Firewire ports causing "initilaized drive" issues?

So this is now the second time this has happened to me, and since it was with a 4 day old drive I'm a little concerned (especially as it was used to recover files from ANOTHER drive that got erased...)
i just plugging in my new Western Digital 1tb Mybook Studio external drive using the FW800 and got a message saying "unable to recognize drive, initialize, cancel" etc.
Because it was new, i just hit cancel (glad I did...)
Plugged it in again, and all was fine. This had happened before a few months back with another drive only using the FW400 port.
Is there something WRONG with my Firewire ports that could be causing this? I've NEVER had an issue with USB (but these are scratch discs for video so they need to be FW). Im really concerned that this could fry my drive... which would be bad. cause i have a lot of important data on these suckers.
any ideas?

You are not alone....
My attention grabber:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1917005&tstart=0
main thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1910899&tstart=0

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ITunes 7.1 causes DVD drive issue?

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I upgraded to 7.1, after which my computer stopped recognizing my DVD drive.
usually, that sort of thing is associated with a device filter conflict in the registry. (although it usually doesn't hit Toshibas ... Packard Bells from the UK are most commonly hit by it.)
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ISight Firewire Hard Drive issues? Anyone?

Hey there, I just picked up a refurbished 1.83 Core 2 Dou Mac Mini, and I've got a weird issue going on.
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Thanks!

Hi RocketChicken-
Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards.
iSight cameras are notorious for being picky about what else is connected to the FW bus. Does it cause problems just being plugged in or only when it is on?
You may find more help in the iSight forum: Forum : iSight
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Firewire Driver issue

Anyone using M-Audio Firewire 1814 still experiencing Driver issues with Snow Leopard and LP9? There was an update on 11/13 and 11/14 but my Firewire still isn't working. Anyone got any ideas? This is absolutely crazy that M-Audio hasn't got itself organized. Make me think twice about purchasing another one of their pieces of equipment. This is crap!!

Thanks guys for replying - I'm very grateful.
I have reset PRAM, bought a new FW cable, de-installed and reinstalled OS X and APOGEE user interface. I do not have any other FW devices unfortunately but I can try it on friends so will do that to rule out a hardware fault. The mini has only been in my possession since early jan and it was a completely clean unit - no apps or software etc.
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Why would the Firewire Port and/or External DVD-RW suddenly not work?

Hi, it's me again. I swear, I must be destined to just use Windows machines...
Anyways, I have a used/refurbished iBook G3 500MHz 320MB RAM Dual USB (1 Firewire)laptop running OS 10.2.8 that I bought a few months ago. I went and purchased an external Firewire/USB 2.0 DVD-RW drive as I only had a CD-ROM drive on my machine and I wanted the option to burn CD's or watch/read data from DVD's (I know that with my slow processor writing DVD's -other than data- would be a stretch and have other machines to do that with anyways so it wasn't a concern really). I received it and installed it, also installed the free version of Toast that came with it, and the drive worked fine. I have not needed to use the drive since then and have not used the laptop much at all since then really, but I do need to say that I did end up adding a new user account, though I can't remember if I changed the original Admin account and then still have the one I created myself when I first started the laptop after I bought it (had a fresh install of Jaguar on it, but I have no disk to re-install with if needed) or if I created a separate (new) account and ended up deleting the Original Admin accout (I know in Windows, you cannot delete the original Admin account but I do not know if that is the same for OSX or not). I did this as I wanted a master Admin account that I just wouldn't really use and then wanted the other as my main account (and use it to connect to my home windows network) and for some reason it would not let me put a check in the box to allow that account to do so (from either Apple or my user accounts) and so I know that my main user account now is set up to allow it (was it the old Apple user account or a new one, I can't remember- sorry).
Ok, so that is the back story to my problem, which happens to be this:
I just bought a new chip of RAM (512MB to make it a machine with 576MB RAM total) and as I had been looking at getting OSX Tiger (but didn't want to do it without the extra ram and had been considering Panther instead as well), I thought it was necessary if I wanted to not bog down my machine. I bought the Install Disks on DVD for Panther, as well as an upgrade disk (DVD again) for Tiger, therefore letting me use the External Firewire DVD-RW to install Panther, and if I liked I could go ahead and upgrade to Tiger (and if I didn't like it too much, or it slowed things down too much etc, then I could always go back to panther and have both available for future options). The extra RAM coming in handy here definitely.
So I was going to install the RAM today, and decided to go ahead and test out the External DVD to make sure it could boot from it (before making any changes to my system) and then go and install the RAM, and after that, install Panther to start... But I plugged all the cords and cables in, used my laptop with AC power even, and I could not get the External to show up at all... (kinda like the very current post right below mine but for the G4- it worked before, but now the firewire External just does not show up).
I only have USB 1.1 on this laptop obviously, and I don't even know if you could do a boot from an external with USB 2.0 if my laptop had it (the DVD player does). I was recommended to boot with an external firewire DVD or firewire to another machine with DVD capabilities to do the install. So my problem right now is getting slightly bigger, as of course, I can't seem to momentarily find the stuff that came with the External (spare USB cable to check and see if the laptop will recognize it at least with that and to show it is the firewire that is not working properly, or the disk that I used to install it -might have been only used to install Toast free version if it didn't need any drivers, but I don't know where that or the instructions for installation sheet currently is -- I am looking for it, but I have switched bedrooms just last week and I also seem to be missing a few other Windows laptop disks as well so there is a good chance that they are all together, I just need to figure out where, heh.)
I am waiting currently before installing the memory, though if I don't get the External working tonight, I may go ahead and do it first as at least I will have more memory on my laptop then, until I can get other stuff functioning and be able to do the Panther install.
But my main question is, is there something that would cause an installed external to suddenly not show up in OSX? Since I hadn't used it since that one day, and it was unplugged from the laptop itself, would that end up doing it, or more likely, the changing of the user accounts (though I have been trying to test it with different types of media and through both of my user account (which are both "admin" ones), though I do still have one of those being an account that was on there when the External DVD was first installed, so it really shouldn't have done this at all (one would think). So how big of a chance is it that the firewire has somehow gone dead and this is the main culprit to my wasting the past 4 hours on this???
I am currently scavenging around for an extra USB cable to try and test the External that way and will post the results when I can... I love the look and idea of macs, now I have a mac and want to upgrade it even, but why is it that whenever I attempt to use it after having not used it for a bit (and try to make the iBook feel better by using it more as I am sure it feels sad and alone sitting on the shelf while my Windows Laptop gets more attention), or try to fix it when it can be made better (and therefore used more often), the mac (all macs really), just seem to get all pissy and cause problems and make me spend hours upon hours trying to get things to work again??? You have to admit it, I am "mac cursed"... sigh I can program in 4 or 5 computer languages and am very advanced at many tech things (the ones I am not as good at I am still usually Average or Medium skilled) so it makes me wonder why I have so many tech problems with Macs when they are supposed to be the "easy" OS to use...

Actually, I think I have it all working now. After going back to the Plextor Website, I found out that the switch between the USB and 1394 ports only gets activated (switched over to the other) with you turn the device off first, move the switch and then turn it back on. I was sure that I had done this with the ibook, but maybe not as when I went back and did it with first the USB and then the Firewire cables, it did work. I definitely knew that I had not done this with the Windows laptop, the reason it would not have the USB work for me on it.
but back to the iBook, I was confused as it was only showing up as a DVD-ROM (which I guess is what they do until you actually open up the burning software to then be able to burn to it), and it also had the wrong Model #, which after more research, showed that it was the Internal DVD drive model version (PX-708A) compared to the actual model version (PX-708UF) which is the USB/Firewire (External) model. The firmware was really out of date as well (from June 2004 I think, v1.06) and they had v1.12 from Spet/Oct 2006 available so I went to get that (which was a hassle). They had nice easy Windows self extractor/installer packs, and then the BIN files for use for all systems (Sun OS/ Mac OSX/ Mac OS/ Linux etc as well as usable for Windows), and those needed a special Firmware Updater Application which was OS specific. Only I had the hardest time trying to get the OSX one as it would send me to a FTP site and not give me any clues as to which file(s) I needed to get and the Mac OS version was just for older 9.2 or below versions and didn't want to install under the OS Classic mode.
I ended up using my windows computer which made it easier to view with the FTP stuff as I have FireFTP in Firefox, and downloaded the files I thought I needed (to test out), and then realized my silliness, and just downloaded (as well) the Windows Auto Extractor/Installer as the Firmware is the same for all OS's, just the way to install/update it was different... So I hooked the DVD drive to my PC and updated the firmware, checked it out on here before moving it back to the ibook, where I checked that it still worked and had the new update version showing, which it did, and now I have my fully working and newly updated drive ready for the OSX installations... I had attempted to update my Jaguar system as well while online, but it had no new updates available (I guess those were all mostly Tiger updates that were just recently released).
I am now off to install my additional RAM, and after checking that it all shows up correctly, I will go ahead and do the Panther Install (and test it out and see if I like it or not).
For anyone that currently uses Panther on any mac, are there still any major problems I should know about before hand, or know about things that they have mostly fixed (like the issues with Firewire ports and External Drives that they had around the time Panther was first released for example)???
Thanks to all that helped... I now know to attempt an "eject" of any external HD (which I do have one that I will setup to use after I get Panther on the ibook) or CD/DVD drive instead of just unplugging the USB/Firewire cable.

Firewire failure causing long boot time

Hello, I have an issue where my firewire ports seem to have failed. It takes around 10 minutes for the mac to boot up. The only fix I found for this was to disable the firewire ports from loading up, then it will boot normally. there are 2 firewire ports, 1 800, 1 400, I fail to see how both can fail at the same time. If I enable the ports(and wait 10 mintues for hte mac to boot up), it says unable to list firewire devices. Any ideas on this?

Well initially I put a new HD and memory in(thinking one of those was bad, especially when I would run the disk repair utility, it would always find errors). After that failed I watched the post on bootup then looked at the system log and noticed an error(I can't remember it now) but after googling that error I discovered it was the firewire ports causing the issue(which I then disabled them by moving a file so the firewire ports wouldn't load) I will try to find the exact error message I was receiving and which file was removed.

Firewire Ports Quit Working

Suggestions please.
Firewire drives that have always booted are no longer recognized at the firewire ports. The drives are confirmed perfect on other computers. It's not a drive issue. Nothing radical changed, just one day it no longer showed up. It's like something just turned off the firewire ports.
Is there anything hardware or OS that could simply shut off the firewire ports, or does this sound like a motherboard issue?
Thanks in advance!

Could be hardware related, but look at these links.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US
What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Dealing with FireWire problems (drives not mounting, devices unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908
 Cheers, Tom

Disabling the Firewire Port

Okay, so long story short, I got some Axe Bodywash got stuck in my Firewire port. This is causing electricity to "boil" the shampoo in the firewire port, causing smoke and a horrendous smell to come out of the port. It's already completely useless now, but I keep getting notifications saying that my Firewire Port has been disabled. Now, it's turning off and on again because I keep getting these notifications. How can I permentantly disable the function of the port for safety purposes and since it's draining battery at a much faster, noticable rate?

I would opt for getting the port professionally cleaned. Take it into a Apple Store.

USB/FireWire Ports Issue

So before I go into the apple store and ask for this computer to be repaired/replaced, I would like to see if anyone knows if something can be done about this issue I have pinpointed..
Basically when I have more than a few USB/FireWire ports connected, one or more of the devices does not function properly. This has happened with two external hard drives - which should have no problem being connected simultaneously.. When I try to eject one of them, I receive a message stating that it cannot be ejected because one or more programs may be using it.. although all programs are closed, causing me to have to force eject..
Also, I plug in one drive and open the other in finder to back it up, and all of the folders in the drive are suddenly empty.. nothing inside. I go to Get Info.. Zero KB.. I try ejecting, but receive the same message, so I force eject, plug it back in, and wala, all the files are back in the right place..
This has also happened in the past when my cinema display and a printer were plugged in simultaneously.. the computer won't detect the USB of the cinema display -- which only means that the speakers of the display won't work + no brightness control from the keyboard.. so i let it slide.. but now with this external hard drive issue, i need to solve the problem..
Thank you for reading..

Same here. Since a few weeks, my MacPro ejects USB HDD's as soon as I write or read data on it.
(no I haven't installed something new at this time and all HUB's and HDD's have their own power supply, and yes they have been exchanged, so its not a broken cable or so !!!!!!!!)
After a reset of the NVRAM and PRAM its better for an hour or so, then starts to eject again. I've seen a lot of communities with exact the same question, but never a solution for it. There is also nothing in the support tab of apple.
Hope someone here can help me out or due to the fact that this is a AplleSupportCommunity, a Apple-Employee may starts to do his job and help this huge amount (I guess there are hundrets or tousand) of mac-user with exact the same problem....
btw: don't agree with MACATTACK2010 that this is a hardware problem, cause there are a lot of people in the
net that ask the same question with brandnew Hardware. I think it's an OS or an Update Bug, or may both.

Firewire port disabled by G-Drive

What would cause my Mac Pro to shut down one of its firewire ports?
I just got a 1TB G-Drive and hooked it up to one of the FW800 ports on my 2008 Mac Pro (running 10.5.8) in place of my current Freecom drive that's been running perfectly for a year and more.
Powered on the drive, then the Mac and... nothing. Tried hot-plugging the drive: still nothing. Checked in Disk Utility and the physical drive wasn't visible. Plugged the Freecom back in and it wasn't recognised. Unplugged my Time Machine drive from the other FW800 port and plugged the Freecom in there and it came up straight away.
At this point I was getting a bit upset. The FW800 port I'd plugged the G-Drive into appeared to be dead: any FW400 or FW800 device plugged into it was ignored. Doing an SMC reset has brought it back to life, but I'd like to know what could cause this since I now don't dare plug the G-Drive into any of my computers in case it kills them.
Any suggestions?

FWIW, I had a similar issue recently, and the culprit was a faulty drive-interface connection.
If other FW drives are working, with the same cable, it's most likely a defective G-tech unit you got .
Also, if one off your FW ports goes down, don't panic, just reboot and wait a little while, it might come back on.

Firewire ports not responding to external drives.

I have a LaCie 250 gig and it was working fine until I plugged a power book into one of the firewire ports. Not only did my G4 not recognize the power book, it also stopped recognizing my external drive.
The .mac site said to unplug everything and restart the computer to reset the firewire ports. Which I did and nothing changed. Figured it was a lost cause so I used the USB instead.
Then, one day, I tried it again to see what would happen and it worked. The firewire went back to normal and everything was fine.
The other day, I plugged my Canon XL2 into the firewire port and it shut everything down again. So, now I'm without firewire and back to USB for my external drive.
The firewire DOES turn on the drive, it just doesn't recognize that there's anything plugged in.
Thoughts?

1. Shut-down your Mac, and unplug the power cord
2. Turn the power off on your external FireWire devices
3. Unplug the FireWire devices from the Mac
4. Wait for 5 min.
5. Plug the power cord to your Mac only
6. For PPC Macs: Restart the Mac while holding the Option-Apple-O-F, and keep holding until you get the ">" prompt, then release the keys
7. At the ">" prompt type:
      reset-nvram and hit the Return key
      set-defaults and hit the Return key
      reset-all and hit the Return key
the last command will restart your mac
8. Shut down your Mac
9. Connect all your FireWire devices to the Mac and turn them on
10. Restart your Mac.
All your FireWire devices should reapear, if not repeat the procedure
How to avoid the issue :
The only really proven way to avoid burning up a FireWire port is to connect all devices and to turn them on PRIOR turning on the Mac. Likely, one must unplug them and turn them off AFTER the Mac has been turned off. If you need to connect another device, then you're on for a shutdown of your machine...  It's a tad annoying but it guarantees that the FW ports won't be damaged.  Be careful when using self powered devices such as webcams, iPods, hard drives or hubs, as they can destroy the port pretty easily. Another thing is to avoid daisy-chaining hard drives.
When the FW port doesn't respond anymore :
In this case, peripherals won't be mounted upon plugging, and won't be displayed in Apple's System Profiler. The self powered devices will still be fed by the port, but won't respond either.  It happens that the PHY just hangs after a surge or a random problem. Once hung, the port will not respond any longer, it is possible to reset the component by going through the following steps :
1° boot the PPC mac in Open Firmware by holding [ Apple key - Option - O - F ] after the startup chime.  2° you'll get to a command prompt. the keyboard mapping will be QWERTY, so pay attention when you type the following :  RESET-NVRAM (enter)  RESET-ALL (enter)  3° Now the mac should restart itself and the port should function properly again.  If it still doesn't work, then it means that the PHY is damaged.
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/16/
From Kappy post:
922 is only used in dual drive cases to provide a "build-in firmware RAID support"
912 or 912+ is FW800, the "+" means USB2
911 is FW400
924 adds eSATA support along with FW400/800
MacSales, OWC Tech Support library is where I would go first, as they do tend to have or links to, firmware updates for Oxford.
From Wiebetech:
I just upgraded my Mac OS, and now I'm having trouble with my FireWire device. What can I do?
A: With nearly every OS update Apple releases, some external drives are not recognized after the update. The typical symptom is that the device will not mount but the volume is visible and grayed out in Disk Utility. This means that the device is working properly, but the OS does not recognize the volume as mountable. Sometimes the drive does not show up at all.
The first thing to do is to see if repairing Permissions with Apple's Disk Utility First Aid feature solves the problem. If not, try repairing the disk with First Aid. Another possible solution is to zap the PRAM. This is done with a keyboard command while rebooting. Restart your computer and hold down the Command, Option, P and R keys. Consult the Apple web site for details.
If this does not work, then try pushing the PMMU reset button on the logic board. Consult the Apple web site for locations of the button for your Mac. If the drive still does not show up, shut down, disconnect all peripheral devices, and boot from the Mac OS Installation CD. The later the OS version, the better. Do not reinstall the OS, but when the Installer is loaded up and ready to begin, go to the File menu and use the Disk Utility program. Connect the drive that is having problems, then start the Disk Utility application. If you see the external drive and it is not grayed out, you know the drive is okay. Run Disk First Aid on it anyway. Then run it on your internal boot drive while you are at it. When done, unmount the external drive and UNPLUG it! Then restart the Mac.
When the Mac has restarted and is running on the internal boot drive, reconnect the external drive.

I have just upgraded from a Macbook to a Macbook Air. I have been using a iomega external hard drive for Time Machine, which use a Firewire. However, Macbook Air's do not have a Firewire port and i cannot find an adaptor anywhere. Can anyone help?? Thanks

I have just upgraded from a Macbook to a Macbook Air. I have been using a iomega external hard drive for Time Machine, which use a Firewire. However, Macbook Air's do not have a Firewire port and i cannot find an adaptor anywhere. Can anyone help?? Thanks

There has never been a reliable firewire ---> USB adapter suitable for external high speed storage. This was a major issue when the MacBooks lost the firewire port a number of years ago (Apple subsequently brought it back).
The only high speed port on the Air is the ThunderBolt port. There are external ThunderBolt drive options out there, but they're somewhat more expensive than traditional USB/FireWire options.

Power shortage caused by mini-display touching firewire port.

I discovered if you touch the in firewire port with a mini-display adaptor the power cuts and you need to restart the machine.
Has anyone else discovered this happens or is it jsut this one machine?

Well that would create a dead short between the pins on the FW port, as the mini display adapter has a metal outer surround, I would think that it cause an issue with any machine as these pins are not intended to ever touch. BE CAREFUL!

Issue Using both Firewire Ports on 24" iMac

I just got a new 24" iMac with the 3.06 processor. I intend to use it with Pro Tools and other music making software. I have an audio interface that is firewire only and an external hard drive (where I store my audio files) that is both firewire and USB. The problem is that I when I use both firewire ports (800 and 400) at the same time, my Pro Tools starts acting up. And I found one post stating that this was a known issue with the 24". But that was back in May and I thought it would have been resolved by now. Anyway, when I use the USB port on my hard drive instead of the firewire, everything works. Also, on my 17" iMac PPC G5 everything works just fine on there, including using both firewire ports a the same time. Finally, I've got the latest updates on all devices involved. Has anyone experienced this problem or have any knowledge of it? Thanks in advance.

I've got a similar problem. I've got a WD external drive connected via FW800 and an Mbox pro 2 audio interface connected via FW400 to my 24" mid 2007 iMac. They both power on (the mbox gets it's power from the iMac) and are recognised by the iMac. However, the WD drive seems to take dominance at some point during start up. The reason I know this is because I was watching the LED on the Mbox light up as I sent it signal from the guitar and then it suddenly stopped lighting up. I tried daisy chaining the mbox to the WD but outcome was the same. Then tried chaining the WD drive to the Mbox (this meant the WD drive was now down to FW400 speed). It worked!!!.............until the next time I started up the computer. The WD drive wasn't recognised by the iMac.
I'm not impressed with the iMac's inability to deal with devices from both it's ports. Why put them on the machine if they can't handle it?
I bought the WD drive to work at FW800 speed and don't want to have to submit to USB 2.0 if I can help it.
Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks

Firewire drive issue

Not certain if this is the right place to post this. Sorry if it's not.
The ext drive was working great until the wildfires chased us out. Now when I set it up, it's lighting up but I can't access it. I don't have the same config of ext's but why would that matter? Does firewire need to be terminated? My hard drive used to live with the cam attached and that's not on there. Should that matter? What am I missing here?
Thanks for reading my miserable post.

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 didn't 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. Yours is the 10.4.10 Combo update ( PPC, not for Intel systems). Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still didn't 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! Also, here is Apple doc.#88338 on getting FireWire to work.
Here's another
Fw Faq.
 Cheers! DALE

Firewire ports causing "initilaized drive" issues?

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