Second Firewire drive causes first to be disconnected

Having transferred a load of stuff off the main HD onto an external Firewire drive, I decided it would be prudent to have a backup schedule for the new drive as well as the main one. However, whenever I connect and power up a second Firewire drive, the first is disconnected and I get the message that it's a bad idea to disconnect drives without unmounting them first. I ended up having to connect the backup drive via the powered USB hub and watch a very slow backup take place.
If you can't run two drives off an iMac, what's the point of having two Firewire ports...? (The external drives are both powered by "bricks" so I'm surprised there's a problem.)
Is my Mac a lemon? (Cos with all the problems I've been having I'm beginning to think so!)
Would an external (powered) Firewire hub be a good idea in this case?

Have you tried daisy-chaining them? That is, plugging one drive into the other, then into the computer? In any case, a fire wirehub wouldn't be a bad idea.

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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:
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How To add a second eSata drive once first drive capacity is reached

What upgrade options are available once an eSata drive recording capacity is reached?
Once an eSata drive connected to CHS 435HDC DVR reaches recording capacity, is there a way for a second external eSata drives to be connected and used as external storage devices without loss of all data on the first eSata drive?
Currently once a second drive is connected and activated on the DVR, all playback access to ALL the data stored on the first eSata drive is lost and cannot be played back once the second drive is ejected from the DVR and the first reinstalled..
Once the first drive is reinstalled the Check Capacity option for the first drive which once showed the drive as full and at maximum capacity before it was ejected and uninstalled, now shows 0% full, and 0 hours usage hours and the drive space 100% available.
These reading are without having reformatted the drive and only selecting the "accept" option once the DVR detected the drive being reinstalled.
The Recording option still will show recorded program listing, but once a recording is selected for playback, no recorded program data appears on the screen nor none of the normal indicators displayed on screen during normal playback does not appear.
This means there is no upgrade path or option available once recording capacity is reached for an eSata extended storage drive, other than losing all 350 hours of recorded program data or deletion of files to free up capacity.
Also there is no warning that once a drive is disconnected from the DVD and another drive is activated all data recorded on the first drive is lost and cannot be played back! The data must be there nut not recognizable by the DVD program even though the data was created on the same DVR and eSata drive.
How can I safely connect a second eSata drive to the DVD and not lose all the recorded data on the first eSata drive?
Thanking you in advance for your help.

phoneb1ll wrote:
How can I safely connect a second eSata drive to the DVD and not lose all the recorded data on the first eSata drive?
Thanking you in advance for your help.
Based on the description of your own observations, you can't. Does some one else know otherwise?

Firewire drives cause kernel panic on PPC, not Intel

I'm trying to get three firewire drives to work on a PowerMac G5. Before updating to 10.4.8, they worked individually, but not chained together. Now, if you connect any one of them, the system has a kernel panic. They would cause the panic on the earlier version of 10.4 when chained together. Everything works perfectly on a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, both running 10.4.8.
Below are the notes I took on the three drives as I was troubleshooting. All three are from Maxtor.
Drive 1:
300GB
EDA EB300G0160101
Has a filesystem, but Disk Utility claims there is no partition. It mounts on an Intel Mac, but causes a kernel panic on a G5.
Filesystem is Mac OS Standard
G5 System will panic while booting if the drive is connected and turned on.
G5 panics when trying to mount drive.
Drive 2:
200GB
EDA Ay200A0260101
Has a Mac OS Extended filesystem
G5 System will panic while booting if the drive is connected and turned on.
G5 Panics when trying to mount drive.
Drive 3:
300GB
EDA BA300D0080101
Has a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) filesystem.
G5 System will panic while booting if the drive is connected and turned on.
G5 panics when trying to mount drive.
Because of the change when 10.4.8 was installed, I suspect this is a driver problem. It could also be a controller problem that just happened to get worse when the update was done.
I ran the Apple Service Diagnostic on this machine and was unable to find anything wrong since I replaced both CPUs.
Any ideas?
PowerMac G5 dual 1.8 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If the drives were formatted on the Intel Mac then they will have a GUID partition map installed on the drive. PPC Macs will not understand the GUID partition scheme which may be the root cause of your problem. If you want to use the drives on both platforms they need to be re-partitioned using the APM partition scheme.
Also, you should not use Mac OS Standard. You should use Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)

External USB & Firewire drives causing system to stall

Hi there,
I have zapped the PRAM and reset the system controller.
I have two external hard drives, one USB and one Firewire, connected directly to the computer. I run into the frequent problem where either (or both) of the hard drives are keeping the computer from switching users, although they do seem to allow the computer to fully boot. However, if I try to change users, it will not allow me to get to the login screen without shutting the hard drive off. We also run into problems where the hard drives stall the system... just causes the whole computer to lock up. Any ideas?
Thanks!

With a brand new iMac, make use of the free 90 day Apple support. In the US (800) APL-CARE (800-275-2273)

Firewire Drive Causes Crash at Startup, Safe Boot OK

I have a LaCie External Drive that all of a sudden decided to start causing OSX to crash at startup. While connected booting normally brings up the "need to restart" screen, booting in Single User causes a Kernel Panic, Safe Boot is ok, Booting from Install Disk is ok, but as soon as I connect the drive it's "you need to restart..."
So far i have tried the following;
Zapped the PRAM, repaired permissions normally while disconnected, repaired permissions in Safe Boot while connected, and repaired permissions from Install CD while connected.
My question is of course, what can be causing this problem and how do I fix?
I have sifted through previous discussions but was unable to find an answer, so I apologize if this is a duplicate. Also, if anyone knows of a better category to list this I would appreciate input. Thanks!

DOH!
Like everything else in life, the simplest solution is best. after remembering that the drive is both USB and FW i dug up my cables and tried the USB connection and...all better. So yes, I guess this would prove that the FW port is to blame.
Thanks for the help!

Firewire driver causes crash on wake up

Every time I wake up my Mac Pro I get a crash report, that Leopard quit. The culprit I have found out is the Apple driver for my Saffire audio device which uses the apple firewire. My only choice is never to let my mac sleep, which I find unacceptable.
Does anyone have an idea about a fix or wether apple has plans to update their firewire drivers?

If anyone did have an idea when an update was forthcoming, the Terms of Use of this forum, and their non-disclosure agreement would forbid them from saying.
I would say this, contact the manufactuers of Saffire Audio, and inform them their firmware needs to be updated for Energy Saver compatibility. Not all peripheral vendors know the Energy Saver standards that Apple uses.
In the meantime, you can use a Screen Saver instead of Energy Saver of a picture filling the screen with black, or download the freeware Mac Brightness. I can't find the link right now as Versiontracker appears to be down from where I'm at.

Random daisychained Firewire drive disconnects under Snow Leopard

OK... so I thought this was specific to my hard drives. However, we're not starting to see the problem though out the studio.
Plugging a single firewire drive into a machine running Snow Leopard has no issues. However... if you daisy-chain firewire drives then they will randomly disconnect. The connection will last 2-5 minutes tops before it just drops the drives as if someone had unplugged them.
We finally verified this on a total of three machines using various hard drives.... ensuring that we were taking specific drives out of the mix.

Next time you plug in the drive, see if it shows up in
Disk Utility. Want to see if the OS is recognizing it
and just not mounting it. If it doesn't show up there,
try the command line version by using the following
command:
diskutil list

Please Help! Cannot get firewire drive to mount!

Hi,
I am running 10.4.5 on a dual g5 2ghz. I cannot get my second firewire drive (lacie 160gb porsche) to mount. It has been working ok up until now and is only a few months old.. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
BTW does not show up in disk utilities or DiskWarrior either..
Many Thanks,
Ed.

Hi Ed,
look at the excellent Dale Weisshaar's advices here. It worked for me (unpluging the computer for 30 minutes).
Dual 2.3GHz G5 3GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.5) iBook G4 1GHz

No power supply cable for second hard drive

Hard drive in PC is crashing mechanically. Want to ghost a second hard drive before first drive crashes completely. Bought duplicate of existing hard drive, but there is no power supply cable/connector for it. Have SATA plug, but cannot power up second hard drive. What do I do?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

LB1815, welcome to the forum.
If I understand your problem correctly, this is the connector that you need. It converts a single SATA power cable to two connectors. This allows you to connect two drives with on cable. There are many other brands available on Newegg. This is just one example.
Please click the "Thumbs up + button" if I have helped you and click "Accept as Solution" if your problem is solved.
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Disconnecting daisychained Firewire drives

I have two MacAlly 100AC firewire drives daisychained. What is the proper way to disconnect one or both of them from my computer?

If you want to disconnect only the last one on the chain, you can Eject it and then disconnect it. And be very careful not to disconnect the first one.
If you want to disconnect the first one or both, you must Eject both before disconnecting.
After doing the software eject, it's a good idea to wait around five seconds before actually unplugging. Some users, including myself, have noticed that OS X sometimes doesn't register the eject right away, and you get the warning message about a device being removed without being dismounted even though you did it. Waiting always avoids this problem.
Eject methods:
A. File > Eject or its keyboard shortcut listed on the menu, Command-E.
B. Click the Eject button next to the drive in the Finder window sidebar.
C. Use Disk Utility to Unmount or Eject any mounted volume.
D. Drag the volume to the Trash; this changes the Trash icon to an Eject icon in OS X.
I stopped telling Mac users to "drag to the Trash to eject" as the preferred method. This holdover from OS 9 is one of the most counter-intuitive UI ideas ever to come out of Apple and caused Apple to be the subject of much ridicule. Apple got smart in OS X and added more and better ways to eject. Dragging to the Trash is also the slowest way because you have to aim it there. Command-E or the sidebar Eject button are instantaneous.

Can firewire drives in series sometimes cause system failure?

We have had problems with a 2007 iMac (23") locking up at times. We have AppleCare, and have run numerous tests to try to elucidate the problem.
After the Apple service center here could not find any problem during several days of testing, we've been doing some testing back in our office. Here's what we seemed to have discovered:
Problems SOMETIMES seem to arise when two firewire drives are connected in series to the firewire 800 port. One is a LaCie d2 Big Disk USB 2.0 & FireWire 800 , the other is an OWC Mercury Elite Firewire 800 Pro. Our normal way of running these has been with the LaCie as the outermost of the two. We discovered that we seem to be free of problems if the order is reversed and the LaCie is off, though she can also run for (at least) a while with the LaCie on, as well.
I'm theorizing that our problems may be related to one of two things:
1) Conflict between the way the two drives, and the iMac, implement the firewire 800 standard.
2) Startup problems when the firewire drives are turned on more-or-less simultaneously. One drive could be in a state where its interface is transitioning from "pass through" (drive off) stage to the "active" (drive on) state.
My question is this: Is anyone aware of any problem like this? Is it understandable that such a problem could affect the system enough to even freeze up the system?

Sure external devices can cause issues with your Mac if it's causing some kind of hardware problem with the Firewire bus-- drawing too much power, over or under voltage etc.. Some iMacs just have problems with the FW ports themselves. Sometime resetting the SMC will fix it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543?viewlocale=en_US
I have two FW800 drives from OWC daisy chained and I have not had any issues at all. I would try and isolate the two drives if possible to see if the problem persists. Disconnect one of the drives for a few days and use just one drive. Then switch and connect only the other drive for a few days. Then maybe try one of them on FW800 and the other on USB. The FW400 and 800 share the same bus so it may not be any differnt testing one on each if it ends up being a power issue. I wouldn't think it's a power issue though because the external drives have their own power and should not be drawing any power from the computer. But you never know
George

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.

I just purchased the Mac Mini Server with the intention of replacing Lion Server with Lion for the first hard drive while installing Windows 7 thru Bootcamp on the second hard drive. Is it possible for me to do this? Thanks.

I just purchased the Mac Mini Server with the intention of replacing Lion Server with Lion for the first hard drive while installing Windows 7 thru Bootcamp on the second hard drive. Is it possible for me to do this? Thanks.

I would use Parallels or VMWare and use the second drive to hold the virtual machine. That way the VM only uses the space that it needs and you can still use the remainder of the drive for other things, not to mention that you would not need to reboot to run windows.
Also Time Machine does not back up a boot camp partition.

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.

Second Firewire drive causes first to be disconnected

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