FireWire400 Drive disconnects randomly - Acomdata 250GB External - Help?

I bought a Acomdata 250GB External hard drive with FireWire400. It has worked beautifully for me for the past week or so. I used it with Time Machine and I also backed up files (movies, music, etc.) onto it which worked pretty well. I never formatted it or anything, just plugged it in and it started working. I use it in Windows sometimes using MacDrive - software which lets you access Mac formatted drives. I do this to transfer my Music to my Windows XP partition (Boot Camp) and things like that. Just recenetly (past 2 days or so) it disconnects randomly even when a file transfer is in progress. If I unplug and replug it, it sometimes fixes it. But other times I need to flip the power switch on/off for it to start up again. I feel like cutting the power like that must be bad for the drive. In my 2 weeks of ownership I never turned it off until I started having the issues, I just would let it spin down when I turn off the computer. I thought it got too hot so I let it sit for a while but I still have issues. I've heard you should totally unhook everthing (Firewire cable, power cable, then take everything out of your laptop (ethernet, Firewire, battery, etc.) and let them sit for like 30 minutes to get all power cycled and stuff. I'll try that now but can anyone throw me a bone? Please?

By the way, now I can't even get Mac to see it. I've turned it on/off, unplugged/replugged, what the crap.

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uname -a
Linux t61 3.18.6-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Feb 7 08:44:05 CET 2015 x86_64 GNU/Linux
smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [x86_64-linux-3.18.6-1-ARCH] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA
Device Model: WDC WD3200BEVT-00A23T0
Serial Number: WD-WXG1AB002023
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2054a2f6c
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity: 320,072,933,376 bytes [320 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is: Sun Feb 22 20:46:13 2015 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 7800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 93) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x7037) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 1
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 152 147 021 Pre-fail Always - 1375
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 4249
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 087 087 000 Old_age Always - 9983
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 4032
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 113
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 162 162 000 Old_age Always - 114798
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 115 096 000 Old_age Always - 28
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
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SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7530 -
# 2 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 7530 -
# 3 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 6969 -
# 4 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 5007 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 5006 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3168 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1270 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 944 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
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So it's like I want to continue watching a movie from external drive and then player crashes because my hard disk partitions got unmounted...
I'm wondering if it can happen because disk is underpowered (it's connected only to one USB port because I lost my original USB cable which had two USB plugs). Anyway it would be strange as problem occurs also when disk is 'idle' so then the power consumption is also lower I assume. I can only say this disk was working just fine when used as internal drive. Any ideas?
Last edited by jakub (2015-02-22 20:08:50)

Your recommendation to check cable was just - a good recommendation I played a little bit with the B connector and disk immediately stopped working. OMG it was so simple ;p Thanks. I have to buy a new cable (I hope the case is all right).
EDIT:
Confirmed with portable mp3 player. Cable (B connector) is damaged.
I just won't delete this thread as it's a perfect example to show that basic stuff and simplest things should be always checked first !
Last edited by jakub (2015-02-22 20:28:26)

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Hi - I have been on the phone with support 4X since late December - all good calls. They have been scratching their heads on this issue.
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Message was edited by: jinglada
Message was edited by: jinglada

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FireWire400 Drive disconnects randomly - Acomdata 250GB External - Help?

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