off the computer and unplugging it and the drives for a while, etc. I've tried different cables, too.
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    For what it's worth... I'm having the exact same issue and so are many others on the forums since 10.5.6.
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    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9206635
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9043830
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8917764
    ---cross posted---
    I'm having a very similar issue as of the last few weeks at least. Periodically I'll turn my FW drive on and it won't mount and isn't visible in Disk Utility. This is usually after waking the computer from sleep.
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    Also the console shows a long running list of errors that seem to occur non-stop when the drive is on, connected, but not mounting.
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    ---

  • External firewire drive won't mount

    I've got an external Western Digital firewire drive that's been somewhat flaky recently, and today my Mac won't mount it.
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    Dale,
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  • FireWire drives don't mount

    Hello everybody,
    my trusted LaCie 500GB and 250GB drives worked flawlessly since I bought them. Since two days they are not mounting. About a monthe ago I upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.4.7. Everything worked fine.
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    I am at the end of my knowledge.
    Thank you!

    Thank you again for your reply.
    I did try the HD on my friends older PB and all was fine.
    Resetting the PMU did not solve the problem.
    All other applications (but Logic, because I could not access my files) were running smooth.
    Going back to 10 a.m. yesterday, basically starting over, there was one thing I missed checking: the AC to DC converters supplied by LaCie for their drives.
    Voilá! Individual testing revealed, that the AC/DC converter for the first LaCie drive in my chain did not spin up any of my other six LaCie drives (which I never run all at the same time).
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