Lacie external firewire hard drive not recognised

I have an intel iMac and I'm trying to use a "LaCie Big Disk with Triple Interface" on firewire 400 but it's like the OS doesn't see it, not even in Disk Utility. The drive is formatted properly and shows up just fine using USB. I plugged the external drive into an old powermac g4 on firewire 400 and it showed up fine there. I know the firewire ports work on my iMac are working because I put it in target disk mode and I could see it's files on my powermac over firewire 400. I tried swapping cables too, but no luck.
I was having this problem on 10.5.8 so I formatted and installed 10.6, but that didn't help. Does anyone know how to get this drive to work on firewire?

ChemBot01:
A guess. Could it be that your computer only works with Firewire 800 and not 400 but if you connected your computer to the external HD what I suggest shouldn't be the problem. The iMac I have only has 800 so I have to connect via USB whereas with the computer I had before had a 400 port but not this one. I can connect if I have a 400 to 800 connector. Anyway, just a thought.

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External USB Hard Drive Not Recognised / Seen

Hi,
I have a WP 250 GB External hard drive which was working fine until recently and now is not recognised by my 2007 Intel Macbook. When I plug in the hard drive, a light comes on solidly and it begins whirring. Then, it continues to whirr as if it was going to work, but the light starts flickering.
It is not visable as an external hard drive in finder. 'View Hard Disk' is switched on under Finder / Preferences. On System Profiler, when I click 'USB' fom the list on the left, the computer displays the circular "thinking about it" spinning thing, and system profiler freezes, and nothing else happens. The same thing happens with disk utility.
I tried plugging the hard drive into a windows computer, and it worked fine; all the files inside it were visable. It is formatted to my mac and I have successfully used the hard drive many times before. A logical next step would be to try it on another mac but I don't have access to one.
I have tried to to a PRAM reset, but couldn't do it, even following the instructions on the MAC website (turn off computer, turn on and hold the mac button, ctrl, p, and r simultaneously) it wouldn't do a PRAM reset.
I am not a computer expert, but I am not completely green either. Why is it that doing the simplest thing on a computer requires a minimum of a 4 year computer science degree or equivalent.... somebody please help me crack this, I am close to smashing the whole thing to pieces with a hammer (which would be satisfying but counterproductive and expensive...)
Thanks in advance for your replies

Did you allow Windows to upgrade the formatting on this drive from FAT to NTFS recently? You should be able to check the formatting on the volume from within Windows. It would also be worth trying to repair the drive under Windows if it allows you to.
Note that NTFS is not readable under OS 10.4.x without special software. NTFS is read-only but not writable under OS 10.5 and later.
If the volume isn't NTFS, and repairing it doesn't help, you may need to just backup the data and try to reformat it.

External Firewire Hard Drive is not recognized

Hello
I have a LaCie External Firewire Hard Drive (like this one (http://www.lacie.com/us/support/support_manifest.htm?id=10105). Since it uses a fireware 400 cable, I bought a FireWire 800-400 adapter, the one from moshi that is sold in the mac store.
I have tried connecting it to both ports in the external harddrive, connecting and disconnecting and still is not recognized. Any idea and suggestions?
I already tried in another computer, with windows xp, and the hard drive works.
Thanks.

Hi, oops, I have more than 1 mac & I apologize for assuming you are a multiple mac owner..
You could visit your local Apple Store or Local Apple Approved Service Agent.
You could try connecting via USB if your external HD has the capability, it could also be a bad cable.
You can check the Finder -> Preferences & the Show These Items..
You can reboot with the Ext HD connected & see if it shows up on your d/top...L

Installing Mac OS X on an external firewire hard drive.

No matter what I try, I cannot get my Mac mini to boot from the SuperDrive, in order to install the Mac OS X operating system onto my external firewire hard drive...
The Mac mini always recognises the external firewire HD, each time the system boots-up which is good, however it also boots-up from the internal HD, automatically.
Any suggestions ?
I have also noticed that my external firewire HD does not appear as an option as a Startup Disk, under System Preferences...
Regards,
Howard Pew.

I have used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the Mini's internal HD to the firewire external HD, and now it appers as a Startup Drive under System Preferences...
I have also noticed that I must first turn-on the ext. firewire HD and then after a few seconds turn-on the Mini.
And, yes, I was using the original DVD-ROM System Install Disk that came with the Mini, when I was trying to install Mac OS X onto the ext. firewire HD...
Now, I still cannot get my Mac Mini to boot from the ext. firewire HD, even with a clone copy of the internal HD. I keep selecting it as my Startup Disk under System Preferences and even lock-it, but this does not seem to work.
Now, I use the 'Alt' key (for Windows PC keyboards) which is the 'Option' key for Mac keyboards, when the Mini is booting up. This gives me a choice as to which HD I want to boot from... However, I cannot seem to change this from the default internal HD. It gives me a large arrow to use, in order to change the HD, but I cannot seem to use this large arrow from the keyboard. And the mouse just stays in the top left-hand corner of the screen. I know, if the mouse curser were free, I would be able to change the large arrow and boot from the ext. firewire HD...
Any suggestions ?
Regards,
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EMac and FCE using an external firewire hard drive as a Scratch Disk

I am about to purchase a new hard drive for use with FCE as a scratch disc.
I am looking for people who are "actually" using an external firewire hard drive as a scratch disc with FCE on an eMac.
I am interested in the following info.
1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
I blew up 3 eMacs last year. Apple could not figure it out or anyone else.
I was using a Lacie P3 250/8mb firewire drive as a scratch disc.
Thanks in advance.
eMac 1.25ghz/1gb RAM/160gb HD/Superdrive Mac OS X (10.3.9)

1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
I have two LaCie Porsche drives, one 160 GB and another 250 GB (more like 159 GB and 233 GB in actuality).
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
They're both 5400 RPM if memory serves me. The 160 drive has 2 MB cache and the 250 has 8 MB cache.
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
The 160 GB drive caused me some problems, but I'm chalking most of that up to a bad FireWire cable. LaCie replaced the cable for free, and I haven't had any significant problems.
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
Since I've got a 15" PowerBook, I'm limited to 1 Firewire bus, so the two drives, a LaCie DVD burner, and my Sony Handicam are all daisy-chained together. Having the Handicam on the bus tends to slow things down, but I can certainly capture to the drives with no problems. If I'm doing a lot of editing, though, I'll unplug the camera to speed up the bus.
I use the 160 GB drive primarily for backup, storing finished projects, and storing stock footage. The 250 GB drive is used solely for video capture and render.
The only thing I might caution you with is that the LaCie Porsche drives are rather picky about how they get turned on and plugged into the FireWire bus. You need to plug the power in, turn them on, and THEN plug in FireWire -- it won't work if you have FireWire plugged in when you turn them on. It's not a big issue, as long as you're aware of it. (It could be that my PowerBook is a little wonky, too.)

How do I start up an iMac G4 on an external Firewire hard drive using Tige?

How do I start up using Tiger from an external Firewire hard drive? I have a 1 GHz iMac G4 with 768 MB RAM. The hard drive failed last week. I don't want to buy and install a new hard drive for the iMac G4. I have access to an Intel based iBook and a brand new copy of OS X 10.5 (Tiger) which I can use to install the copy of Tiger on an external Firewire hard drive that I have that's not being used. What are the steps for installing Tiger on the external Firewire hard drive and then using that external drive as the startup disk for the iMac G4?

Hi
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Next attach the drive to your iMac, switch on your iMac. The mac should find for itself the first bootable system it 'senses'. It should boot thereafter. You could forego this and simply attach the drive, boot the iMac and hold down the alt key. This should bring up startup disk manager which should show any or all valid bootable systems. Select the one you want and click the right hand arrow.
Tony

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Hi Megabyte,
sad to say but Windows can not be installed to an external Firewire Harddrive.
And this is not a OSX BootCamp issue, but 'designed' by Microsoft to not be doable.
Only way I know is with an USB connected external harddisk and described here: http://tubeshards.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/install-windows-to-a-macintosh-usb-dr ive/
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I highly recommend that Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC as well. They are very stable and reliable due to their use of the Oxford 911 chipset and not the more common - and more problematic - Prolific chipset. I also use SuperDuper to make fully bootable clones of my internal drive for backing up everything.
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From the SoftRAID manual:
Fire hubs and disk drives. FireWire hubs are notorious for introducing errors and instability onto the bus.
Make sure that all of your consumer electronic devices (iSight, cameras, scanners) are connected to a separate FW bus. These devices are not built to the same standards as storage devices and known for introducing errors onto a FW bus.
Cables. While most cables work fine with a single device, many cables will introduce errors when 2 or more disks are connected to the bus.
http://www.softraid.com
http://www.softraid.com/demo.html - manual and demo
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iMovie Discussions

Using an external firewire hard drive + interface at the same time?

Hi Guys,
It seems that the issues I am having with BFD2 not streaming properly might be to do with the slow USB transfer rate. (Thanks to everyone who has helped with this issue!)
So... I am thinking of getting an external firewire hard drive for my iMac.
Thing is, my audio interface also uses firewire (Mackie Onyx 1220)... can they share using a hub? Will one slow the other down? What if I also run another hard drive on firewire for my audio, will two FW drives and the audio interface all be able to share the one firewire port using a hub?
At the moment, all my drives have their own direct USB port, is going to shared firewire a step forward or a step backwards?
Cheers and thanks,
Mike

Gorwel Owen1 wrote:
On my G4 (roughly 30 % the power of your MBP)
Is this with an external drive and interface?
No Interface (yes, I use built in audio), but that shouldn't make a difference in CPU use.
I have four Internal drives. But that shouldn't make a difference either
That is very dependent on what you put on these tracks
I was thinking mainly about recording i.e. 8 simultaneous tracks whilst playing back up to about 16. I generally avoid plug-ins until mixing anyway. Sounds like I should be OK.
Absolutely.
but when logic overloads (when the CPU can't process audio in realtime anymore) Logic simply stops playback.
When I tried using a drive and interface on the same bus a few years ago I experienced minor glitching rather than stopping. Perhaps Logic has been improved in this respect.
P.S. How do you 'quote'in the forum?
Just above the field where you type replies in, there are 5 symbols - they are buttons.
The first three work on selected text (making it Bold, Italic and Underlined). The abc-tick is spell-checking and the " sign means Quote. When you click it, the message you reply to is inserted wherever your cursor is.
The preview tab lets you see how the message will look, giving an opportunity to edit. You cannot edit in preview mode though, just look. Only in Compose can you edit.

External Firewire hard drive won't mount after 10.4.10 update

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Can PB boot from an External Firewire Hard Drive?

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Photon2:
Yes, you can set up your external firewire HDD as an emergency boot drive.
Here's what you need to do:
1. Your HDD must be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2. (Optional) I suggest you partition your HDD so that the first partition is roughly equivalent to the size of your internal HDD. The rest can be partitioned for other uses. (See Dr. Smoke's FAQ Backup and Recovery) For step-by-step for formatting and partitioning please post back).
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Cheers
cornelius

Installing a Time Machine Backup to an external Firewire Hard Drive

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Figured it out!

How to move iTunes Library/Media Files to external firewire Hard Drive and make it the master library, and then point iTunes to that when adding new content??

How to move iTunes Library/Media Files to external firewire Hard Drive and make it the master library, and then point iTunes to that when adding new content??

Copy your ENTIRE iTunes FOLDER to an External Drive...
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External USB hard drive not being recognized

Hello! I'm sure this has been posted before, but excuse my naivety with this sort of thing...
I have a mac mini 10.5.6 (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and I run the Time Machine function to an external usb hard drive. The hard drive worked fine (plugged into the usb port on an older keyboard), but I went out and bought a new aluminum apple keyboard (because they look so cool ^_^ ) - I plugged the external usb drive into the keyboard and it wasn't recognized, so I tried plugging the external drive directly into the mac mini, but it is still not recognized. It is not showing up in Disk Utility or in System Profiler
Help? I'd hate to have to give up this fancy keyboard...
Thank you!
Dr. E

I believe I had my external drive plugged into the (old) keyboard because with the old mac that I had didn't have a free usb port for it - so when I got the mini I just plugged things back in where they were. But I have always had the Time Machine back up to this drive (connected to the keyboard) though it has been slow (another reason I thought the new keyboard was a good idea).
I tried restarting the computer without the alu keyboard plugged in, but same problem of no drive showing up.
Here is what System Profiler has to say about my drive:
USB2.0 Storage Device:
Capacity: 93.16 GB
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x6830
Vendor ID: 0x04b4 (Cypress Semiconductor)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: DEF107920F07
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor
Location ID: 0x3d130000
Current Available (mA): 100
Current Required (mA): 0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
USB:
Capacity: 92.84 GB
Available: 53.14 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/USB
I don't know the brand or model as it has 'always' been in the case that in which it currently resides and I didn't physically buy the thing :\ I do know that no software was installed with the drive as I assumed that when I put all the old info from the original mac to the mini that it was the sort of thing that would carry over.
Sorry I'm not terribly helpful - Thank you!
Dr. E

Lacie external firewire hard drive not recognised

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