Thunderbolt to Firewire doesn't see External HardDrive

Greetings...
I was setting up my Mom's new MacBookAir, and I had to aquire a Thunderbolt Adapter (to Firewire 800). She used an External drive for her Time Machine backup previously. It is a Maxtor OneTouch drive, but it uses the older Firewire ports. Fortunately, the Firewire 800 cable I bought (by Rocketfish) also came with an Adaptor to connect the FW 800 cable to the FW 400 ports on the Maxtor drive. But, the drive won't show up on her Desktop (nor does Time Machine see it when trying to use Migration Asst to transfer her backup). I also pulled up the Disk Utility (as a test), but it didn't see the External drive either (?).
Anyone out there have an idea as to why the MacBookAir (running Maverick) doesn't see the External Maxtor drive? I appreciate any input…Chip Henley

I thought that the cable might have been bad, so I used the USB cable that went with my Iomega HD to test this idea. It didn't work either.
Ironically, after I posted my previous message, lo and behold, the SimpleDrive showed up when I booted my PowerBook. I used that opportunity to reformat the HD for MacOSX extended (journaled), and it has thus far appeared twice after shutting down and rebooting. So, I'm not quite sure what the problem was, or still may be. But I'll keep the forum notified of progress or setbacks, so my learnings can be used by others.

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Hi vberardo,
If you are having an issue with your external hard drive now connecting to your MacBook Air, I would suggest that you troubleshoot using the steps in this article -
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

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Folks,
This is *really* frustrating. Last night I tried, for the first time, to use an external display for my MBA. I have a Thunderbolt-to-HDMI Apple cable I bought for this purpose (the only way to do it on my MBA), and I connected it to the external display via an HDMI cable. I plugged in the monitor, turned it on, and opened up the MBA (it was in sleep mode) and it was glorious -- full, beautiful color (well, after I adjusted the gamma and brightness/contrast appropriately to calibrate it).
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I thought I'd add a couple of things here that might be helpful to others searching for a solution to this or a similar problem.
I happened to leave my MBA turned off for a while but with the external monitor connected. When it came time to turn it back on I connected it to power (although it was pretty fully charged) because I had been reading this:
http://gizmodo.com/5938452/a-trick-to-make-using-an-external-monitor-with-your-m acbook-way-better
and in the bottom comments there was a section that read as follows:
"Closed Clamshell Mode is still a function of the OS. Here's how: close the lid of portable, plug into power, monitor, and keyboard/mouse, wake portable by clicking the mouse or hitting a key on the space bar. Important note: portable has to be plugged into power, even if the battery is full."
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Thanks - Just tried that and it did find something to repair.
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That should say "Now none of the laptops (a MacBook and an iBook) will see either external drive..." I hate typos.
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Hello!
Today I put my macbook with an external monitor to sleep. After I woke it up, the macbook can't see my external monitor anymore.
What can be the problem & solutions?
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Thunderbolt to Firewire doesn't see External HardDrive

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