Firewire drives freezing intermitantly

When I upgraded to my current G5 in 2004 I took the old drives out of my G3 and stuck them in cheap firewire cases, these never worked well but I assumed that the problem was the cheap cases.
This winter I finally got around to buying a nice dual case from OWC thinking that this would solve the problems. But it didn't.
When the drives mount they will work fine for a while, diskwarrior etc can see them and say there are no problems, but after about five minutes the drives will freeze, and lock up the OS, the only way out is a re-start or turning off the drives. (This problem is the same with either the nice new case or the old cheap ones) What is wrong?

Hello! When you ran Diskwarrior did you go ahead and replace the directory? Directory problems can cause such behavior as can firewire cables. Have you tried a different cable? Sometimes even using a different port makes a difference. Tom

Similar Messages

Oxford 912 Firewire Drive Freezes on Wake

I have an OWC 320 GB FW400/800 drive that will no longer wake properly. The drive will mount properly and I can use it as long as it stays active. Once the drive goes to sleep, it will not wake. This drive works fine on 10.4.11 or earlier. According to OWC, there is an issue with some firewire drives that Apple is aware of and working on. Here is the relevant portion of the syslog:
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: I/O error.
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]: BlkNum 2325] [FSLogMsgID 2114434281] [FSLogMsgOrder First]
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: media is not present.
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:43: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: media is not present.
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:43: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: media is not present.
Apr 6 13:28:43 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:50: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:50: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: media is not present.
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:50: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]: HFS: err 6 reading VH blk (Mercury300)
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]: disk5s10: media is not present.
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]:
Apr 6 13:28:50: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 6 13:28:50 ep-mbook kernel[0]: HFS: err 6 reading VH blk (Mercury300)
Apr 6 13:28:55 ep-mbook /usr/sbin/spindump[58895]: process 3274 is being no longer being monitored
This is from a chat with OWC tech support:
Jason Bohannon: There is no firmware updates for them. Some drives work fine, others don't. I'm not really sure what the root cause, just heard our tech manager saying it is a Leopard issue [as they work fine with tiger] and it is something which Apple is working on
Eric Paulsen: O.K. I'll just need to dismount this drive when finished. I'll move it into an archival use, and use it only for periodic archival. Do you have any certified drives for Leopard? Many of your web pages still refer to 10.4.x as the latest OS.
Jason Bohannon: They all work with leopard, but I believe the reason for the pages not being updated is the issue you're having. some drives work fine, others, from the same batch, have issues. As it is an OS problem and not a hardware problem, I think that's why it still lists tiger as the most updated OS. Once these issues/bugs go away, I would think the product manager would update the page. Anything with firewire has a chance to have that problem, regardless of what drive it is.
Eric Paulsen: Bummer. Well, I'll hold off purchasing for the time being, and wait and see if 10.5.3 addresses it. Thanks for your help.
Is this for real or should I be hounding OWC some more?

Thanks for the suggestions, I can't help thinking some basic fault exists within this iMac. It was purchased about 6 weeks ago, and as far as I know was a 2008 build. Not sure how the check this but I understand the serial number is on the base.
The article seem to refer to iMac's with this problem as of, mid 2007 vintage, well that's not mine.
I plan to call Apple and may look at a replacement model, but would appreciate any other thoughts.
Not too keen either on loosing 'personal' settings, whichever they may be.

MacBook Air + Thunderbolt-Firewire Adapter + LaCie FW800 Drive = Freeze

I recently bought a new MacBook Air 13" including the TB-to-FW800 adapter from Apple. I own an older external LaCie FireWire 800 drive I want to use with.
From time to time (i.e. not always) when I connect the LaCie drive to the MacBook Air, OS X 10.8.2 freezes completely so that I have to hard reset it. Seems that someone here has a similar problem:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1419956
Is there any solution available?
Thanks!

The only time my system freezes is if I try to boot with the thunderbolt/firewire drive connected.
I have had no problem connecting the drive after boot has been completed.
Which reminds me I need to retest now that I am at 10.8.2.

Powerbook freezes when I connect maxtor firewire drive

Ever since I installed tiger and upgraded to v 10.4.6 my G4 powerbook freezes when I connect a Maxtor firewire drive. I also recently installed Final Cut Pro Studio v 5.1. The maxtor drive mounts fine on another PB OS X 10.1.2. A Lacie firewire drive mounts fine on both computers. I can't figure it out. The powerbook with tiger crashes on startup when the maxtor firewire drive is attached or when it's just turned on. Does anyone have any solutions??

Welcome to the Apple discussion forums.
This isn't a guaranteed fix, however, did you update to 10.4.6 via software update or the combo installer? There have been some odd happenings recently when people have updated via the software update function. If you did the upgrade that way, you might try clearing your system and kernal caches (I use OnyX to do that, and other maintenance. It can be found at http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html ). Then download the 140mb combo updater, which can be found at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1046comboforppc.html .

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.
I tried selecting the os on the firewire drive as the startup disk, but when i restart, after the grey screen i get the flashing question mark icon, until the mac recognises only the default osx on the internal drive and boots with that instead.
That not working, i created a clone of my startup disk using DejaVu in my system preferences and saved it on the other, empty partition on the external drive and tried booting from that.
On restarting, i get the grey screen once again as the backlight fires up, and nothing more. the screen remains grey without any further ado until i hold the power button and force it to turn off. then as i start it up again, up comes the flashing question mark icon followed by a boot from the internal drive.
Any Solutions on this?
Many Thanks, Neptune.

Hi Dale,
Whoops- everythings not as smooth as i thought it was!
since i restored my internal drive, a lot of things have been really messed up, starting with, for example, iTunes reverting to version 4 instead of 7. that wasnt a problem, i still had the 7 installer, and soon had my whole music library back again. but the computer appears to have a problem with the handling of graphics. the finder wont create previews of even simple jpeg images, nor will it for video. quicktime wont open any video file, i get some random error message which i cant remember stating it could not open the file. and if i view my finder window in grid icon view, the usual blue mac os desktop image that i keep as a background in the finder window isnt there, instead its pitch black. same goes for the slideshow feature in the application graphic converter, i can start a slideshow and it will scroll through the images, but every image will instead be completely black. there are no scroll bars in itunes. i can scroll down randomly by clicking where the scroll bar should be, but there is nothing visual there at all, no scroll bar, no arrows. when i connect my ipod, the main ipod window of itunes wont display any graphics either, be it the picture of the ipod or the capacity bar indicating usage of the drive for music, videos, data, etc. instead, fine print says something similar to 'cannot display image, quicktime and lzw tiff decompression plugin (?) required' I cant remember word for word what it says, dont quote me on that.
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?

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.

FW drive freezes OS X 10.4.9

Several years ago I bought a Neptune firewire drive from OWC to use with an older Mac running OS 8.6 and 9.1. It worked very well with that machine.
I retired the computer but had a lot of files on that disk that I'd like to access from my G5 powermac running OS 10.4.9.
I didn't see any indications in the user info that came with the drive or on OWC's website that this would be a problem. But when I plugged it into the G5 it mounts, yet when I click on the icon it freezes the computer. The only way I can unmount it is to restart the G5. (The G5 has been giving me no other problems, before or since.)
When I first tried this I could hear the disk being accessed and I thought that this might be spotlight cataloging the files so I waited a few minutes until it stopped. But then when I tried opening it - crash.
So, afraid that I may have lost data on the Neptune, I hooked it up to the old computer again and I was relieved to see that it still worked there and the files seemed to be intact.
I wrote to OWC customer support and although I've been happy with their products, I found them less than helpful in this matter.
Several questions:
Does anyone know why this is happening?
How can I get this drive to work with the G5?
If it freezes the computer how can I reformat or do anything with it now?
I've perused the forums about this and although I see problems with other firewire drives not mounting, I haven't found anything like this (mounting but freezing) or other references to Neptune drives.

Don't have a clue. Did you run Disk First Aid on the FWHD when hooked up to the old computer and check its status? Repair permissions and the disk? Rather than trying to figure out what's going on, I suggest hooking it up to the old computer and doing that first. If it passes, check its format—should be HFS+—drag&drop the files onto the old computer, erase and format the FWHD, drag&drop the files back, and see if it'll mount and open on the G5.
These might give you some solutions:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908 and
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338

Can firewire drives in series sometimes cause system failure?

We have had problems with a 2007 iMac (23") locking up at times. We have AppleCare, and have run numerous tests to try to elucidate the problem.
After the Apple service center here could not find any problem during several days of testing, we've been doing some testing back in our office. Here's what we seemed to have discovered:
Problems SOMETIMES seem to arise when two firewire drives are connected in series to the firewire 800 port. One is a LaCie d2 Big Disk USB 2.0 & FireWire 800 , the other is an OWC Mercury Elite Firewire 800 Pro. Our normal way of running these has been with the LaCie as the outermost of the two. We discovered that we seem to be free of problems if the order is reversed and the LaCie is off, though she can also run for (at least) a while with the LaCie on, as well.
I'm theorizing that our problems may be related to one of two things:
1) Conflict between the way the two drives, and the iMac, implement the firewire 800 standard.
2) Startup problems when the firewire drives are turned on more-or-less simultaneously. One drive could be in a state where its interface is transitioning from "pass through" (drive off) stage to the "active" (drive on) state.
My question is this: Is anyone aware of any problem like this? Is it understandable that such a problem could affect the system enough to even freeze up the system?

Sure external devices can cause issues with your Mac if it's causing some kind of hardware problem with the Firewire bus-- drawing too much power, over or under voltage etc.. Some iMacs just have problems with the FW ports themselves. Sometime resetting the SMC will fix it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543?viewlocale=en_US
I have two FW800 drives from OWC daisy chained and I have not had any issues at all. I would try and isolate the two drives if possible to see if the problem persists. Disconnect one of the drives for a few days and use just one drive. Then switch and connect only the other drive for a few days. Then maybe try one of them on FW800 and the other on USB. The FW400 and 800 share the same bus so it may not be any differnt testing one on each if it ends up being a power issue. I wouldn't think it's a power issue though because the external drives have their own power and should not be drawing any power from the computer. But you never know
George

Firewire drive startup problems

Gang,
There's been a lot of talk regarding issues with Firewire drives and Leopard. I've tried reading through these posts in an effort to solve a problem I've been having. I haven't found any posts that match what I've been experiencing; however, I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere.
All right, here's what's happening. I've been using a Neptune external firewire drive from OWC for the past couple of years. I've experienced flawless operation until last week when I upgraded to Leopard. Things were OK for a few days, but now this particular drive hangs upon startup -- I get the spinning beachball. When I turn this drive on, everything stops: the finder, and programs I try to open, etc. Sometimes it shows up on the desktop, sometimes it does not. Sometimes it shows up in Disk Utility, sometimes it does not. Once I turn the drive off, the Finder regains its composure and continues along its merry way.
Any attempts to repair the drive using Disk Utility (when it shows up) have been unsuccessful, because the program freezes before too long. I've also tried the "unplug your machine for 15 minutes" trick, but this doesn't resolve the problems either. Doing this allows the drive to show up on the desktop, but it still hangs after a few moments.
From what I can tell, the FW drive is attempting to do something, I just don't know what. I hear lots of crunching going on inside the enclosure. I don't think it's a Spotlight issue, because there is no dot inside the spotlight icon.
Anyone have any suggestions? Am I just not being patient enough?

Hey i had the same problem with one of my external drives as well but it was a drive that i just got so i was able to have Lacie help me track down the problem. I am not sure if my problem was the same one you are having if you have had the drive for 2 years and use it allot it may just be getting ready to die but here is what they said so give this a try.
Make absolutely sure that the drive has a direct connection to the computer, and is the only external drive connected if you have more than one. Do not connect through a hub, or a port replicator, as those are things which could possibly be contributing to the problem. And, use ports on the rear of a desktop machine, as front ports are always hubbed. If you have any other external hard drives aside from this one, make absolutely sure they're disconnected, for troubleshooting.
The method for correcting corruption, which also is our next hardware troubleshooting step, involves repartitioning and erasing the drive in the Disk Utility. This is a process which does erase the drive entirely, including the corruption.
Disk Utility is accessed by opening the Macintosh HD, then the Applications folder, and then the Utilities folder. Within that, Disk Utility has an icon of a hard drive with a stethoscope on it.
- Highlight the GB hardware line- in your case, the approximately 465GB disk line.
- Click the Partition tab which becomes available up top.
- There should be an Options button at the bottom. Click it, and on the following window, make sure that the dot is next to ‘Apple Partition.’ Click OK through the window.
- Volume Scheme must be changed from 'Current' to '1 Partition'.
- Format is ideal to leave default Mac OS Extended Journaling.
- Uncheck the option for ‘Install Mac OS 9 Drivers.’
- Change the volume name 'Untitled 1' to whatever you prefer, alpha numeric only, and it is very important to give it a name that is new to it.
- Hit the Options button at the bottom of the window, and make sure the dot is in Apple Partition, then click OK through.
- Hit the Partition button in the lower right. Then click the Partition button through the warning window that comes up.
- The process is finished, when you see the name you gave it, indented under the GB hardware line you highlighted at the beginning.
If complications occur during or shortly after the format, that's when we're leaning towards isolating a physical problem to the drive. I recommend changing USB cords, trying a different power supply, and if possible another computer, to see if it makes things better. If it completes, I advise copying some data to it manually, to make sure it works. If it does, you should be all set.
If you find that your computer does not properly dismount the drive when it goes to sleep, you might want to consider changing this setting so that the computer does not go to sleep when the drive is attached. Unfortunately, there's nothing in the drive that can be changed to affect the way the computer dismounts the drive when it enters sleep mode.

Can Leopard be installed from a Firewire Drive or Another Mac?

I have a Mac Mini with a faulty Super Drive. It's not really a problem since I only use it as a network appliance and rarely install software via CD/DVD. But now I don't know know how to upgrade it to Leopard. And since its my File server, I can't use it with Time Machine.
Is it possible to put the install on one of my Firewire Drives and install it from there?
Any advice?

Dear Cabak
You may have options, but I am not sure as I have only two days with Leopard thus far, but....
I am positive with Tiger it was possible to start the client computer up in Target Disk Mode and use the host computer to "upgrade", "archive and upgrade", or "clean install" the operating system.
You will actually start the HOST computer up with the install disc AFTER you have the client computer in TDM. You simply choose the client computer hard drive and select the type of install you prefer to do.
Remember to check the client computer for any offending files that will cause you to get caught in a blue screen freeze on startup. There are plenty of threads in the discussions about people having this problem. Read the following document if you are not aware of the situation.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306857
The beautiful thing about this (if there were one) is that you can remove these files easily while in Target Disc Mode. These are the files you should get rid of before the upgrade process...
/Library/Preference Panes/Application Enhancer.prefpane
/Library/Frameworks/Application Enhancer.framework
/System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Application Enhancer.bundle
/Library/Preferences/com.unsanity.ape.plist
I think you will be pleased with the outcome of your efforts.
-James

Audio cutting out when using D2 external Firewire Drive

Hi,
I have just upgraded to Logic Studio, using the following setup:
Macbook Pro
Motu 828
AMT 8
Logic Studio
D2 Lacie 500GB Firewire Drive
As the MacBook's internal hard drive is not sufficient to record and playpack efficiently, I was advised to get an external Firewire Drive. Given that I have very little space on my laptop - (am running windows on a partition also) I am trying to save my logic files to the external HD. When creating tracks specifically using Audio Instruments, the playpack keeps cutting out.
I am connecting the HD via usb 2. I am also having to freeze the tracks in order to record more layers. There is lots of clipping and latency. I thought by using the external, this problem would be resolved.
The HD is not playing back the tracks fast enough, and keeps cutting the audio out. The audio cuts out everytime the blue light on the drive flashes.
I cannot save the files to the MackBook HD as there is notenough space.
Is there something very wrong with my setup?
any advice would be really appreciated.
ps. I am a bit of a newbie
thank you in advance.
Spy

Connect it via firewire 800. USB2 is not good for audio or video streaming.
I have 3 D2's connected to my mac pro, works like a charm.
good luck.

External Firewire Drive Problems

I have a firewire drive that all of a sudden stopped appearing on my desktop when I booted up each day ... BUT, after about an hour or so if I shut down, turned off the the FW drive, turned the drive back on and re-booted the FW drive appears. Hmmmm? When I would run disk repair on the drive in question the report came back "Drive Ok - No Repairs Necessary". THEN - when I started copying from the FW drive ./ moving files on it after a few days it started to hang up the computer. Next, re-running Disk Repair turned up "Invalid Node." I succesfully rebuilt the FW disk with Disk Warrior last night rebooted and ran disk repair on the FW drive and all was well. Shut everything down and called it a night. Today my computer will not see the FW drive, it doesn't show up in the Finder, Disk Uttility or even in System Profiler where under "firewire" it lists "unknow device."
Ok, any ideas anyone. Thanks much.

I have six 300gig Seagate hard drives chained together that all worked fine with Tiger on my MacBook Pro. All drives have been fully reformatted to Mac format and I do not use any One-Touch software.
As soon as I upgraded to Leopard, I found that I could only mount 2 of these drives at a time. If I attempted to mount a third drive (in ANY order of startup or wiring configuration) either that drive doesn't mount, the System locks up... or both, usually. The only way out is to hold the Power button to kill the computer
I have tried everything. I've repaired every drive with Disk Utility AND with Disk Warrior. I've tried every wiring order, but the results are the same. I restarted with a clone of my former (pre-Leopard) Tiger drive, and all the Seagate drives worked fine, but as soon as I restarted with Leopard, the same problem occurred. I've started up in "Safe" mode - same problem. The computer works fine when not connected to Firewire; and it seems to work fine with only one or two WD drives connected; but the minute I connect too many drives (any drive, any order of wiring, different Firewire cables, etc) everything freezes again.
After all the usual troubleshooting with Apple, the only thing they had left to suggest was an Archive and Install of Leopard which I've done, but the problem still persists.
An Apple product specialist is investigating this problem in depth; but since all my drives are Seagate, I'm wondering if anyone has gotten any feedback about specific Seagate problems with Leopard.
THE PROBLEM ALSO OCCURS WHEN RUNNING DISK UTILITY FROM THE LEOPARD INSTALL DISK - ONLY 3 OF THE SIX DRIVES WILL MOUNT AT ANY ONE TIME, The order of connection makes no difference. This seems to be a Leopard problem, but I'm wondering if it's also specific to just Seagate drives.
Anyone got any ideas?

Lion mysteriously erases SSD partition on external FireWire drive.

I'm not sure whether this is a problem with OS X, my SSD, or my external FireWire drive, so please bear with me.
Recently, I have been having some hardware problems on my MacBook Pro, and decided to send my computer off to be repaired. Before doing so, I took my Corsair Performance Pro SSD (still on firmware 1.0) out of my machine so that I could boot it from my FireWire 800 drive (Oyen Digital Minipro) onto the school computers.
Both times I have tried this (and on different machines!) I was able to successfully load my laptop installation. Then, after a few minutes, everything would suddenly freeze up (beach balls, et al) and I would have to shut down the computer. Afterwards, the system would not let me boot back into the external drive, and Disk Utility in the host OS would show that my partition had been completely erased, and that I would have to reformat the drive and restore from Time Machine.
Is it possible that Lion doesn't like being booted from FireWire drives? My OS X installation is still on 10.7.3 (as I have not had a chance to update yet) so maybe the FireWire driver has been fixed since then? Could this be a problem with my SSD? Or could my FireWire drive be malfunctioning? I have used this enclosure with a non-boot hard drive without any problems in the past.
Sorry this question is so broad, but I am at a complete loss.

In the "Current" Volume Scheme, the 8GB partition is on top. The 85GB is below that. Originally, the 20GB partition was between them. There is no grey mass i.e. free space in the middle.
Is there a grey mass anywhere? top? bottom?
In other words, do the two white sections that represent the active partitions fill the entire block, or is there any other space that's vacant?
All volumes on the drive are/were formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I'm not sure but, I think that corresponds to "GUID"...right?
No, Mac OS X Extended (whether journaled or not) is independent of the partition scheme in use.
The bottom of the Disk Utility window should report the partition format.

Firewire drives missing

I have successfully had two WD firewire drives daisy chained to my mac pro for a few months. One for Time Machine, one for SuperDuper.
Lately the mac is not seeing the drives, every few hours it stops seeing them. If I click on the drive in the finder I just get the spinning beachball and the mac just freezes causing me to force a re-boot.
I have to then disconnect the power supply first and then re-boot to get the drives back. I have spoken to Apple who say it is a hardware problem and I need to take the machine in for repair.
I have also noticed that under firewire in the system profiler I am seeing an 'unknown device' as well as the two drives and my isight. I don't know if that has any relevance.
I am hoping that someone out there has a idea of what might be happening. I don't really want to take the machine in for repair as I don't want to be without it for weeks.

I think there are enough problems with MyBook to always suspect that as the culprit, and perhaps switch to another make/brand in some cases; to avoid daisy-chains possibly (I use 3rd party FW800 Aaxeon card). Most of my hard drives in the last two years are WD, but not MyBook (or LaCie or Seagate) FW cases.
Resetting the FW bus (unplug etc and power down) helps, but the cause is bad cheap equipment, cables, bridge, power).
Seeing you use SuperDuper I assume you also run Disk Warrior before/after backups as well. And backup the backups! Redundancy.

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.
The drive shows up in the system profiler as an unknown device but not in the Finder. I have a USB hub with a card reader and 4G SD card that shows up just fine. I tried the MyBook in the USB port but it didn't show up there either.
The power supplies are working, as the indicator lights are on for both drives.
The MyBook was working fine until recently; not sure when it stopped working. I hadn't used the La Cie for a while but hooked it up to store iMovie files.
I plugged a Canopus ADVC-55 analog-to-digital convert into the FW port on both computers and it showed up as a named device in System Profiler. That tells me the port is OK and the problem is with the HDs--right?
Very frustrating! Hope someone can help.
Thanks in advance.

For what it's worth... I'm having the exact same issue and so are many others on the forums since 10.5.6.
See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9206734
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.
The only way to get it back is to restart.
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.
AppleFWOHCI_AsyncTransmit::waitForDMA
AppleFWOHCI_AsyncReceive::waitForDMA
I've also noticed that the system occasionally will not boot up and instead freezes on the Apple logo on startup. Not sure if this is related however.
---

Firewire drives freezing intermitantly

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