? regarding firewire 800 load time

Hi all. I recently purchased a new imac i5 27" and at the same time purchased a G-Force 3TB Hard Drive. I keep my iphoto library and itunes library on the external drive and have encountered what I consider an annoyance but am unsure if it is normal or not. I have itunes and iphoto set to automatically open when my computer is restarted, as both libraries are on the external drive neither itunes or iphoto can load unless the external drive is fully operation and on the desktop once OS X has loaded.
When using either of the G-Force's Firewire 800 ports to connect to the iMac it takes 12-15 seconds for the G-Force hard drive icon to load onto the desktop once OS X has loaded. Of course by this time iTunes & iPhoto have both attempted to load and can not as the G-Force hard drive still hasn't loaded. However if I use the G-Force's USB 2.0 to connect to the iMac the external had drive is always loaded by the time the desktop comes up and this of course negates the problem I have been having with the initial load of itunes and iPhoto.
Is it par for the course that Firewire 800 takes longer to startup? It would seem counter intuitive to me but I don't have much experience with it? Or perhaps it's just this particular external hard drive (or it's FW 800 ports) that is causing the long initial load time, however that wouldn't explain why when using USB 2.0 on the hard drive I don't have this problem.
The bottom line is that for the meantime I will have to use USB 2.0 as I really like to have itunes & iPhoto open at launch. I can't say I'm loving the G-Force 3TB as this is my second unit, the first returned due to long read/write times, so perhaps not all Firewire 800 drives take so long to load? Any insight would be appreciated. Thx

Is it par for the course that Firewire 800 takes longer to startup?
No.
I have a 1.0TB external drive connected via FW800. I've partitioned it into three volumes. On booting or restarting, when the desktop is first displayed all three volumes are displayed with it. No delays at all.
The delay you experience could well be something peculiar to your drive.

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Firewire 800 External Time Machine Backup Drive Disconnects

Hi. Is this the Time Machine Firewire 800 external problem or Mountain Lion or the iMac Late 2009 model (iMac 11, 1): it doesn't happen often but it disconnects then OS X (10.8.2) would prompt that it should be ejected properly. After awhile it;s mounted again. How can I repair this? Is there a way to check if a firewire external drive (1TB) is still ok or if the firewire port is not damaged (I don't remove it often, almost not at all).
Thank you in advance.
God bless.

I don't know except that this kind of problem always seems to be reported by WD owners. I think I read that this drive tries to spin down or sleep or something in a way that is not liked by the Mac OS. That could be wrong - it's just a vague recollection.
Anyway, what do you have in System Preferences, Energy Saver, under "Put Hard Disks to Sleep..." I would try not checking that one, if it is currently checked.
charlie

Time Machine won't mount Firewire 800 drive after restart / Finder crashes

I've been having problems with Finder crashes. I first suspected Spotlight might be the problem because sometimes when I started typing a search, it would display the first 3 characters and then lock up. I could force quit the Finder, but it wouldn't relaunch and required the computer to be shutdown and restarted with the power button. Once restarted, I had no keyboard and no mouse click (the mouse would move across the screen but I could not click on anything). After waiting several minutes (3-5) the mouse and keyboard worked properly.
After some research suggested the Spotlight index might be corrupt, I forced Spotlight to rebuild the index (add the drive to the exclude list under "Privacy" and then remove it from the list) and then repaired disk permissions. After that Spotlight was noticeably snappier and I thought my Finder crashes had been solved until........
Part 2: I have been using Time Machine (connected to a Fantom GreenDrive via Firewire 800) for several months now and ever since the beginning, I have noticed that the drive will NOT mount after a restart. I must turn the drive off and back on again to get it to mount. After that Time Machine picks it up and seems to work fine.....well, that is until this Finder crashing thing started several weeks ago. Anyway, I inadvertently set up an experiment last weekend when I installed some software update and forgot to remount the Time Machine drive after the restart. That was last Sunday night. The computer did not crash all week long. I thought my Spotlight fix had finally solved my problems, but now it seems I was wrong. This morning (Saturday, six days later), I noticed my Time Machine drive was not mounted. I mounted it, told Time Machine to "Back Up Now" and went away for a few hours. When I came back the Finder was locked up.
So guess my question is this: Are there any know problems with using Firewire 800 with Time Machine? and What can I do to fix this? In the meantime I'm trying another experiment - I've disconnect the Firewire 800 connection and replaced it with USB.

shaneeudy wrote:
So guess my question is this: Are there any know problems with using Firewire 800 with Time Machine?
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Not in general. Some drives don't always wake or "spin up" fast enough; often that's seen when the system wakes from sleep, though, not so much after a system Restart. Many Western Digitals do that; I don't recall seeing any posts here about yours, but you might want to search the forums for Fantom
In the meantime I'm trying another experiment - I've disconnect the Firewire 800 connection and replaced it with USB.
Good plan - that may provide a clue.
Also, check with the maker -- there may be a firmware or driver update.
And try verifying your internal HD, and repairing your backups, per #A5 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Either might cause that.

Itunes Load Times

Hey all.
I would just like a bit of input regarding the Itunes load times? How long on average does it seem to take from when you first click on the itunes icon, until it pops up? Because it seems to take quite a bit longer than my other media players, and I was just wondering if I am facing an issue.

You have posted in the Mac forum, you will probably find more help in the Windows forum.

Time Machine backup problems with firewire 800 since Mavericks

Since I installed Mavericks about a week ago, I have had problems with TM not working with my LaCie external drive. At best, it would not back up when the mac was awakened from sleep mode and in use. When I would open time machine preferences, I would see the "preparing for back up" prompt that would last forever. Not only was it doing that, I have found that it would freeze my mac. I figured this out when I was not able to get my mac to respond from the login screen. It was basically frozen and couldn't log on. I noticed the back up drive light flickering but nothing would happen even with waiting a long time. I finally figured out that shutting off the TM EHD would unfreeze the mac and it would start functioning normal again. This was happening with my external HD daisy chained to another external drive that contains my iPhoto, iMovie and Itunes files. That drive was also connected to the mac using firewire 800. I tried many different configurations, switched the order the drives were daisy chained, tried different cables and even directly connected the TM drive with firewire 800 to the mac, but the problems still persisted. The strange thing is that when I connect the TM drive through USB, it works flawlesly and no hanging up of the computer. Thats what Ive been forced to do. I have my other EHD connected directly through firewire 800 and it works fine. I only have one firewire 800 port, and since it works fine with my other LaCie drive, it makes me think its not the port or macs hardware? I can only guess this is a Time Machine issue or something wrong with my TM drive? I have been in contact with LaCie and given them all these details but I have not heard back yet on what they feel the problem is. I thought I would post this to see if anyone else had some experience with this problem.

Forgot to mention I did that. Completely erased and reformatted HD and then reconnected to TM. Didn't help. I did have the mac hang up while installing Mavericks and had to eventually shut off the external drive. It did that to me the firs time I tried to install Mavericks and I lost all my data because it did a clean install after that. I had another back up on CCC so I just restored from there. This time the update to Mavericks transferred my data. I have had TM hang up my mac in the past on occasion, but I was always able to shut down the drive and then the mac would return to normal. Perhaps I should try to erase and reformat again?

My Fantom backup drive is failing. I want to copy the time machine contents to a new backup drive and continue on as if nothing has happened. Can I do this and if so how? I have intel iMac running Mountain Lion. Fantom Drive via Firewire 800.

My Fantom backup drive is failing and I have to send it in for warranty repair. Before I do that I want to copy the time machine contents to a new drive and then use it for the backup, continuing on as if nothing had gone wrong with the first drive. Can I do this? Is it as simple as duplicating the first drive and replacing it with the second? New drive arrives Tuesday PM and both drives have dual firewire 800 ports.

I have used the Disk Utility to verify the contents of the backup drive so I don't think I have any corrupt files. The drive just takes a minute or so to spin up to speed. If I turn it off and then back on, it beeps at me for a few seconds and then starts it's slow process of trying to spin. I think it's a power problem not a data problem. I have my fingers crossed that it holds on until Tuesday PM when the new drive arrives. I'm thinking that my two options are to duplicate the bad drive or partition the new drive and put the old backups on one partition and start afresh on the second partition. Any input?
And thanks to both of you for the valuable information so far!

Time Machine fails to backup HD and stalls computer when backing up to external HD (Western Digital WD5000MT) when using Firewire 800 but works fine using USB

I have a mid 2012 MBP (MacbookPro9,1) running Mountain Lion 10.8.2. When I start a Time Machine backup to an external Western Digital HD (WD5000MT) connected using a Firewire 800 cable, my open programs stop responding and in general my computer freezes up not allowing me to open activity monitor or the console utility. I can't even shut down or restart my computer and must hard boot to reset. Though removing the firewire cable that goes to the external HD can sometimes get my system working again. However, the WD external HD also has a usb port and when I connect it to my computer via a USB cable, Time Machine seems to backup my system fine without stalling my computer. This same external HD worked fine with Firewire 800 using my old late 2007 MBP running snow leopard. I should note that my brother has the exact same model WD external HD and he also had issues with the firewire port on his MBP running mountain lion. I have run the disk utility checking for disk/file permission errors and the drive itself seems fine. I initially formatted that drive as ExFAT but while troubleshooting reformatted to HFS+ and still had the same issue. I tested using a different firewire 800 cable but still had the same issue. Can't think of anything else to do. I don't have another firewire-compatible device to test if it is the HD vs the firewire port. I would prefer to use the firewire port for quicker transfer speeds but I'm stuck with USB for now. Any suggestions?

Maybe these will help:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11194
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275 (note - older article)
Have you tried looking at the Western Digital web site to see if you can find anything?
http://support.wdc.com

Iomega eGo 2TB USB/Firewire 800 drive not working with Time Machine.

The drive I had for Time Machine died and I replaced it with an iomega eGo 2 TB USB/Firewire 800 drive. Time Machine finds it and backs up the disk when I first boot up but then it seems like the drive goes off line. At that point, when Time Machine tires to back up it can't get the drive to respond and my system hangs. To fix that, I turn off the iomega that fixes the hang up and I get the disconnect without ejecting warning.
I ran disk utility and disk warrior. Both apps reported the disk is fine.
Can any tell me what's up? I'm running OS X 10.7.2
Thanks.

I am having this exact same error with my new iMac 21.5" connected to a brand new Iomega eGo 2 TB Desktop Firewire 800 External Hard Drive (Mac Edition - 34796).
The TimeMachine backup works fine, but as soon as the iMac goes to sleep and wakes back up, TimeMachine doesn't respond well to any commands and all sorts of errors appear on the screen.
I will try the tip here from Kappy and report back later if this works for me.
Kappy, one thing to note is that I'm using the Firewire connection from the iMac to the eGo and experiencing this problem. The eGo has its own power supply too.

LaCie 500GB External Firewire 800 causes crash every time its plugged in???

My LaCie 500GB Firewire External hard drive causes the computer to freeze every time I plug it in.
I just switched back to Mac from Win XP, where the LaCie was used for almost a year without a single problem. Supposedly, since it is formatted for XP use, it can simply be plugged in to my G5 (dual 2.3, 4BG RAM) and work just fine.
I've upgraded to 10.4.4 and still have issues. I've read this is a 'kernal panic' issue, etc.
What is the solution? I can't even plug it in and reformat it - as soon as it's plugged in the Mac collapses; the screen goes 'grey tinted' and an error message appears telling me to hold down the restart button and restart the computer. If I leave the drive plugged in, as soon as I've signed in on the restart, it crashes/freezes/collapses again, same error (i.e. it's circular).
There seems to be no solution. Any help MUCH appreciated!
Thanks,
Sarge

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
First find out if this is a Firewire 800 or 400 problem. Try connecting a Firewire 400 cable to the drive if it supports it. If it only has Firewire 800 ports, you may want to get a Firewire 400 drive to experiment to see if that's all the problem is.
After a forced reboot, it is also always wise to repair the directory if you are backed up:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
If it detects issues on your source drive that it can't repair, and you are backed up, then I would use Alsoft Disk Warrior.
If it detects no issues, then the problem probably resides in either the cable or the drive you are connecting to. Try a little process of elimination.

Time Machine Server - external firewire 800 RAID array incompatible??

Hi all
I originally posted in the wrong forum... so here I go again...
I have an XServe G5 connected to an 8TB RAID array via firewire 800 (running latest version of leopard server) purchased solely to act as a time machine server for a whole bunch of machines. A lot of money and resources went toward this as this is a vital part of our office. One of the machines is a completely decked out Mac Pro with 4x500GB Hard Drives striped for multimedia processing. (Thats why I need a HUGE backup partition on Time Machine)
Now, this was working for about 4 months. Some computers still see the backup array as a destination, but can't write to it, (just sit there for ever "preparing backup") and one machine successfully is still backing up to it.
But for the majority of the machines, when I try to set the Xserve external raid array as a Time Machine destination for the network, it comes up with a yellow "!" sign and "This disk drive may not support Time Machine over the network. Get more information about compatible drives" with a link that points here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306332
As you can see, that was completely not helpful, and now i'm wondering if I'll still have a job after the boss finds out I've just wasted his several thousands of dollars...
When selecting a backup destination for time machine backups, the array appears, but it always says "Failed" with an "i" next to Latest Backup in the system preferences, with the message "Backup volume cannot be found". Thats not true because i've so much as gone to the effort of actually mounting the dang drive in the finder... so its just not looking hard enough!
Here is some info about the external device:
It looks like a PC tower thing, with 8 firewire 800 ports on the back and 8 internal SATA slots. I purchased 8x1TB drives and inserted them in, and software partitioned them to create a giant striped drive (I understand that this might be a little unstable but its just a backup drive).
I daisy chained the firewire 800 ports on the back to output 2 cables, both going in the back of the xserve. Formatted fine, and works a treat. Except for the silly time machine thing....
I think what I am going to do is completely and utterly start again... go nuts one weekend and erase everything, every computer, every wireless router, everything, and start fresh. Since there have been so many little glitches here and there I just want them dead.
Well, if anyone has a quick fix, i'd appreciated it before the weekend

Hi everyone, Just thought I would give you all an update on how things went.
Lets just say that I got everything working fine... this is what I did.
1. I went through, completely un-raided and formatted the external 8 Bay firewire 800 drive
2. Completely reformatted XServe and reinstalled fresh (Probably not an option for a few, but I had a spare weekend)
3. Completely reformatted all client computers and reset all client accounts (Once again, probably not an option for most)
Essentially, I was starting out with a completely virgin setup and setting up for the first time. I installed the firewire 800 drives, and made them into a RAID again. Then installed Leopard server. Brought all the backed up files across, and when I plugged in the drive in Finder, it asked "Do you want to use this as a time machine backup" to which I said "Yes". It proceeded to create a backup.
When that finished, I went into server preferences, and selected the external as a time machine backup for the network. It worked...
I then went about everything like business as usual, and everything worked great. Still going... for now.
So thanks for all that helped, maybe try completely reinstalling everything and it may work.

Can't run Firewire 800 Drive and Firewire 400 Camera at same time?

I just bought a 1TB firewire 800 drive for time machine. Works great. Problem is, when I plug in my Canon DV via firewire at the same time the 800 is connected it doesn't work. I have to unmount the HD, turn it off, and even THEN it wont recognize the DV camera. I have to physically unplug the firewire 800 to get my Canon DV to mount. Amazing. Never had problems with the DV before. Is there some hardware reason why I can't run an 800 and 400 firewire at the same time? Any help would be great. Thanks.

Some DV cameras won't work with anything else connected to the FireWire bus (the FW400 and FW800 share the same bus)
... in particular Canon cameras (Canon firewire implementation) are very sensitive to other firewire devices.
Alberto

Firewire 800 external drive reccomendations for mavericks time machine?

I think I need a new back up drive after upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion to Mavericks. I like using the firewire 800 port so my others are freed up for other peripherals. Any suggestions? I've not been happy with the reminder that the WD I got a t the Apple store can't be read. Any suggestions?

Are you saying that the WD drive doesn't have FW capability?
If you need to purchase a new EHD the drives suggested by Allan are very reliable. I have 7 of them and have had no issues.

What do I need to support my FireWire 800 gear on a new iMac

I need to replace my antique mac pro 1.1
I am now retired and my needs tend more towards games than av creation so the new Mac Pro is not only overkill but the dual video I here is not optimized for games in any case.
The problem is all of my existing FireWire 800 gear and no FireWire ports on the new iMac designs
I guess I need to buy an external thunderbolt case for the 4 2 terabyte drives in the old pro do any of the external T-bolt cases offer good FireWire 800 support (full speed support) for all of my old gear?
Are there other ways to support these devices than an external t-bolt case for sata drives?
And for a game playing iMac is a fusion drive or a large solid state drive best choice bearing in mind I will have about 10 terabytes of FireWire and t-bolt external storage ( I was thinking of making the drives in the required t-bolt external case a raid array for best performance)
So what external t-bolt drive case should I buy and if it does not support a set of FireWire 800 ports what external t-bolt gadget for that support should I buy?
Thanks

Windshadow99 wrote:
I looked at those but would it not be far better to have a gadget that plugged into a t-bolt port and then had a bunch of FireWire 800 ports on it? There must be lots of folks that like me invested in FW800 gear with their older computers and need something like this.
Perhaps, though as with anything it depends on your needs. I don't know of any such device, though. All the Thunderbolt docks I've seen that have Firewire at all have only a single port. You could use a TBolt to FW adapter with Thunderbolt ports in a dock, though. A Firewire hub isn't a lot of good other than providing multiple connectors since all devices are on the same FW bus and hence not really much different from daisy-chaining. There's certainly no performance improvement and probably not much in the way of stability improvement either.
I was told a long time ago back in the mac 2fx sccsi days that daisy chaining things should be avoided and giving things their own pro was better does this advice sill hold good?
SCSI was very different (and usually wasn't a problem as long as it was terminated correctly). Daisy-chaining FW is different, though it very much depends on the devices and the sort of throughput you need. Daisy-chaining Thunderbolt should be no problem at all as long as the devices support it.
Regards.

NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card (34)

After some foot dragging by FireWire direct, today I finally received the NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card ordered almost a month ago.
First Impressions: Unimpressive at best.
According to the FireWire direct rep, it is supposed to work using the Mac OS built in drivers and require no additional driver....
Upon first insertion, my MacBook Pro promptly went into a kernel panic.
NOT a good introductory performance!
Upon restart, I did get the thing to work, "sort of".
First, it requires AC power even with a 2.5" external drive meant for bus power. Bummer, but so be it. However, less acceptable: it is VERY fussy about sequence, reminding me of evil SCSI voodoo rituals from the past century. Seems it only likes to work once- if I remove the card, it requires a reboot to recognize anything attached to it subsequently.
Functionality is intermittent. Sometimes I can mount and unmount a drive several times in a row, sometimes just once before it fails to recognize the drive and requires another reboot. One drive it took a long time to recognize but eventually it did- only to freeze up rock solid soon thereafter requiring an uncomfortable long push on the power button to shut down- nothing else worked. That drive was a known to be working Lacie, the first a known to be working WiebeTech and both are totally reliable on my G5 and previously completely reliable on the MacBook Pro using the integrated FireWire 400 port.
Unscientific results so far show a modest speed increase transferring a few large files, nothing like double the FireWire 800 speed hoped for. In any case if it ain't reliable it ain't gettin' used. Hoping for a driver solution in 10.4.7? (Wishful thinking)
No one likes a fussy device, much less one doomed to corrupting directories with that kind of behavior. I'm disappointed with Apple for omitting the FireWire 800 port on the 15 inch model and leaving us with this cheesy "solution".
I am not a big fan of dongles, or things like Express cards which are just asking for trouble by introducing intermediary third party connectivity issues exactly like these...
Oh yeh, and the little metal door on the Express Card slot tends to hang open and not snap closed- just to add insult to the whole process.

Well, after two days of use I have a bit of data regarding the NitroAV (and Apple's implementation of ExpressCard/34).
First some general observations: like bigwheel, there are a few too many rough edges to be fully pleased. After inserting the card, a menu bar icon appears next to the Airport icon. On mouse over, the drop down shows "Unknown Vendor" and "Firewire Controller" are greyed out, while the 3rd "Power off Card" is selectable but does NOT power down the card. Looks like I have to shut down the MBP, then eject the Nitro card.
I also can confirm intermittent unmounting and remounting. My latest experiment is to leave the drive mounted and then have it wake up after sleep. So far it's worked once, but will post if it continues to find my FW 800 drive over time.
One major design flaw of the ExpressCard implementation - to engage the card you push in until it clicks, while to disengage the card you merely push in a second time. But how are you supposed to ATTACH FW800 cables?? I find I have to try to hold the ExpressCard firmly so it doesn't go in while fumbling with the FW800 connector. WAY too fussy...
OK, here's some actual test data, involving transfers of 1,000 MB of files (147 Canon RAW files, approx 7 MB each).
I used three hard drives for various transfers -
1. Internal stock 100 GB - 5400 rpm (TOSHIBA MK1032GSX)
2. FW 800 / 400 500 GB - 7200 rpm (Seagate 3500841A in OWC Mercury Elite case)
3. FW 800 / 400 250 GB - La Cie 7200 rpm drive
All test are transfer of 1 GB of files from HD to HD-
Test 1: Internal to FW 400 - 68 seconds
Test 2: Internal to FW 800 - 65 seconds
Test 3: MBP built in FW 400 daisy-chained - 54 seconds
Test 4: Nitro FW 800 daisy chained - 43 seconds
Test 5: Nitro FW 800 port A to Nitro FW 800 port B - 43 seconds
Test 6: MBP built in FW 400 to Nitro FW 800 - 35 seconds
So it looks like there is some speed increase, but I was surprised that mixing the FW 400 and FW 800 ports gave the fastest transfer speeds! The Nitro card is dependent on Apple's implementation of buses, and this seems to be the winning combo. Not that intuitive that shifting one of the FW 800 devices down to FW 400 will speed things up, but that's what my simple test seemed to imply.
I didn't test read times only, but it would seem that these should speed up (and hopefully speed up my primary application of Aperture).
MBP 2.0, 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Focusrite Saffire does not show up when connected to Imac by Firewire 800

When I connect my focusrite saffire to my i7 imac 27" via the firewire 800 port, the device does not show up on the computer, however it does light up indicating it is being powered off the firewire. When I click on "about this mac<more info<firewire", all I see is this " Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec", I have checked and my "AppleFWAudio" file is up to date. The Focusrite uses Firewire 400 but I use an adaptor which converts it to 800, I have tried different adapters and cables from a number of companies which were suggested by Focusrite themselves and none of them worked.
Any ideas on what the problem could be?

I too was having problems connecting my Focusrite Saffire to my new iMac 27" i7. It would light up and click several times, but it would never be in a ready state w/ both LINE indicators being green. The Saffire Control software would say the the Saffire DSP didn't load and to unplug it and re-plug and wait for the lights to turn green, but that never happened. I called Sweetwater (where I bought the unit) and they didn't seem to know of any prevailing issues, BUT the tech did suggest to reboot the iMac in 32 bit mode (hold down the '3' and '2' keys during startup). I did that and replugged the Saffire but it exhibited the same problem. I unplugged it and left it for like 3 minutes then reattached the firewire cable and it mounted. I opened up the Sound preferences and was able to select it and get sound out of it. I then opened DP and ran a quick test and it worked as well. The next test was to reboot into 64 bit mode. I did that while the Saffire was still connected and it actually stayed mounted and connected upon reboot. I have my System Sound output running through it right now and its still working. I haven't tried DP yet, but will do that later. I'm not going to reboot again until I hear back from Focusrite. I sent in a help request last night.
Hope this helps someone.

? regarding firewire 800 load time

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