My iMac no longer recognizes external firewire WD drives.

This has occured twice in the past few months. The first drive was a WD My Book Studio 2TB configured as Raid 1. The more recent occurance on a WD My Book 4TB configured as Raid 1 and housing iTunes :-( The later occurred after loading the latest Lion Update after the iMac rebooted. Error messages say neither of the drives are recognized. Based on my thought that the issue might have been generated by the drives not properly being dismounted on a shutdown, I swithed the drives over to a PC, successfully mounted them, and then dismounted them. They are still not recognized by the iMac. The Disk Utility gives me an error regardless if I try to mount or dismount the drives despite it indicating the drives are not mounted. The iTunes drive is backed up as well as the Mac; but, I do not know what to do to fix the WD drives and I am especially leary of connecting anymore firewire drives since this appears to be hapening way too often and I do not know why. Any help from a great sage would be greatly appreciated, especially if I can recover the two drives.
Thanks,Glenn

Try resetting the SMC.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and ALL peripherals.
Wait 15 seconds.
Attach the computers power cable.
Wait another 5 seconds and press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

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Eric Root wrote:
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback
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Which external firewire hard drive for protools and imac?

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iTunes 10.6.3.25
QuickTime 7.7.2
FairPlay 1.14.43
Apple Application Support 2.1.9
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VoiceOver Kit 1.4.2 (222093/222742)
CD Driver 2.2.0.1
CD Driver DLL 2.1.1.1
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Apple Mobile Device Driver 1.59.0.0
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Gracenote MusicID 1.9.6.115
Gracenote Submit 1.9.6.143
Gracenote DSP 1.9.6.45
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Video Display Information
ATI Technologies Inc., AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
**** External Plug-ins Information ****
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**** External Plug-ins Information ****
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iTunesHelper 10.6.3.25 is currently running.
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UpperFilters: GEARAspiWDM (2.2.0.1),
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Track 1, start time 00:02:00
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The drive CDR speeds are: 4.
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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?
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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?
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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.

Problems Installing via an External Firewire DVD drive

Hi,
I'm trying to install Leopard from an external LaCie D2 (with LightScribe) DVD/DL drive via a Firewire cable.
I start the iMac (G5 20" SuperDrive is dead) via the "option" key, a screen with a choice between HD and Leopard Install DVD appears.
When I select the second option (install Leopard) I have the Apple Start Up screen (the grey screen with the dark grey Apple) but the spinning flower is missing. And the screen stays that way for minutes... Is it normal? Do I have to wait more? Is my iMac cursed?

Here's the problem:
1- the problem occurs when I boot, so the OS is "innocent"
2- when I load the start up menu (with the option key held down) I see both of the drives (HD and External Firewire DVD drive), so it can't be a "power" problem... (http://youtube.com/watch?v=MQs2n1vxpkw)
3- when I insert a DVD (movie for example), the drive reads it when connected via USB 2.0 and doesn't via Firewire, so the drive is unable to read (or reads slowly)? a Driver problem?
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Hope a fix is coming. No backups are scaaaary.

How to fix the problem of a missing external Hard Drive (Firewire) after it vanishes from you desktop after installing 10.4.10 update.
I have a iMac PPC (Non intel). Aparently my system upated installed the wrong version of 10.4.10 and thus my external firewire hard drives a 320 GB Westerndigital My Book, and Acomdata 80 GB, and aWestern Digital 160 GB media center all vanished from the desktop.
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1) Shut down you computer
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3) Restart holding down the Command (Apple) + Option + P + R keys for three startup bongs, then release the keys and your computer will start up as usual.
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5) Instal 10.4.10 Combo PPC
6) Restart Again
7) Again repair Disk permissions (None of mine needed to be repaired fyi this time)
8) Unplug Power cable and Firewire cable from External Hard Drive (leave along for 1 minute)
9) Reconnect power to Firewire External Drive first then the Firewire cable to the drive second, then the firewire cable from the Drive to the computer last.
10) Turn on your Firewire Drive... you will head it spin up and eventually show up on your desktop just like it did before the 10.4.10 update.

My iMac no longer recognizes external firewire WD drives.

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