LaCie Ext Firewire drive issues... Strange voodoo...

So this is kind of a mystery to me... and complicated... bear with me. I am running Mac OS 10.4.4 (Tiger) and I have a Bigger Disk LaCie Firewire 400/800 d2 drive. I ran a version of Tech Tool Pro that wasn't compatible with Tiger (I know - stupid). The result was a completely unrecognizable drive to the OS. Disk Utility wouldn't even initialize it at first. I had to start up from my Panther disc and run Disk utility there and zeroed the data on the drive after recovering the data.
Now everything seemed to be peachy however, every so often, usually when I am running an application that requires the drives attention whether it be Pro Tools, iTunes, Garageband - basically any app that needs to access the drive from time to time, forces the drive to not only freeze that application, but also freezes the Finder and makes it impossible for me to restart or do anything until I literally turn the drive off. The I get the usual device removal dialogue and everything returns to normal. Force Quit does not work in this case. I literally cannot get any application affected by the drives stalling to to Force Quit until I turn the thing off.
Then when I run Disk Utility or Disk Warrior (I wont let Tech Tool do anything now) it reports that there is nothing wrong with the drive. In addition, in the Disk Utility S.M.A.R.T. status it says that is "Not Supported" when I could have sworn that before I reinitialized the disc it would always say "Verified."
In order to perhaps help the problem I have diabled Hard Disk spindown as well as turned off Spotlight for that drive. I disabled spindown because it seemed that when the drive would go to spindown that it would freeze the Finder then too.
Could it be extreme fragmentation that is causing the problem? There are no weird clicks or mechanical sounds coming from the drive. The only thing that occurs is the blue light on the drive blinks continuously - when it does that and I get the beach ball of death I know I am screwed.
So sorry for the long post but if anyone could help me with this problem I figure they would have to have the whole story.
Unfortunately I am leaning towards the dying drive theory - it would be the third drive to die on me this year alone.
Any and all help is much appreciated.
Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi Andrew
Firstly I don't believe the S.M.A.R.T. status will show anything other than "Not Supported" because FireWire drives are not supported - only internal drives.
Secondly your description makes me think there may be something wrong with the power supply (not exactly unheard of with LaCie drives). However I am not 100% sure - but it may still be worth checking out even if it is just to eliminate the possibility.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.7) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, iPs, AEBS, AX

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It seems you have tried most things in my firewire faq; I'll post it here in case you missed something.
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Firewire drives

I have a Lacie 500gb firewire drive which is no mounting on the desktop of my computer. I have a total of 11 drives including the Lacie. I have not had any problems with my set up until now. The drive still cycles to seem like it was going to mount on the desktop. Any ideas on how to get files out of the drive. Is the drive still useable. Please let me know all what can be done or do I have to bring it to a computer still.

Hi Brian Fass-
If you have another identical drive enclosure with the same power supply brick, try swapping the power supply with a known good drive and see if that works.
I have a lot of experience with LaCie drives. It is possible for the power supply to fail, yet the little blue light still comes on and the drives still spin up.
If you find it is the supply you can actually order it directly from LaCie for around $20.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

LaCie Ext Firewire drive issues... Strange voodoo...

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