Macbook causes external firewire drive to operate constantly

I have a Macbook 1.83MHz with 2GB of RAM installed. Whenever I connect my 80GB LaCie external firewire drive, the drive commenses to do a rapid cycle as if I were copying a large file to it and does not stop for the duration of being attached to the computer. Searching through files on the hard drive is very slow, and if I click on a file in column view, the finder beachballs for several minutes while the info or preview is being generated. The drive is the only device in the chain and worked great with my previous machine, a dual 867MHz G4 mirror drive.
Any thoughts as to what might be going on? Thanks.

well, i attached my other firewire drive and it started doing the same thing, but i was able to add it to spotlight's "ignore" list and the problem went away. so this is probably the issue, but i can't make it stop on the original firewire drive because whenever i try to add it to spotlight's ignore list, the beachball spins for a few seconds then nothing shows up in the list.
checked firmware, everything up to date. next step is to reformat...
too bad spotlight doesn't default to NOT indexing everything you stick into the computer... (or at least dump indexing way back in the priority queue so it doesn't get in the way like this)

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I have a new 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 macbook pro and my external firewire drive is causing the laptop to lock up

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Check with the drive's manufacturer to see if they might have a firmware update for the enclosure; it sounds like the enclosure's firmware isn't properly detecting the FireWire wakeup sequence.
Obviously this could also be a bug with the new MBP's firmware, so it wouldn't hurt to ask the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store; in particular, ask them to show you that the sleep/wakeup sequence on your MBP works with some other FireWire drive.

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I want to purchase an external firewire drive to run FCE4. I have a Canon HV-30 (Vixia). I have read that external FireWire drives do not work well with Canon DV cameras? Is this true of the Canon HV cameras? and if so, has anyone had success with a particular firewire drive model with this camera?

Hi(Bonjour)!
I don't know for this model but it's the implementation of firewire protocol on Canon's models that could make a problem.
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Michel Boissonneault

External Firewire drive does not mount on desktop now.

Greetings everyone.
G5 dual, 4.6GB ram, OSX 10.4.10, external firewire drive, formerly worked fine, now is invisible.
Not the drive. New purchase, worked fine until a restart. Not the cable. Power is getting from the G5 to the firewire drive. Not the port. I also have a firewire card instlaled so I have three ports to connect it to (and two on the FW drive). No combination works. Not the computer, the FW drive also fails to appear on an iBook. Not the OS. I did a clean install to make sure.
I'm not a newbie. I know what I'm doing. Until now! DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius and Apple's Disk Utility cannot see the drive.
The FW drive is a Powerbook internal HD inserted into a case, purchased seperately.
At my wits' end. Can anyone help please.

I am suddenly having this EXACT problem. I have two Firelite firewire drives (one 60G and one 80G) that are suddenly refusing to mount on my older dual 1.25GHz G4 tower. They are also suddenly refusing to mount on my non-intel iMac. They will both mount painlessly on my new Intel MacBook Pro, but that's not much use, since the point of the firewire drives is to transfer files between these computers. I'm updating all of them to 10.4.10 to see if that's the issue...

Trouble with installing 10.5 from an external firewire drive

I have a family pack of 10.5 and installed it just fine on my macbook. But, I'm having trouble getting my imac DVD player to read the DVD. It just spins and spits it out, and spins and spits it out. The imac is not covered under applecare so spending money to get the DVD drive fixed (which I barely use) is not something I want to do right now.
Anyway, I followed instructions on a this website to install 10.5 from an external firewire drive. (http://iuseapple.com/blog/apple-how-to/advanced-os-x/2007/10/29/how-to-install-l eopard-from-external-firewire-hard-drive/)
But I get stuck and am not able to actually get my imac to boot from the installer. Basically, I am able to use disk utility to create a copy of the disk image on my macbook. That resulting file ends in ".cdr" and it mounts when I double click it.
And I partitioned my firewire hard drive without problems.
I think I'm messing up when it comes to doing the restore. If I try to drag the .dmg mounted file in to the "source" it doesn't work (is greyed out). If I try to drag the mounted .dmg there than it works, but I get an error when I click "restore" (something about scans and images not being found). I tried physically copying the .dmg file onto the partition, but then when I plugged the HD into my imac, I wasn't able to get the imac to boot from the installer.
What am I doing wrong? If someone could walk me through these last steps I'd appreciate it!

Okay I finally got around to creating the bootable disk image of 10.5 using Carbon Copy Cloner. Still my iMac is not booting from the firewire drive!
Here's a recap of everything I've tried. I'm at a complete loss now!
- I partitioned the HD into 2 partitions-- a 10gig one for the 10.5 install, the then the rest for Time Machine. I make the partition in Disk Utility on my MacBook.
- I've partitioned the drive a few times-- always partitioning it in APM format (b/c it needs to boot my non-intel iMac).
- I've created the disk image using "restore" in disk utility. I've again tried this a few times.
- I am able to boot my MacBook from the disk image I create! So I know the FW drive is able to be used to boot from!
- Here's what I've tried in terms of getting the iMac to boot from the FW drive. It always just boots to my internal drive instead. Sometimes I briefly see a folder and question mark. I've tried all 3 FW ports. I've selected the install partition at start up in preferences. I've also held down the option key at start up (only my internal drive shows) and I've held down command-option-shift-delete and again I get the question mark and it boots to my internal drive.
- And I installed Carbon Copy Cloner and made the disk image that way on my macbook. Still, I tried everything and the iMac is not able to boot from the firewire drive!
Since my DVD drive is broken, this is the only way for me to install 10.5! Help!

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.

External Firewire Drive not Mounting

Hi, I've been searching these forums but can't find an aswer to my question. I just got a new 27" iMac, and purchased a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter. I have 3 external Firewire drives, two of which are DC powered (the third, I understand, might be a lost cause, as it's bus powered, and I gather the bus power from TB won't power Firewire drives). At any rate, I'm not seeing either of the DC powered drives showing up, which is a big concern as I have about 5TB of stuff on them!
Any reason these wouldn't show up, either in the Finder or Disk Utility? Much thanks for any help!

Hi - did you ever resolve the dropouts? I have a new iMac purchased in Q1 2014 and connect my G-Grive to it via the Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter. My iMac runs 24x7 and this connection drops out on a regular basis - I'd say maybe once every week or so. I have a slightly newer USB3 G-Drive which is connected by the USB socket next to the TB socket on my iMac.
I cannot tell if it is a software issue or a physical (cable movement issue), the plug has never been out and I can't deliberately disconnect it at will by wobbling the cable/plug. So, evidence and experimentation suggests the physical connection is not the issue. This problem has only come about after switching from a physical FW800 connection (my old iMac) to working via a TB adaptor (my new iMac).

External Firewire Drives Don't Mount.... i need a guru.

Warning!!!!!
i'm going to ramble....
2 much sake .. heh heh
i just got a brand butt spanking new iBook G4 14" 1.42 GHz
Tiger pre-installed.
I ran Software Update. As you can tell by my info, i'm at 10.4.2 now.
In a minute i'll tell ya how i got BACK to 10.4.2 from 10.4.5
When i got my iBook I didn't plug my external firewire drives in until (about 2 days) after my update. So when i did get around to building my iTunes library, well, no luck.
My firewire drives would and do NOT mount!
By the way these particular peripherals are Western Digital firewire
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=694&pcreated=1036793224
and AcomData Combo USB 2.0/Firewire
http://www.acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html
drives.
With a little exploration you'll find (at least i did) that they do not have firmware or driver updates for Mac. ( if you find them i'll give ya praise!)
The AcomData drive mounts with USB but not with firewire. The thing that
creeps me out is that my 3rd Gen firewire enabled iPod mounts right up no prob!
Another thing that ties me in knots is that these drives WILL MOUNT on my iBook12" running 10.3.9, as well as my old 5cH00L iMac DV 10.3.9!!!!
I thought it might be the Update so i did a clean install with the dvd provided by Apple and now i'm back to 10.4.2 but still no luck.
I've tried repairing permissions, starting, restarting, rebooting, plugging, unplugging, Updating, Downgrading, standing on my bloody head, looking all over the dotcom.
i swear i did all this with my peripherals unplugged.
i caught wind that though these companies may not provide updates for Mac, if i were to find out the companies that make the "chipsets?" within these drives that i might have luck.
i can't figure out what kind of "chipsets" (Oxford?) are in these drives or what to do if i knew anyway!
exhale
i still believe i have the best machine on the planet right now but .......
i need a guru.
help.
much obliged,
Clive
 G4 iBooks. iMac DV (graphite). gen 2,3,5 iPods Linux on the Pod too! Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Hi, Clive.
Here is some general troubleshooting advice that may help:
(1) Review the AppleCare Knowledge Base document "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device".
(2) If this problem occurred after installing a recent Mac OS X Update, and you are also unable to mount CDs, DVDs, or disk images perform the steps in this Mac OS X Hints article.
(3) The following additional steps will often help resolve problems with FireWire devices, particularly hard drives:(a) Power-on the FireWire drive before starting up (booting) your Mac.
(b) Reset PRAM and NVRAM.
(c) Reset the PMU or SMU: In the case of your iBook, I believe the article you want is "Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)." You can also check the manual that came with your new iBook.
(d) Try a different FireWire port. James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech, has published FireWire Port Failures in Host Computers and Peripheral Devices, a white paper providing backgroud information and technical analysis concerning the causes of failure for FireWire ports. This may provide additional diagnostic information.Note that some of the information above is from the "FireWire Problems" chapter of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X.
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

External Firewire drive not Mounting/Appearing!

I have a White macbook core duo and when I plug in the External Firewire Drive it doesn't appear anymore! The Drive draws power from the computer still yet the computer cannot detect the drive. I addition the when i ran Disk Utility the program did not load completely till i removed the firewire drive. I have a SmartDisk "FireLite" FireWire Drive (40gb.) Help PLEASE!!!!
Message was edited by: slverice

I had this problem too with my G5 (PPC) and brand new Mac Book.
Both of my computers were given the same local subnet address. To change this go to System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name, you'll see an "Edit" button, click on it and change the name or add a "2" to the end of the name before ".local"
I guess what is happening is both computers are using the same local subnet and your macbook isn't being recognized.
Mine works fine now, hope this has helped you!
Jay

Installing on External Firewire Drive

Hi-
My Mac has started doing some funny things recently; I cant connect any USB devices, MobileMe refuses to let me delete any items from my iCal and other little irritations.
I have an external 4Tb Firewire Drive which has loads of space on it free, so I want to do a complete re-install of OS X and boot from from the external drive. I can then reinstall my apps and stuff bit by bit and see what is causing the problems.
The question is: when I install the system onto the FW drive, will it erase what is already on there? I have some important work on it and don’t want to lose it! Does the installer need a ‘clean’ disc to install?
Thanks, Andy

Disk utility's Restore function (and other copying apps such as CCC) will make a bootable installation of Snow Leopard on an external firewire drive that already contains data. Just remember not to check the erase disk option for the firewire drive.
It's most convenient if you first collect all your user material on the firewire drive into one folder. And there is possibly a risk of something bad happening if some files in your user material have names identical to the names of files in the Snow Leopard installation. That may be unlikely. But you'll have to judge that.
If that worries you, before you do the Snow Leopard installation on your firewire drive, you can use disk utility to repartition your external drive without erasing any of its data. See this: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1395749. With such a large firewire drive, a number of partitions would seem desirable.
Then you can install a bootable Snow Leopard on an empty partition of the firewire drive for which you do check the erase disk option. With that option checked, the copy is performed as a block by block copy. Otherwise it's performed as a file by file copy. The block by block copy goes faster and is supposed to be identical in all respects to the original. That's not so with the file by file copy -- though both provide equal functionality.
Your firewire drive should be partitioned GUID. You can use APM (and the copy will still be bootable) but you will not be able (I've read) to install Snow Leopard updates. You can't, alas, change the partitioning scheme without erasing your firewire drive.
Message was edited by: Roy Vincent
Message was edited by: Roy Vincent

HV20 Capture to External Firewire Drive

I'm here again, trying to help a friend who live in another country.
She says, "It seems that I can't capture footage from my camera (HV20) directly on to the external hard drive as my camera doesn't allow another firewire or
USB to be connected to the computer at the same time."
Any reason she would think this?
I know she's using a pre-unibody MacBook Pro with Final Cut Express. I don't know the details of the specs on hers (I will be asking her about that).
But shouldn't she be able to capture to an external Firewire drive? I'm thinking that when she plugs in the camera, the drive is no longer recognized. I'm in the process of getting more details from her.
Any help is very appreciated.

Of course she should be able to do it.
It should have 2 FW sockets, so she could use one for the camera and one for the FW HD.
Even if it had only one, she could daisy-chain computer, FW HD and camera.
A third possibility is to capture direct to the MBP's HD and then copy the media across to the FW HD. The media from a one hour tape can be copied in less than 10 minutes so it is no big problem.
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Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

Audio cutting out when using D2 external Firewire Drive

Hi,
I have just upgraded to Logic Studio, using the following setup:
Macbook Pro
Motu 828
AMT 8
Logic Studio
D2 Lacie 500GB Firewire Drive
As the MacBook's internal hard drive is not sufficient to record and playpack efficiently, I was advised to get an external Firewire Drive. Given that I have very little space on my laptop - (am running windows on a partition also) I am trying to save my logic files to the external HD. When creating tracks specifically using Audio Instruments, the playpack keeps cutting out.
I am connecting the HD via usb 2. I am also having to freeze the tracks in order to record more layers. There is lots of clipping and latency. I thought by using the external, this problem would be resolved.
The HD is not playing back the tracks fast enough, and keeps cutting the audio out. The audio cuts out everytime the blue light on the drive flashes.
I cannot save the files to the MackBook HD as there is notenough space.
Is there something very wrong with my setup?
any advice would be really appreciated.
ps. I am a bit of a newbie
thank you in advance.
Spy

Connect it via firewire 800. USB2 is not good for audio or video streaming.
I have 3 D2's connected to my mac pro, works like a charm.
good luck.

Lion mysteriously erases SSD partition on external FireWire drive.

I'm not sure whether this is a problem with OS X, my SSD, or my external FireWire drive, so please bear with me.
Recently, I have been having some hardware problems on my MacBook Pro, and decided to send my computer off to be repaired. Before doing so, I took my Corsair Performance Pro SSD (still on firmware 1.0) out of my machine so that I could boot it from my FireWire 800 drive (Oyen Digital Minipro) onto the school computers.
Both times I have tried this (and on different machines!) I was able to successfully load my laptop installation. Then, after a few minutes, everything would suddenly freeze up (beach balls, et al) and I would have to shut down the computer. Afterwards, the system would not let me boot back into the external drive, and Disk Utility in the host OS would show that my partition had been completely erased, and that I would have to reformat the drive and restore from Time Machine.
Is it possible that Lion doesn't like being booted from FireWire drives? My OS X installation is still on 10.7.3 (as I have not had a chance to update yet) so maybe the FireWire driver has been fixed since then? Could this be a problem with my SSD? Or could my FireWire drive be malfunctioning? I have used this enclosure with a non-boot hard drive without any problems in the past.
Sorry this question is so broad, but I am at a complete loss.

In the "Current" Volume Scheme, the 8GB partition is on top. The 85GB is below that. Originally, the 20GB partition was between them. There is no grey mass i.e. free space in the middle.
Is there a grey mass anywhere? top? bottom?
In other words, do the two white sections that represent the active partitions fill the entire block, or is there any other space that's vacant?
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Boot process hangs if external firewire drive disconnected.

I have an external firewire drive connected to my desktop at work. Time machine has been working well until someone disconnected the firewire drive. I didn't notice that it wasn't connected, but what I did notice was that the computer would hang at the grey screen during the boot process. Sometimes, I shut down the machine and then started it again, it would boot normally.
Then I noticed that the firewire drive was disconnected. Once I reconnected it, there were no longer any problems. I haven't seen any posts about this topic but I have heard from other folks at work that they have had the same experience.
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Hello, and thanks in advance for your guidance with this inquiry! I am considering upgrading from my PowerBook 12" to a current MacBook Pro 13": If I back up the PowerBook to an image via Disk Utility or SuperDuper and onto an external firewire drive and restore it there, will I be able to then use Migration Assistant to transfer that data to the MacBook-or can Migration Assistant be used only to transfer data directly between the two laptops? Thanks again so much, and a quick reply is especially appreciated since I may be selling my PowerBook tonight! : )
Best Regards,
Robert

Migration Assistant offers the option of migrating data from "Another volume" or something like that, which includes external hard drives. I used that option to migrate data from an external USB drive to my daughter's new unibody MacBook last December, when it proved impossible to migrate directly via Ethernet or FireWire connection from her old Powerbook running Panther. We cloned her internal drive to the USB drive using SuperDuper, and then the migration from that drive worked flawlessly.

Macbook causes external firewire drive to operate constantly

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