Shutting down external firewire drives.

Is there not anyway to do this? Seems rather odd that there wouldn't be an option for this function. I searched through some older posts but couldn't find a concrete answer.
I know there's no way, unless I'm missing it, to do it in Disk Utility. Is there a 3rd party app? I have one drive that spins down after being idle for about 5 minutes and another that never seems to sleep.

Hi ckh242, Welcome to the forums.
The FWHD may have a switch or you may need to unplug it.
What you do want to do from the computer is eject the HD. Just turning it off risks damaging it. You probably knew that but I threw it in anyway.

Similar Messages

When iMac sleeps... it shuts down external hard drives

When I wake my iMac I get the error message that my hard drives were removed, could cause damage, etc. This just started today. It's almost like the iMac kind of goes into a deeeeeeeep sleep... but the computer doesnt shut down totally. I can still wake it, takes a little longer than usual though.
Anyone know what the issue can be?
Thanks

Do you have an external drive attached?
The reason for asking is I have seen similar errors when I fail
to properly unmount or removes an external drive.
There may be a better way but when I want to turn off my
external drive (used for TM and SD), I right click on he
external HD's icon and select the EJECT option. This unmount
the drive so the power can be turned OFF and removed
from the back of the iMac. You can also do with the Disk
Utility.
Try unmounting your external drives and restart to see
if this helps.

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?
All volumes on the drive are/were formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I'm not sure but, I think that corresponds to "GUID"...right?
No, Mac OS X Extended (whether journaled or not) is independent of the partition scheme in use.
The bottom of the Disk Utility window should report the partition format.

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.
So my real question is this: if I set up my MacBook Pro (which I carry back and forth to work on a daily basis) to have Time Machine back up to the Time Capsule at home, will the MacBook Pro be reluctant to boot when I'm not at home and Time Capsule is not available?

Has no problem booting when disconnected from time machine

Booting os x from *partitioned* external firewire drive?

Hi all,
my internal hard disk (on a 12" powerbook G4 867 mhz running osx tiger 10.4.10) has started acting weird (many people are reporting failing hard drives, and I'm assuming mine is failing too), so I'm preparing for replacing it with a new hard drive.
I've backed up the drive to an external firewire drive (LaCie portable 80 GB firewire drive "Design by F.A. Porsche") using Carbon Copy Cloner with the option 'make bootable' selected.
PROBLEM: I can't boot OS X using my clone on the external drive.
I'VE TRIED:
1. holding down Command-Option-Shift-Delete while booting to bypass the internal drive. (This didn't work: I saw an os 9 icon blinking/alternating with a question mark for a while, and then the computer booted from the internal hard disk.)
2. holding down Option to select the external drive in Startup Manager. (Didn't work either: Startup Manager opened fine, but only showed my internal drive volume. I tried clicking the 'rescan' button, but it couldn't find my external drive.)
3. SELECTING THE EXTERNAL DRIVE under Startup Disk in System Preferences. Note that the external drive volume *did show up* there. So under some conditions at least, the external volume is identified as a bootable volume. (This didn't work either, though: When I shut down the computer and booted up with the external drive connected, it still booted up from the internal drive.)
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION?
My external drive is partitioned into three partitions of different formats:
1. "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)"
2. "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)"
3. "MS-DOS File System (FAT32)"
The bootable volume is the first partition with the os x format.
Could my problem be caused by this partitioning of my external drive?
Either way, what to do?? I hope some of you savvy people out there can help me out.
Cheers,
Philip

Hi Philip,
My problem has been fixed, & I imagine it's the same for you...:
With the excellent help from Dave Nanian at shirtpocket.com - the developer of 'SuperDuper!' (thanks Dave - you rock!), the problem (as Michael suggested) is to do with the Partition Scheme of the drive.
If your drive was like my portable LaCie Porsche drive, it was FAT32-formatted for PC out of the box. This format has an underlying MBR (master boot record) partition-scheme. When re-partitioning a drive in 'Disk Utility', the original partition-scheme sticks, so if you simply re-partition the drive to Mac OS Extended, it will still have an MBR partition scheme... which Macs cannot boot from!
For a Power PC Mac to be able to boot from an external firewire drive, the drive MUST have an APM (Apple Partition Map) Partition Scheme underlying the Mac OS Extended partitions. To do this, click on the 'Options' button in 'Disk Utility' when on the 'Partition' page before partitioning. You will see the options:
GUID Partition Table (for Intel Macs... (n.b. Power PC's cannot boot from a GPT drive))
Apple Partition Map (to create a bootable drive for a Power PC Mac)
Master Boot Record (to create a bootable PC drive)
So.... to make your external drive bootable for your Powerbook G4, choose 'Apple Partition Map' in the 'Options' page prior to partitioning.
Special note about Intel Macs: Contrary to info supplied by Apple, an Intel Mac CAN boot from an APM-partitioned drive (this is why the OSX installer can be univerally bootable!), BUT, the problem is that the OSX installer will NOT let you install OSX-intel on an APM-partitioned drive....
You can, however, clone an Intel-Mac-OSX internal drive that has a GPT partition-scheme (using CCC or SuperDuper) to an external drive with APM, & the Intel Mac will still be able to boot from that clone...
The only real use for doing this, though, is if you want a multi-partitioned backup drive with separate bootable partitions for OSX-PPC & OSX-Intel machines. (Remember that a PPC machine cannot boot from a GTP-partion-scheme drive, hence the need to use APM in this instance seeing as the Partition Scheme applies to the entire drive (it can't be different for each partition.)
Good luck - let us know how you get on!
Jason

External firewire drive fails to boot OS X after restart

I have a G4 Cube that exhibits a perplexing boot issue on an external firewire drive. The external drive is a clone of the Cube's internal dual boot, two partition drive made with an identical 120 GB Seagate. The internal drive boots without incident into either OS X or OS 9 - each in it's own partition.
The problem comes when I select the external drive's OS X partition in Startup Disk and restart - the external drive's activity LED shows an initial attempt to boot but then hesitates and boots to the internal OS X partition repeatedly.
As a workaround, I am able to select and boot to the OS 9 partition, either internally or externally, launch the StartUp Disk control panel, select the external OS X partition and reboot successfully into that partition. But upon a restart, it fails to boot into the external OS X partition repeating the aforementioned behavior i.e. it boots to the internal OS X partition.
Using Option-Restart shows the the two partitions on the external drive and the two partitions on the internal drive normally but will only successfully process selecting either of the two OS 9 partitions or the internal OS X partition, again failing to process a selection to the external OS X partition.
Interestingly, this same external firewire drive will repeatedly boot to it's OS X partition without incident using either of two iBook G4s.
I'm stumped!

Hi, LEOinDC -
How old is the internal battery in that Cube? Many machines exhibit boot anomalies if that battery is too weak or dead.
Those batteries have an expected life of about 4 to 5 years under best-case usage; if the machine is unplugged regularly or for an extended period, the battery is consumed much faster. Even if the machine is not unnplugged the battery will eventually die, and there will be no symptoms such as loss of date or time since the trickle power drawn when the machine is shut down (but still plugged in) will maintain those.
Also, is the external firewire drive self-powered? If not, try that.
Sometimes when using Startup Manager (which is what booting with Option held down invokes), all available bootable volumes aren't picked up before it displays what it has found. The solution for that is to click the circular arrow button in Startup Manager - this is an instruction to rescan the buses.

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!

10.4.4 corrupts external Firewire drives

I had now twice corruption with external firewire drives after a hardreset (not normal shutdown, but holding the powerbutton until the mac turns off).
The first time I was forced to do this, because the whole Mac froze after a program run (not from Apple). At that time I had two external FW harddisks. One older 200GB Maxtor and one newer 250GB Maxtor, the newer one was backup, the old one master.
Because at that time I thought the old harddisk might be bad, I bought another 250GB Maxtor same as the backup drive and synced (with rsync on the terminal) all data there. I tried to recover data before that, but Disk Utility completly failed, it just ejected the disk, same with DiskWarrior.
Now, after another hard reset (Suddenly all programs locked up, and I couldn't do anything else) I had two corrupted. both the 250GB backup and the 250GB new master.
Again Disk Utility failed, although it didn't eject the disk. DiskWarrior also failed to do anything. After I tried to repair it diskwarriro said it had an error. Then I could repair it with Disk Utility, but the luck was short. soon after I couldn't read some files, and then again I had the same errors on both disks.
Right now I sync all my data from my master disk to the old 200GB Maxtor (which I reformated in between).
I am just really scared if all hard resets will corrupt my external FW harddisks. I rely on them as I only have 40GB internal data. And what good does a backup do, if it also gets corrupted.
Anybody with similar problems?
Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Yes, I have seen this twice now. It has happened to two of my external VFAT drives when used on the firewire port. The drives are in BYTECC firewire/usb chassis that use this Prolific device: 067b:3507 Prolific Technology, Inc.
The drives mount fine once, but on dismount OS X trashes the VFAT boot sector. The drive will not remount on OS X after this happens. I have one mounted now in Linux, apparently on the backup copy of the partition table. The primary is completely blown away.
The signature looks like this:
from sector offset 0 on the disk:
0x00000000 45 52 02 00 1d 38 63 80 | 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
and all zeros down to 0x200.
At 0x00000230 the ASCII string "Applepartitionmap" pops up.
I don't see why this would be a vendor's driver problem.
It's just another silly OS X firewire trick. Firewire has been a nightmare on my iMac G5, and it just keeps getting better.
This happened once at 10.4.4 and again at 10.4.5, so falling back probably won't be worth it...
Apple, have you tried regression testing the firewire disk drives? It's really uncool to detroy our data like this.
There is no valid reason to write to any drive's partition table on exit unless specifically told to do so by me via the disk utility, so stop it already.
iMac G5 20 Mac OS X (10.4)

Blue Screen Result When Installing To External Firewire Drive

I can't afford to have problems with programs not running on Leopard on my 17" G4 1.67 GHz 2 GB RAM PowerBook so I am trying to install it on an external Firewire drive. I was hoping to test out Leopard with certain applications by running it from the external drive.
The Firewire drive has two partitions, one has my backup clone of the PowerBook and the other just has files and about 35 GB of free space. The installation would be a new installation so none of the files that deal with login or Application Enhancer that are being talked about in other threads are an issue.
My first attempt to install brought up a blue screen after the installation restart. I left it there for about 30 minutes then powered off the PowerBook by holding down the power button. I started it again and held down the option key, picked the install disk as startup, went through the disk utility repair disk (found no problems). After that I picked the new install on the external from the startup preferences and it simply restarted to a blue screen. I left that one for about 20 minutes then powered down.
I went back to the Powerbook Tiger OS system, deleted all the installed folders on the external and tried a completely new install. Once again it went to the blue screen after the Leopard install restart. This time I left it overnight and this morning the display was dark and upon waking it up with a tap of the space bar was greeted by the bluescreen again.
I talked to my Apple hardware rep who knows the equipment that I am working with and we talked about all the steps I went through and he has no explanation why it won't work on the external.
I would love to hear from anyone that may have insight for this particular external FW drive installation perspective.

Joe-
Is the drive partitioned to APM? (Sorry I took Anton's reply to be yours.) What was the type fo partitioning onthe disk with the success? I am not knowledgable enough in those error messages on the system.log file, but one thought is - after the memory upgrade, did you clear the PRAM (long shot, but do it anyway)? The machine booting on one external Firewire drive (#2) implies the problem is with the external FW disk (#1) you are using. Some other people had the bus error, but with Time Machine. (Not to go on a tangent, but TM seems to have problems when the disk name has non-alphanumeric in it.)
Hoping someone who knows the syslog errors and the boot sequence will pipe in here.

Freeagent External Firewire Drive disappears

I have a "Mac-compatible" 500GB external Firewire Freeagent drive. The drive disappears from the finder when the drive sleeps. When I remove and reseat the drive it returns in the finder. I've used the seagate utility to test the drive - it checks out. Freeagent seems to say that the Mac OS governs the drive sleeping. I've checked for all drives to not sleep in the system settings. What else is necessary to wake a drive in the OS other that yanking and resetting the cable every time. Anyone else having this issue?

Yup, count me in as well. Probably somewhere in System Preferences. Then go to Energy Saver, then look down where the checkboxes are, one says "put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible." My problem is that this happens and then I don't get an EyeTV recording that I wanted because I set EyeTV to record to the external Firewire Drive. So, guess the solution is to stay with the main drive and copy stuff. Sigh!

Disappearing external Firewire drive.

Hi friends.
My wife's mini has a LaCie external firewire drive attached. She uses it with Backup and it just suddenly disappeared.
It appears to be on and working- but not showing up on her desktop. Is there a way on restart-- to force her mini to look for peripherals it's not seeing? I always get such great help on this forum. Thanks in advance. Dan

I'm curious if/how that link worked out for you. I have been observing problems with Firewire/USB for the past month or more that I allowed my clients to upgrade to 10.4.9 and 10.4.10.
I am finally starting to cross over into the belief that an update within 10.4.9/10.4.10 caused a failure with external Firewire drives -- now I will include USB drives in that belief. I was skeptical for a long while but the coincidences don't line up.
My guess is that Apple updated the Firewire/USB bridge -- perhaps they even made it more efficient. The cost may be that various external drive enclosure manufacturers who coexisted (or even accommodated) Apple's previous bridge, now fail. I don't know if you recall the 10.3.x update that took down Firewires for quite some time to come. The only solution that worked for me then was to boot into OS 9, mount the drive there, and then restart in OS X. A very round-about solution.
So far, I have observed the following failures in the past couple months:
Powerbook G4 1.4Ghz (or so): failed USB LaCie hard drive, no clicking/non-harddrive malfunction
Mac Pro -- Intel Core Duo: two failed Firewire enclosures (Nexstar Vantecs). The drives inside were perfect but the enclosures ceased functioning first on an iMac G5 and then continued to disappear on a Mac Pro tower.
One of these enclosures had also disappeared from a new iMac - Intel. I could get the thing to mount and then it would disappear overnight -- my thought is that perhaps the drives don't remount after sleep? I did not do extensive tests.
I have had another client on an as-of-yet-unknown machine (purchased in last couple years) lose a LaCie Firewire drive... no clicks or hardware failure indications. I will investigate this week.
I had yet another client lose two LaCie drives connected to a Dual 1.0 Ghz G4 Tower. One LaCie drive enclosure seemed to fail completely at Firewire 800 speed and transfer slowly but reliably when dumbed down to Firewire 400. The other LaCie was unreadable even when I transferred the drive to another enclosure. I am still investigating.
On a Mac Mini (Intel) new enclosures from PPA Galaxy Metal Gear would not daisy chain without disappearing.
I admit that I don't want to believe that the recent OS updates could have caused this -- especially after the debacle of 10.3.x. But it is definitely possible and not altogether unlikely. Consider this discussion about a LaCie firmware update tool meant to make them compatible: http://lovemac.org/2007/04/28/external-lacie-firewire-disappeared-from-the-deskh elp/
Not having attempted the Firmware update yet myself, I cannot vouch for it. Firmware updates are not to be taken lightly but they are just the sort of thing that might make the Firewire/USB bridge in the LaCie's compatible with Apple's updates/fixes. Of course, that leaves the other vendors' drives high-and-dry.
Usually, Apple or Apple defenders like to say that the vendors should be writing perfect code and it's not Apple's fault if they optimize or fix code which breaks the vendors' equipment. I think this is a ridiculous argument. Granted, in our legal system, Apple would not usually be obliged to accommodate "faulty" code (even if they might happen to have been the originators of it). But what is the true definition of faulty code? In the realm of technology and computers, there are likely countless kludges and fixes and patches. The whole idea and goal is FUNCTION (ideally). Optimizing or standardizing code is important of course. It means that future authors can rely on the accuracy of the previous authors. But the world -- especially the tech world -- stands to gain more from consistency... from the language of the vernacular. If all the equipment and all the operating systems up to a point have deigned to speak in a consistent kind of pidgin, then it doesn't make complete sense to "fix" it to be some more "accurate" or "refined" grammar. Language works because it's locally consistent, not because it's accurate to some holy grail of grammar.
Specifically: Apple can't switch code midstream and say "oh, I made the code 'accurate,' not my fault if your stuff was built on bad code." Up until that point THEIR stuff was built on "bad" code too! It's a ridiculous argument but what can you do.
At this point, I imagine that Apple attempted to fix something with 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 that it had tried to fix before with OS 10.3.X. Instead, I believe it created an intermittent failure in Firewire/USB drives that leaves the drives inoperable as often as unmountable. It's just a theory based on having seen enough updates and upgrades have a really bad effect. I think people think we live in some future where we can trust our technology and tech manufacturers to get things right (or at least get things right often enough). Surely they're doing the best they can...no doubt.
I'm a little frustrated I should ramp down my expectations. I know. It's not like this is 2020 or 2050. It's really only 2007.
Good luck to us all.

Cannot boot my mini from CD/DVD or external firewire drive

The problem I face is simple: I cannot boot my mini from CD/DVD or external firewire drive.
When I boot with option key down, I see the Mac OSX boot and a ghost Windows from an early BootCamp installation, removed long ago (I now use Parallels).
I tried disconnecting everything but keyboard and mouse, to no avail.
I tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM.
I tried disconnecting the mini from everything and waiting one night.
I tried erasing the disk from another Mac when booting the mini as FireWire drive.
And still, the mini refuses to boot from the original CD, or any external drive.
Anyone has an idea whether it is software or hardware ?
Could it be a consequence of the early Boot Camp install and then removal ? Is there a way to reverse this ?
Any help or hint will be appreciated.
Best regards
JC
Intel mini early 2006 Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2gb RAM, core duo

Hi DaddyPaycheck,
Thanks for your message. Indeed, I failed to mention the problem from the Startup Disk Preference point of view.
Bootable CD and/or external disks also never appear in Startup Disk Prefs.
It indeed sounds like time for a backup (I did that) and a HD erase and reinstall of OSX. But since the CD does not want to boot, I tried installing from another Mac with my mini booted as FireWire drive. And that failed, probably because the master mini I used was a G4 one...
Best regards
JC

Booting from external Firewire drive--possible?

If I add a USB/Firewire card to my Beige G3 minitower (300MHz), can I then boot from an external Firewire hard drive on which I have installed Panther? A comment by Tina Garfield in another thread seems to suggest this is indeed possible. (I didn't want to "threadjack" that discussion, so I created this new one. I hope Tina sees it and can help me.)
Tina wrote the following:
Having Firewire allows you to have external drives,
which you will be able to boot from, and make
backups and maintenance especially easy.
I was under the impression that the Beige G3 can't see iadd-on Firewire/USB cards until the machine has booted from the internal hard drive. I really hope I am wrong! If it is indeed possible to have the machine recognize the external drive at startup, and there is something I need to do to enable this, please let me know.
Thanks!
GeeKay

Hi GeeKay,
Ditto to everything Grant posted, with an extra reminder to be sure to download XPostFacto 3.1 and not version 4. I believe on the XPF page ( http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.ht ml ), the download for 3.1 is a little bit down the page.
If/when you buy an external FW drive be sure it has an Oxford chipset. If the description does not include mention of the the Oxford chipset, I would strongly recommend finding another external drive that does specify this. Our Beiges are very particular about what they will accept for external booting, and the Oxford chipset is a critical component.
Also, I've found, since I do partition my external firewire drives, that I can boot only from the first partition of the external drive, similar to the behavior of our internal drives. In addition, with one of my Beiges, my "helper" disk that I specify to XPostFacto to allow me to boot externally must be the first partition of my internal drive.
I don't believe that you can actually INSTALL to an external drive. I simply cloned my internal drive's system over to the FW drive. This can be done with software such as the free Silverkeeper ( http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/ ) or with shareware SuperDuper ( http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ ) which are both great for all backups. I happen to prefer SuperDuper because of its redundancy -- it explains EVERY step before you take it and then, even after you tell it to go ahead, it asks you again to be sure That's what you want to do.
Once set up, however, it is extremely cool, and helpful, to be able to boot externally. If your external drive is dual USB/FW, you will only be able to boot when connected via Firewire. None of the Beiges are USB-bootable.
Hope this helps, and keep us posted,
Tina

Blue screen of death when La Cie external firewire drive connected

I tested a LaCie external firewire drive on my iMac and it worked fine. I packed it up well and posted it to a friend who gets the blue screen of death when the LaCie is connected to her iMac. She's not even trying to boot from it.
My iMac is 9.1 and hers is 8.1. We are both running Snow Leopard. Was there some problem once upon a time with chipsets or am I mis-remembering?
TIA

Create an ISO (Encore) or folder on your hard drive (Encore or Premiere Elements) and then use the FREE http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download to write files or folders or ISO to disc for DVD or BluRay (send the author a PayPal donation if you like his program)
Imgburn will read the ACTUAL disc brand from the disc, which is not always the same as the box label (Memorex is notorious for buying "anything" and putting it inside a Memorex box)
When you write to disc with Imgburn, use the SLOWEST possible speed setting, so your burner has the best chance to create "good, well formed" laser burn holes... since no player is required to read a burned disc, having a "good" one from a high quality blank will help

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?

Shutting down external firewire drives.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for