Firewire drives, project problems

I'm trying to open a fairly large project file, with media spread out over 9 firewire drives, and I keep having problems with the system choking up.
Most importantly, at least one of the drives failes to be recognized by the system, and it appears that the clips on it are offline. It's happened on different drives, so I know it's not a drive specific issue, and when I search for the drive name it turns out the icon for it is buried inside of another firewire drives directory. Even once I've found the icon, I'm unable to access any of the contents, which I know are safe and sound on the drive.
Is there a way to avoid this? I've trashed my project preferences, repaired permissions, and I can't think what else to do. This problem only started once the project got bloated with a lot of sequences.
I'm using FCP 3, with OSX 10.2 on a G4 400mhz with maxed out RAM. All the firewire cases are Oxford911 chips.

Hi Shane--
Do you have any experience with SPINDOWNFIX 1.1 on an OSX version later than 10.2.3? I'm hesitating to install it just because it hasn't been tested any further than that OS. I'm on 10.3.9 on a MDD G4 and I'm pretty much maxed out on storage as well.
The difference is that I normally edit from my internal drives (500 GB RAID and additonal 250 GB Storage) and try to use the FW drives as backup for the projects once I'm done. FCP doesn't have any problems reconnecting files unless you're changing the filenames quite a bit.
I have ~900 GB on 4 Lacie Ext. FW drives, 3 are for A/V storage, and 1 is a company drive for project files, Images, DVDSP stuff, Word docs, etc. The first 3 drives I have daisy chained via the machines only FW800 port. The chain looks like this:
G4-->FW800-->FW800-->FW400. The other 'company' FW drive has it's own dediacated FW400 port from the G4. The other FW400 port is dedicated for my capture deck only.
My suggestion for the original poster is to rearrange ALL your hard drives (int AND ext.), so that you are working off of internal drives as much as possible (whatsize will be an invaluable tool for doing this). Then, if you truly DO have NINE drives daisy-chained, and you're done capturing (on to an INTERNAL drive, I assume), at least spread out the Daisy-chains over all of your FW ports. And as mentioned before, try to leave the drives you don't need OFF.
Thanks!
chris

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Firewire Drive/Camcorder Problems with FCP

I seem to have a recurring problem connecting a DV camcorder and a firewire hard drive simultaneously. Most recently I was trying to set up FCP to output to a camcorder I had connected - and during the configuration, my hard drive (a western digital MyBook) un-mounted while FC was running. I couldn't get it back for awhile and thought I'd lost my client's project and all the rest I had on that drive. Luckily it returned. But I've had this problem in the past with Avid system on a PC, in that case a Seagate drive...it makes me think I'm doing something wrong here. I'm not the savviest when it comes to technical issues with hardware & such, I really just want to edit.
Also, twice within the year my logic board on my powerbook g4 has been replaced due to a bad firewire, another issue that happened in mid-project. I don't know if the camera did it, or the drive. The tech at Apple said I hadn't done anything to cause it...but it happened twice.
I guess what I'm asking is, is there a method or a sequence for connecting a deck or camera to my system when working with external firewire drives? Are these issues with the hard drive manufacturer, my system, or my own error? Are there any major DO's and DONT's in this area and what am I doing wrong?

So, from what I understand...supposing nothing external is connected to my machine...power down, plug in my firewire drive and the camera, then power up, then run FCP? At what point do I turn the camera on, while the computer is still off?
I'm sorry I'm not sure I understand the BUS concept? As of now I'm using the rear fw400 port for a hard drive and the front for the camera.
Why did the drive crash when I was in easy setup on FCP?

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.

When I download a movie from iTunes the cover art disappears. I try get info and add the art, it doesn't show up. So it's just gray. It opens and plays fine. Apple can't figure it out. It's an nas drive. When I use a firewire drive I get the art

When I download movies from iTunes to my NAS drive, I don't get the cover art. It shows up while its downloading, but when it's finish it disappears. If it has an iTunes extra the cover art is there. I tried get info and add the cover art, it never shows. Regardless of how I add it. Funny thing is, if I download the same movie to my external firewire drive, no problem its there. I've called Apple with no success. I've even tried copying the movie with the art from the firewire drive to replace the file on then NAS drive I still loose the movie cover art. I also tried several times to re download it, no luck. Any ideas? I'm out of ideas.

Do you have any videos/movies in the video app?
In iTunes if you right click on the video and select Get Info and go to the Option tap what Media Type is shown?

Connecting DV camera via firewire disconnects external firewire drive

All of a sudden this has started happening.
When i connect my video camera via firewire to my external Lacie harddrive, and turn the camera on, the drive I have it connected to goes off line. A window come up saying 'Device Removal'. When I disconnect the camera, the drive comes back online.
I have 4 drives connected inline and it happens to any one of them, whichever I attach the firewire to.
I trashed FCP permissions, but that didn't help. I'm running FCPHD 4.5.
Any ideas?
PowerBook G4 15 Titanium Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Its the canon camera. Firewire and canon cameras apparently don't play in the same sandbox very well. All macs have only one firewire bus. For a macbook pro you can use an express card slot, but the imac's you are kinda stuck. The best course of action is to copy to hard drive and then move it within imovie. I read this in Tom Wolksy's book on FCE. It is weird. I have a Sony HDV and an older imac and i can use one firewire port for importing and go straight to an external firewire drive--no problem. However, in his book on page 56. It states the firewire issue. I know this is an imovie forum, but i can assume its also the same for imovie.

Can't properly open fcp6 project on firewire drive on another computer

I have a long and complex fcp6 project that I have been editing with fcp6 on my piwermac g5 quad running leopard. The media and render files are each split between my boot drive and a second internal drive. I copy both drives onto a partitioned FireWire drive and then plug it into my macpro 3.1. The names on the FireWire partitions are exactly the same as the powermac drive names. The project opens perfectly on the 8 core macpro from the FireWire drive and I am able to render and other things much faster . However, I am about to outgrow the 1TB FireWire drive, so I got a larger one. I duped both partitions onto the similarly partitioned and identically named new bigger firewire drive....but when I go to open the project half the media filess are disconnected and even after I manually reconnect all kinds of error messages come up and the project is totally unworkable. So, why does the first firewiure drive work perfect but not the cloned nee FireWire drive? I even put an extra internal drive in the macpro and cloned the original FireWire to it but it does the same thing as the new FireWire, totally unworkable. I don't understand why things work perfectly with first FireWire but not with any other internal or external drive. Any help would be tremendously appreciated.

The original fiteewire which does open on the mac pro was partitioned apple partition map. The new FireWire drive that doesn't open properly is also apm, but I've erased and partitioned i GUID. I've tried using both disk utilities and superduper for the cloning in the past. I'm doing the cloning onto the guid partitions right now and will let you know if it helps in the morning. At any rate I appreciate your help.

Post-Install Problem with External Firewire drive

I just installed Tiger 10.4.3 and the computer would not reboot. It would stop prior to the Starting Mac OS X progress bar and gray out letting me know that the computer needs to restart.
I finally got it to boot successfully by unplugging or turning orr my external Maxtor Firewire drive. The external drive was plugged during the install process (mistake?)
Via Software upgrade, I upgraded to 10.4.6 in the hopes that this would solve the issue. No luck and when turning the drive on, it immediately goes right to the gray screen and lets me know it will need to reboot.
Is this a known problem with a known solution? Did I FUBAR my drive somehow? Any suggestions for righting to ship?
Thanks!
Rob P

OK, last one before dinner. I found the panic log. here is what it says:
Description: Panic (system crashes) log
Size: 12.39 KB
Last Modified: 5/25/06 6:39 PM
Location: /Library/Logs/panic.log
Recent Contents: ...
panic(cpu 0): 0x400 - Inst access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000857F4 0x00085C24 0x000287B4 0x0008F6A8 0x000927B8
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x24051780)
PC=0x00000020; MSR=0x40009030; DAR=0x11F23B98; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x16FE0DEC; R1=0x1227BB90; XCP=0x00000010 (0x400 - Inst access)
Backtrace:
0x16FE0C58 0x16FE08DC 0x16FE043C 0x0021FFAC 0x0021FDA8 0x002206F8 0x00220D54 0x002111D0
0x00211194
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.maxtor.iokit.IOFireWireMxBt(2.0d1)@0x16fdf000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOFireWireFamily(1.4.0)@0x233d3000
Exception state (sv=0x22F58A00)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 6.8:
Wed Sep 10 15:20:55 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.49.obj~2/RELEASE_PPC
Does this help anyone???
Rob P

Trying to move film project between external firewire drives HELP!

i have a film project that i've been working on and all of the media files and the project file are on one external firewire drive. I want to move the film project to a different, smaller and more transportable firewire drive, however, when i use the media manager to make a copy of the project on the second external drive, when i try to open the new project, it uses only approximate outpoints of the clips in the sequence and all my editting work is pretty much lost. is there a way to preserve my editted outpoints? please help! thanks, jkkjnz

the clips all have names. 01_01 until 01_85 or so and 02_01 until 02_52 or so. when the cop of the project is finishing up, a series of error messages appear which say "an unknown error occured while trying to reconnect clip 02_12 [for example] to the copied file". Then, when i try to reconnect the media from the new project, it says specifically for some clips, "02_09 does not have enough media content to reconnect clip in Sequence 1" and then after a list of similar messages, it says "one or more files did not have enough media to reconnect some clips. some edited clip items have had their outpoints adjusted." grrrr...

Problem with external FireWire drive

Two weeks ago I purchased a 1 tb Iomega ultra drive with FireWire 800/Firewire 400/USB 2/ESATA to use for back ups. I plugged it in the Firewire 800 port of my iMac. It worked fine until early this morning. I noticed there was a problem first because it was taking forever to log off or restart the computer with the drive connected and second that Time Machine had stopped doing backups a few hours previously and the drive was no longer recognized by OSX. I can plug it into a USB 2 port and it works fine. I have two Lacie drives daisy chained from the same Firewire 800 port - so the port is just fine. Thus it appears that the problem is with the Firewire 800 connection on the Iomega drive. Time Machine works with USB but I bought the drive for its flexibility. In future I might want use it as a bootable drive plus Firewire 800 is faster than USB 2. Any idea if this could be a software problem? I hate to return this drive since a) I would need to securely erase it first; b) I would have no time machine backup until I received a replacement (though I am doing less frequent conventional backups on 3 other drives (ie subsets of my files since none of the other drives are large enough for a single time machine backup plus I like redundancy); c) it is a pain to pack up and return.
So my question is: should I bother or just live with USB 2 and hope that the FireWire problem does not mean the drive is a piece of junk and should not be trusted for anything?

I called the store where I bought the drive and was told I have up to 30 days to return it. So I tried plugging it into the firewire 800 daisy chain (at the end) and now it's working again. So I will watch it closely over the next few days to see if this happens again within the 30 day return period. Also by registering online at the Iomega website, I now have 3 year warranty.
Also from reading other threads about firewire issues, it appears that intermittent firewire problems may be more prevalent than I would expect (based on previous experience with a variety of firewire drives from many vendors).

Problems backing up then booting from a firewire drive on Intel Macs

Hi
I wanted to help a friend back up his Macbook and then install Bootcamp.
I took over my trusty external firewire drive (Makeytec MHD-25 Combo enclosure + Samsung 80Gb HDD).
So... I ran Disk Utility
Highlighted the firewire drive, clicked Partitions, named it "Backup". Clicked Options -> GUID -> Partition
I backed up his computer with SuperDuper onto Backup. SuperDuper automatically makes the drive bootable. At the end Backup was mounted on the desktop and all files are there.
But Backup wouldn't boot the computer. Instead I got a grey screen for a long time, then the Apple logo with the spinning cog, then after a few more minutes a circle with a bar through it (like a no smoking sign minus the cigarette)
Things I tried after this....
Partitioned the drive again, double checking that I had selected GUID
Erased the drive zeroing out all the data
Backing up using CCC (with make drive bootable option checked) instead of SuperDuper
Could not get this drive to boot his computer.
Then took the drive back home. Tried doing it with my MacMini (same problem)
Then plugged it into my Powerbook, Partitioned it as Apple Partition Map, ran SuperDuper, rebooted from it fine.
My conclusion: The drive will boot a G4 just fine, but not an Intel based Mac.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

A workaround:
The drive enclosure also has support for USB "1.1/2.0", including the ever important cable.
I reconnected it to the Macbook, partitioned the drive back to GUID, then I used super duper to back the Macbook drive (again!). I used firewire (only because it was much quicker - 6Mb/s vs 2.8Mb/s)
Once I did the backup, I ejected the external drive, disconnected it, then plugged it back in with USB, then selected it as the start up disk, then hit restart. Machine rebooted just fine although very slowly.
Still doesn't answer the question of why booting via the firewire port works fine with a G4 mac but not Intel.
Tim

I just added two external firewire drives and they keep going to sleep. I did not have this problem when USB. I have turned off "put disks to sleep" in power preference.

I just added two external firewire drives and they keep going to sleep. I did not have this problem when using USB external drives. I have turned off "put disks to sleep" in power preference.

It is not clear if these are the same drives, just connected
differently, or different drives?
One thing that may be happening is that the drives firmware
itself is putting it to sleep when inactive. Many drives on
the market have ths feature and it is turned on by default
and require a drive utility from the manufacturer to disable it.

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?

Problems with External Seagate GoFlex Firewire Drive Disconnecting on Sleep Mode

I am Running a 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac running Mac OS X 10.7.3. I run time machine to backup to an external Seagate 3TB, FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, FireWire Drive. When the Mac goes into sleep mode, the Seagate drive un-mounts. When the Mac wakes up, I get an error that the drive was not properly disconnected and the drive is no longer mounted. The only way I can get the drive to remount, is to remove power from the drive for several seconds and then reconnect it.
I have seen several people talking about this issue in various forums with many various makes and models of FireWire drives, but I see no answers to this issue from Apple. Does anyone have a resolution to this issue, or are we just stuck with this problem? It is terribly frustrating!!!! The lack of response or interest from Apple is even more frustrating!!!

Wish I had an answer, or even a clue about this one. I have a Western Digital MyBook Studio that I've had for a fair number of years now and finally had to resort to just plugging it it as a USB device. Since it's only used for Time Machine backups and storing things I rarely need, it's not a huge burden, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a suggestion as to how to fix this. I recently upgraded from a 17" late 2006 iMac to a Mid 2011 21.5" iMac and would really like to go back to FireWire if it's not going to be a big-ole-pain in the hind end.

Weird Problem with Firewire Drive on 17" MBP

I have an external firewire drive that worked great on my 15" MBP and with any other computer I have never had any problems. The problem occurs when I plug the drive into my 17" MBP with the magsafe connected, it just wont mount, but as soon as I unplug the magsafe the drive mounts. Really weird. Anyone have a similar problem? I am going to the Apple Store and see if I can duplicate the problem.

I'd backup your files if you can. If the drive is failing then the advise you've gotten is good advise. You can try software recovery if you are unable to use the drive:
Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
If the above is not possible then sending the drive to a data recovery service may be your only option, and they are very expensive.

Problems with firewire drive

Hi all.
Ive got a problem I need help with. Just installed Final Cut 3 on this older G3. Would like to do a little editing at home. Have a 240 gig Lacie firewire drive that I would like to use as a scratch drive. The drive was originally used on a pc so I initialized it on the mack Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I can capture video to the internal Mac harddrive but not the Lacie. Capture stops after a few seconds. I have tried transfering captured video from the internal drive to the Lacie but I get an error message and it wont transfer. Any ideas what I need to do to remedy this situation?
Thanks
Rocky
g3 Mac OS X (10.3) 256 mb ram

This seems wrong. I have two firewire drives daisy-chained and then plugged into my cube, and on the other firewire port I have my cinema display's hub which leads to my ipod mini and my belkin mac mini USB and firewire hub, where I connect my DV camera for import. I have had no problems importing footage to my FW drives. I'd say don't plug the camera into the computer through the FW drive, just straight into the computer. If that doesn't work, try what the other guy said about either reinitializing it or use disk utility to check the drive and maybe verify/repair something on it.
-Brian

Firewire drives, project problems

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