Seagate firewire drive question

I have installed Leopard on my G4 and G5 tower with no problems.
The problem starts when I plug in a Seagate remote firewire drive. the drive is formatted as Apple Partition Map, but I am not using it as a boot disk. I have also tried formatting it as MBR.
In both cases if I have the drive plugged in when I boot to Leopard after about 3 minutes my cooling fans go to full speed and nothing else happens. If I then boot back to my Tiger it starts up fine. If I unplug this drive I can boot to Leopard with no problems.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening?
thanks

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Firewire drive question

I'm not sure whom to ask, so I though you all would have some reasonable input.
I currently have 8 firewire drives, each in an external case. What I would ideally like to see is some kind of case, that I can toss a number of the drives into, and plug into my FW800 or FW400 port and would let me turn each drive on or off so I'm not causing brownouts in my neighborhood.
Cost is bit of an issue, but my media drive collection is getting out of hand. Turning on three drives so I can get at the fourth is getting old, real quick.
Any suggestions?

What you're looking for is commonly called a RAID. There really isn't a practical reason to combine several Firewire drives into one case just to share power supplies and whatnot. Firewire drives are designed for portability and flexibility. If what you're looking for is something to combine several drives, there are some reliability and configuration issues to consider.
But bottom line, it gets a little more complicated as you add more drives.
Here's one page that shows you some options:
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/hotswapsatakits.php

Installing Mac OS X on external Seagate firewire drive

I've dropped in on some of the discussions on this topic and have tried most stuff, but my 10.4.3 disc will not let me install on the Seagate drive even though it is mounted. I'm still backing up to that drive, but is that accomplishing anything if I don't have an operating system installed?
They included BounceBack software and it backs everything up, but will frequently omit a scheduled backup and I'm not sure why.

You won't be able to install certain applications directly on it. The reason is that it isn't the boot drive, and many prefer to be on a boot drive. Unfortunately, the Blue and White G3 can't boot off Firewire hard disks, so really the only verification you have that the clone works is either to put the drive inside the Blue and White G3 by taking it ouside of the case that Seagate gave it (assuming the drive is under 128 GB), or hooking it up to another Mac and testing to see if it boots that Mac. If you install on the internal drive of the Blue and White, and then clone the Blue and White to the Seagate, that should work.

Spinning Ball- Firewire Drive question?

Question about my external drive before I go and purchase a new one...
I have one hard drive that gives me the spinning ball quite regularly now. I have booted up Disc Utility and repaired the disc. I have also used Disk Warrior (a great 3rd party app) to scan the disk, repair it's data structure and even rebuild it. I have also scanned the hard drive with ClamX AV to try and rule out some sort of virus. Why is this drive locking up my computer, freezing applications, preventing reboots, etc.? It only happens to this one external drive, so my thoughts are it's either a data structure issue, or its hardware. Am I right in that line of thinking?
Is there a core system process that handles the mounting and dismounting of external drives that could be corrupt? Can I monitor and log what is causing my drive to hang? I'm not that familiar with terminal so I have been watching 'Activity Monitor' to see what processes are in use when I

Okay, I did everything you suggested, and I believe that as soon as I had Zapped the PRAM things with the drive became remarkably better...I could eject the drive successfully, and then remount it. Thank you!
But after two days of tests I have still had some irregular issues: it has frozen iTunes once or twice, locking up multiple programs and preventing a restart until the drive is turned off.
I'll definitely try Zapping it again and see what happens, but does this ring as the beginnings of a failing drive? Should I still look to replace it? It does not have the S.M.A.R.T. function...

Sleeping firewire drive causes system crash

I have a 320 GB external firewire seagate drive connected to my Dual Ghz Quicksilver G4. At least twice a day, when I try to access that drive, I experience a system crash, what I believe to be a kernal panic. I get a message telling me I need to shut my computer down and restart it. I am thinking this is not so good for my computer.
So, either the hard drive is the problem or it's the third party firewire card i have installed in one of my PCI slots. But here's the thing, other drives are connected to that card.
Would keeping the Seagate drive awake stop this from happening? It goes to sleep all the time. Have others experienced problems with the seagate drives? Should I stop using it?

Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the Discussions.
If you are seeing this message, that indicates a kernel panic.
There could be a problem with the FireWire drive or the card. If disconnecting the drive for a few days results in no additional panics, then it is the drive. For that, I'd contact Seagate. If not, the card becomes suspect. An examination of the panic log might prove helpful.
You can also try running Step 1 of the process specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ against the Seagate FireWire drive.
Checking the FireWire cables, trying different cables or ports, checking that the card is installed correctly, checking that you assembled the Seagate drive and enclosure correctly (sounds like you built the FW drive) are some other troubleshooting steps to consider. The FireWire enclosure itself may be defective.
See also my "Resolving Kernel Panics" FAQ. This FAQ includes step-by-step instructions for identifying and resolving some of the most common causes of kernel panics, including tips like those above.
My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein.
You maybe unable to prevent the FireWire drive from sleeping. Secondary hard drives (second internal, as well as external drives) may not respect the "Put the hard drive(s) to sleep when possible" option if de-selected. I discuss this particular issue in my "Spinning Beach Ball Of Death (SBBOD)" FAQ, specifically in the section entitled "SBBOD spins for 30-35 seconds. You may hear your hard drives spinning up."
Good luck!
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.

Problems with External Seagate GoFlex Firewire Drive Disconnecting on Sleep Mode

I am Running a 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac running Mac OS X 10.7.3. I run time machine to backup to an external Seagate 3TB, FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, FireWire Drive. When the Mac goes into sleep mode, the Seagate drive un-mounts. When the Mac wakes up, I get an error that the drive was not properly disconnected and the drive is no longer mounted. The only way I can get the drive to remount, is to remove power from the drive for several seconds and then reconnect it.
I have seen several people talking about this issue in various forums with many various makes and models of FireWire drives, but I see no answers to this issue from Apple. Does anyone have a resolution to this issue, or are we just stuck with this problem? It is terribly frustrating!!!! The lack of response or interest from Apple is even more frustrating!!!

Wish I had an answer, or even a clue about this one. I have a Western Digital MyBook Studio that I've had for a fair number of years now and finally had to resort to just plugging it it as a USB device. Since it's only used for Time Machine backups and storing things I rarely need, it's not a huge burden, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a suggestion as to how to fix this. I recently upgraded from a 17" late 2006 iMac to a Mid 2011 21.5" iMac and would really like to go back to FireWire if it's not going to be a big-ole-pain in the hind end.

Firewire drive connected & sleep question

I have an external firewire drive on my eMac. I hardly ever shut the eMac down and the drive is not powered through the computer. Do drives of this type eventually spin down after a while of non-activity, or is the thing always spinning and running if it is on - even when not being used? if so, is it best that I only turn it on when I want to use it, and if that is not at computer boot up is that a problem. I have the drive to do iMovie and iDVD stuff, which is not an everyday occurrence.
thanks

My LaCie drive will "spin down" after a short while of not being used. I keep it unplugged when I don't need it. But it does not seem to be a problem to leave the drive connected 24-7 which I have done from time to time...everything works fine...computer sleeps...
DD

Stupid question: force booting from external FireWire drive

My PowerBook is refusing to boot from it's hard drive (flashing ?/folder), which I'll be attempting to repair using DiskWarrior, etc.
But it's also not finding and booting from the OS X installed on my external FireWire drive (which it could do under normal circumstances). How do I force it to do that given that I'm unable to set the Start Up Volume in the normal manner?
PowerBook G4 17" 1.5GHz 512MB 80GB Mac OS X (10.3.6)

Dale,
Thanks for your response. I've been through the usual stuff as in your reference and I eventually got it to boot off the external HD by just leaving it long enough - it took maybe 10-15 minutes. I'm booted from it now. I hadn't thought of using the Startup Manager, but will try to remember next time.
As for the internal HD, it's looking like it's dead - neither Disk Warrior nor Data Rescue II seem to be able to see it. I tried Disk Utility from the external HD, but it doesn't see it and nor does the Profiler. Maybe it's just a loose connection internally. There is a noise coming from the PB from about just under the division between the left hand rest and the speaker. It sort of sounds like a disk continually being read or written - ie. a sort of very rapid clicking, but I don't think it's the HD. And I don't think it's the fan. Anyone with any ideas before I call AppleCare?
I did have a very similar problem a few weeks ago (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1465680#1465680), but Disk Warrior fixed it apparently with next to no problems. I was going to wipe the drive at the weekend & reinstall, but didn't get round to it in the end ... Fortunately I had a backup this time and was able to restore my user simply by copying it.

Cannot Boot from OSX on external firewire drive

I recently bought a seagate hardrive and installed it in an external firewire casing. I partitioned it into two partitions, and installed osx 10.4.10 on one of the partitions, the same as is running on my Ti Book.
I tried selecting the os on the firewire drive as the startup disk, but when i restart, after the grey screen i get the flashing question mark icon, until the mac recognises only the default osx on the internal drive and boots with that instead.
That not working, i created a clone of my startup disk using DejaVu in my system preferences and saved it on the other, empty partition on the external drive and tried booting from that.
On restarting, i get the grey screen once again as the backlight fires up, and nothing more. the screen remains grey without any further ado until i hold the power button and force it to turn off. then as i start it up again, up comes the flashing question mark icon followed by a boot from the internal drive.
Any Solutions on this?
Many Thanks, Neptune.

Hi Dale,
Whoops- everythings not as smooth as i thought it was!
since i restored my internal drive, a lot of things have been really messed up, starting with, for example, iTunes reverting to version 4 instead of 7. that wasnt a problem, i still had the 7 installer, and soon had my whole music library back again. but the computer appears to have a problem with the handling of graphics. the finder wont create previews of even simple jpeg images, nor will it for video. quicktime wont open any video file, i get some random error message which i cant remember stating it could not open the file. and if i view my finder window in grid icon view, the usual blue mac os desktop image that i keep as a background in the finder window isnt there, instead its pitch black. same goes for the slideshow feature in the application graphic converter, i can start a slideshow and it will scroll through the images, but every image will instead be completely black. there are no scroll bars in itunes. i can scroll down randomly by clicking where the scroll bar should be, but there is nothing visual there at all, no scroll bar, no arrows. when i connect my ipod, the main ipod window of itunes wont display any graphics either, be it the picture of the ipod or the capacity bar indicating usage of the drive for music, videos, data, etc. instead, fine print says something similar to 'cannot display image, quicktime and lzw tiff decompression plugin (?) required' I cant remember word for word what it says, dont quote me on that.
the computer also came to a dead freeze twice in ten minutes, i had to hold the power button down to get it to shut off.
im sure there are other issues too which i havent yet noticed, but even these, i havent the faintest clue what could be causing them!
do you?

Seagate External drive formatting problems

I'm having issues with a brand new seagate drive that I've just bought. It's a 750Gb USB 2.0/Firewire drive. It came in the box formatted as MS-DOS. So, I went into disk utility and tried to format it as a Mac-OS (Extended) (Journaled) drive....but, everytime that I try that, the action script at the bottom of the window says something about "such and such drive's partitions are not in incriments of 4k"....then it proceeds to seem to do nothing.....just sit there "thinking" for hours. It never makes any progress in re-formatting the drive. I let it sit for about 6 hours yesterday and it didn't do anything.
So, today, I tried formatting it as a Unix drive....that worked fine. Then, I tried formatting it as a MS-DOS drive, and that worked fine. But I still can't format it as a Mac drive. Any suggestions? Thanks very much.
-Neil
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You need to re-partition the drive.
Basic Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. If this is the only drive in the computer then you will first need to boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. After the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Click on the Options button. Select GUID partition scheme for Intel Macs or APM scheme for PPC Macs. Click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Quit DU or repeat process for other new drives.
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External Firewire Drive Problems

I have a firewire drive that all of a sudden stopped appearing on my desktop when I booted up each day ... BUT, after about an hour or so if I shut down, turned off the the FW drive, turned the drive back on and re-booted the FW drive appears. Hmmmm? When I would run disk repair on the drive in question the report came back "Drive Ok - No Repairs Necessary". THEN - when I started copying from the FW drive ./ moving files on it after a few days it started to hang up the computer. Next, re-running Disk Repair turned up "Invalid Node." I succesfully rebuilt the FW disk with Disk Warrior last night rebooted and ran disk repair on the FW drive and all was well. Shut everything down and called it a night. Today my computer will not see the FW drive, it doesn't show up in the Finder, Disk Uttility or even in System Profiler where under "firewire" it lists "unknow device."
Ok, any ideas anyone. Thanks much.

I have six 300gig Seagate hard drives chained together that all worked fine with Tiger on my MacBook Pro. All drives have been fully reformatted to Mac format and I do not use any One-Touch software.
As soon as I upgraded to Leopard, I found that I could only mount 2 of these drives at a time. If I attempted to mount a third drive (in ANY order of startup or wiring configuration) either that drive doesn't mount, the System locks up... or both, usually. The only way out is to hold the Power button to kill the computer
I have tried everything. I've repaired every drive with Disk Utility AND with Disk Warrior. I've tried every wiring order, but the results are the same. I restarted with a clone of my former (pre-Leopard) Tiger drive, and all the Seagate drives worked fine, but as soon as I restarted with Leopard, the same problem occurred. I've started up in "Safe" mode - same problem. The computer works fine when not connected to Firewire; and it seems to work fine with only one or two WD drives connected; but the minute I connect too many drives (any drive, any order of wiring, different Firewire cables, etc) everything freezes again.
After all the usual troubleshooting with Apple, the only thing they had left to suggest was an Archive and Install of Leopard which I've done, but the problem still persists.
An Apple product specialist is investigating this problem in depth; but since all my drives are Seagate, I'm wondering if anyone has gotten any feedback about specific Seagate problems with Leopard.
THE PROBLEM ALSO OCCURS WHEN RUNNING DISK UTILITY FROM THE LEOPARD INSTALL DISK - ONLY 3 OF THE SIX DRIVES WILL MOUNT AT ANY ONE TIME, The order of connection makes no difference. This seems to be a Leopard problem, but I'm wondering if it's also specific to just Seagate drives.
Anyone got any ideas?

Stupid external hard drive question

My son gave me a new Seagate 160GB Ultra ATA 100 7200 RPM bare hard drive. I put it in an old generic external Firewire 400 case that has the Oxford 911 chipset in it and timed a few file transfers. I then put the same drive in a generic USB 2.0 external case with an unknown chipset (Prolific maybe?). I have a firewire USB 2.0 PCI expansion card installed that I bought from OWC. I timed the transfer speeds with the same files as with the Firewire box. I got the following results:
3.14GB file copy to Firewire drive took 1 minute 43 seconds
3.14GB file copy to USB 2.0 drive took 3 minutes 28 seconds
Question is do you think this USB 2 box is actually transferring at 2.0 speed? I know USB 2 is in reality slower than Firewire 400 but is it really this much slower? This is the first time I have had a chance to use the USB 2 connection. I bought the PCI card just in case I ever needed high speed USB. Calling it high speed seems a bit far fetched to me.
Thanks in advance for any insight into this.

Thanks for the info Niel. I really didn't know what to expect from USB 2. I'm glad my expectations were not high. I'm happy now that I use three Firewire external drives for storing backups and video files.

Firewire drives do not show up on network

I have a G5 with 2 external drives, 1 firewire, 1 USB
I have a G4 with 2 external drives, both firewire.
When these computers are networked,
The G5 sees the internal drives from the G4.
The G4 sees the internal drives from the G5, as well as the connected USB drive.
But neither computer sees the external firewire drives of the other computer.
I used to see these drives and made aliases for them, but they do not show up now.
I am using the admin accounts from each computer.
G5 running 10.4.5
G4 running 10.3.9
What is the cause of this problem? How can I mount the firewire drives on the networked computers?

I need to modify my question. I also have a G3 running 10.2.8
Yesterday I noticed that the Network icon in the G5 sidebar had an eject symbol next to it. That seems strange, upon reflection, as if something was not right.
I shut off all the machines for the evening.
Today, I restarted all the machines. Chose Finder->Go->Connect to Server->Browse
From each machine, I was able to see the external drives on the other machines, as well as the internal drives, over the network. I did not use nor install sharepoints. It just works (with an admin account).
However, on the G5, there is an external firewire Firelite drive. It is formatted as Fat 32.
It does not show up in the Browse window when I connect to the G5 from any computer. If I move it to the G4, it also does not show up when I connect to the G4 from any computer. So it does not seem to be related to the OS version.
In other words, it seems that since the Firelite is Dos formatted, I cannot see it on the network, even though it is a firewire drive.
So how can I fix this problem?
iMac G5, TiBook, G4 MP 500; G3 beige 333, iMac 333, others Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Has anyone been able to use an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire to daisy chain a dozen or more FireWire drives?

Ever since I realized that I was not able to connect my FireWire daisy chain to my brand new Retina MBP there has been problems. Four months down the road, I am still unable to use my FireWire drives and have experienced terrible problems whenever I connect my FireWire daisy chain to this new Mac.
I have bought two of these adaptors from Apple now and both do the same thing. The daisy chain has been working perfectly for years with my older MBP and still does! There are no problems until I connect to the new Mac.
I have 15 various hard drives in NewerTech and DatOptics enclosures for over 22 TB. When connected to the new Mac, I would have multiple apps just hang, sometimes just Apple apps, sometimes 3rd party. I will not be able to force quit them and they will keep relauching as you can watch them in the Force Quit window. The Finder will hang and there is no relaunching it. I am having to do a force shutdown twice an hour which leaves no time for work!
After four months of this, now I am being told that Apple will buy back my Mac at full price. But I have basically lost the good part of four month’s worth of work because of constantly fighting the new Mac. This is cost me all my savings and I am about to lose a client. It certainly seems that releasing Thunderbolt1 was a huge, huge mistake.
Does anyone know of any large Fire Wire daisy chain working with Thunderbolt?
TIA,
R

Yes, my first post is all about how darn iffy the adaptors are and I have two of them to return now.
I question your answer because I am betting that four drives that are in one enclosure NOT all RAIDed together as one drive, but as four separate drives that those four drive will count as four devices. The daisy chain that I had going had eight drives in TWO quad boxes, four drives in TWO dual drives and another drive in a single enclosure. A total of five “devices” if you will, but also a total of 13 drives that were usually in this daisy chain.
Both of the Apple branded Thunderbolt to FireWire adaptors chocked BIG TIME on this and it works no problem on my older MBP. You basically can not use a new Mac when you are connected to a daisy chain like this!
Just checked the Apple website and indeed, I can get a new MBP with FireWire 800, just not with the Retina display! I wish that I would have known this five months ago before this all started!

External Firewire Drive Ceases to be Detected After DVD Drive Installation

About a week ago, I replaced the original Pioneer DVR-103 drive in my Quicksilver 800 Mhz/dual G4 with a Pioneer DVR-115 to work with newer, faster media. After restarting the machine, I got an alert that told me my 80Gb Maxtor external firewire drive wouldn't initialize. The only real option it gives me is to reformat, thus losing valuable data. That's a non-starter. I've tried restarting the machine with the new DVR unplugged, but I get the same result. I've zapped the Pram, thinking it was a dirty pram, but no go. I've reset the nvram to default, using the command line, but no luck. The odd thing is that applications (like iTunes) continue to access the music files stored on it. I need this drive. Seagate support has been worthless. Any ideas?

About a week ago, I replaced the original Pioneer DVR-103 drive in my Quicksilver 800 Mhz/dual G4 with a Pioneer DVR-115 to work with newer, faster media. After restarting the machine, I got an alert that told me my 80Gb Maxtor external firewire drive wouldn't initialize. The only real option it gives me is to reformat, thus losing valuable data. That's a non-starter. I've tried restarting the machine with the new DVR unplugged, but I get the same result. I've zapped the Pram, thinking it was a dirty pram, but no go. I've reset the nvram to default, using the command line, but no luck. The odd thing is that applications (like iTunes) continue to access the music files stored on it. I need this drive. Seagate support has been worthless. Any ideas?

Seagate firewire drive question

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