Unable to mount external fire-wire hard drive - help, please!

After working the last couple of days to resolve the failure of an internal drive, now one of my external drives (LaCie fire-wire) will not mount. I was using it to back up the bad internal drive, and probably forgot to eject the drive before turning it off; don't know if this really makes any difference, but just in case...
If I use Disk Utility I can see the LaCie drive, but it will not mount.
When I tried to verify the drive got the following message -
Invalid sibling link
The volume LaCie HD needs to be repaired
1 HFS volume checked - volume needs repair
Next I tried to repair the drive, and was told -
Invalid sibling link
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
This is where I stopped. I read another post somewhere in the forums about making a disk image of the drive, but I'm afraid of making things worse by proceeding without knowing what I'm doing. Any ideas on how I can somehow retrieve the data in the LaCie drive?
Once again, thanks in advance for any help!

Hi! Diskwarrior is always better at repairing drive directories which constitute 99% of all drive problems. I run it fairly regularly usually once a month. BUT I always run it at the first sign of weirdness or problems AND every time I have had a power failure or a forced restart or shutdown because those events usually always damage the drive's directory. Often even though the directory is damaged OSX can go ahead and mount it and it will work ok but eventually the damage builds every time one of those events occur and finally there is a failure to mount or boot. Tom

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I'm using iTunes 10.6.1 on an iMac 2,66 Ghz intel core Duo with8GB DDR3 and Lion 10.7.3 I have 260000 mp3 stored on a My Book 3 TB external fire wire 800 Drive - when I play songs I get short interruptions every 20 to 30 seconds. Can't iTunes handle that number of songs?

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Hi
I have a Canon HV20 and a My Book 500 Gig Hard drive and I'm using a Ibook G4.
Here's my Problem , I only have one Firewire Input so I Plugged My Book In it and Put the Cameras firewire in the Hard drives fire wire out and When I try to Import Final cut Express can never find that it is plugged in to my Hard drive but when I go to Imovie It Finds it Easy.
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hey there Michealbak, welcome to Discussions,
i've used a Belkin Firewire hub for 5 years w/ no issues because i needed more Firewire ports on my G4 iMac connecting FW audio, Sony cam & ext FW HDDs. then i used it briefly on my MacBook for the same purpose as you, needed to connect a FW HDD & my video cam. as Tom states Canon cams can have issues w/ multiple devices on the same FW buss. the hub may or may not help, as others have reported issues w/ the MyBook line of HDDs.
good luck

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Hey everyone. I recently bought the Apogee Duet which is friggin awesome by the way. I am now in need of an external 7200 HD that I will be saving all of my recordings onto.
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I don't know anything about Apogee ..., but by all means buy a FW800 drive. Ignoring Apogee, data transfers will be much faster, and you can make a bootable clone on this drive for activities benefiting from the use of a large fast external). The Buffalo 1TB 7200 RPM can be had at Newegg.com, for example, for less than $140. Buffalo makes good drives.
Message was edited by: donv (The Ghost)
Message was edited by: donv (The Ghost)

Weird problem involving my external hard drive - help please!

I recently got a formac mini 120 gb firewire hard drive, which had been working fine with my g4 quicksliver.
i then went to a friends (g5 machine) with my drive and he put some data on it - bought it back to mine and managed to re connect the drive and take the data - no problem - very happy.
I recently gave my drive to another friend using a g5 and when it came back, nothing - i don't get the drive symbol appearing. turned the comp on and off many times and tried re-connecting etc still no drive appearing.
Then i took the drive to my friend with a mac lap top power book. connected there - working fine. Baffling. was happy that my data can still be accessed.
I know it's not the firewire cable because i can get power to the drive - i can see the red light at the fron on.
Can anyone help with this weird problem?
Thanks

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work!
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that did'nt work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try. Yours might be the 10.4.10 Combo update. I have no idea since you did not fill out your specs. fully when you signed in to this site. Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system. This link is for PPC Macs not Intel Macs.
If that still did'nt get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good! Also, here is Apple doc.#88338 on getting FireWire to work.
Good Luck!
Cheers!
DALE

Firewire 400 external vs internal hard drive - which is better?

I’m thinking of buying a handy little Mac Mini (circa 2008) from a friend to replace my ageing, workhorse Powermac (sniff).
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Which will run quicker or better? Internal or Fire-wire 400? (I’m a typical Mac user – lots of internet, quite a lot of iPhoto, a bit of iMovie here and a bit of Dreamweaver there)
Also, I really want to use an Iomega one that matches the mini (I’m buying a mini to save space and reduce clutter in the first place..) – has anyone used this as their bootable drive with success??

A 7200 RPM internal will be the fastest. But Firewire-400 will be pretty good, too, especially if it is a 3.5-inch model.
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Unmountable external fire wire drive

Hello all!
I have a serious problem. I'v been reading these posts, but no luck with my issue.
I have a Maxtor 250GB external FireWire 1 hard drive with 3 partitions on it:
/dev/disk5
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Applepartitionscheme *232.9 Gi disk5
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 Ki disk5s1
2: Apple_Driver43 28.0 Ki disk5s2
3: Apple_Driver43 28.0 Ki disk5s3
4: AppleDriverATA 28.0 Ki disk5s4
5: AppleDriverATA 28.0 Ki disk5s5
6: Apple_FWDriver 256.0 Ki disk5s6
7: AppleDriverIOKit 256.0 Ki disk5s7
8: Apple_Patches 256.0 Ki disk5s8
9: Apple_HFS KEPEK (100) 100.0 Gi disk5s10
10: Apple_HFS ZENE (50) 50.0 Gi disk5s12
11: Apple_HFS DATA (80) 82.5 Gi disk5s14
I am not sure, what happened, but as of yesterday, this drive will not mount:
~ diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk5
One or more volume(s) failed to mount
I have tried to use DiskUtility, and the disk verification is OK on all partitions. I am, however, still unable to mount this drive.
I have successfully created a DiskImage using the DiskUtility, and I get the following error message when trying to mount the image:
Unable to attach "KEPEK (100)/dmg". (no mountable file systems)
Please, help me! I have a bunch of irreplaceable family photos on this drive, and I would like to recover them if it is possible.
All suggestions, advice, and help will be greatly appreciated!
THX all: Thot

Unable to attach "KEPEK (100)/dmg". (no mountable file systems)
This "bug" has surfaced elsewhere, and is within Leopard itself.
Trash the contents (not the folder) of System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches folder, and the System/Library/Extensions.mkext file. Empty the trash and restart.
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Panther: Installation on Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB External Fire Wire Drive.

I am waiting on delivery of a Full Retail Version Panther 10.3 purchased on eBay to be installed on a Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB External FireWire drive.
Are these the steps I should take to format, partition, & properly install Panther on the external FW Drive?
I have updated my OS 9.2.2 with the latest Firmware Update Pbook 4.1.8.smi.
1. Boot (Panther) from the install disk holding down the C key.
2. Once booted go to the Installer Menu and open Disk Utility from Panther.
3. In Disk Utility select FireWire HD in left panel and Erase in main panel.
4. Be sure Volume Format is Mac OS Extended and the checkbox Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed is checked.
5. Select Options at bottom left in Erase panel. This procedure will erase the contents of the entire External Fire Wire HDD. Select option to zero all data.
6. Click OK. Click Erase.
*. After eFWD is erased. Is this when I will partition eFW Drive? I plan five (5) partitions: 1-10GB for back up of my internal HD, 1-20GB for OSX 10.3, 1-50GB for future OS, 1-100GB for Storage and the remainder GB for Storage.
*. After eFWD is partitioned.
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13. Go online and download updates, or go to Software Update under the Apple Menu and update your OS.
14.???Transfer your User Folder from Previous Systems folder. I don’t see a User Folder in my present System Folder of OS9.2.2.
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16. Copy or Clone to the OS 9 partition my existing internal hard drive.
I hope all that is left is to enjoy.
Mac PowerBook G3 (Pismo), 400MHz, 10GB HD, 320MB Ram, DVD Drive, 2 USB & FireWal Mac OS 9.0.x Upgraded to Mac OS 9.2.2, Maxtor OneTouch II 300MB FW Drive,

Thank you for the correction and encouragement. I have changed the erase step to partition. This will be my first experience with partitioning and with OSX. After three weeks of research and discussion I am excited about using OSX and probably will change my strategy to doubling my internal HDD to 20MB, increase RAM to 512MB and install the Panther on the internal drive. If this is my goal, which OS should be put on the external FW drive first, if I want to boot OS 9 from the eFWd instead of the internal? I don’t know if Panther will open archived files produced with OS9 applications? That being the only need to have a working version of OS9. Thanks again for all the help from the discussion groups.
Mac PowerBook G3 (Pismo), 400MHz, 10GB HD, 320MB Ram, DVD Drive, 2 USB & FireWal Mac OS 9.0.x Upgraded to Mac OS 9.2.2, Maxtor OneTouch II 300MB FW Drive,

Can't exclude an external fire wire drive

well that is pretty much it, I can't exclude an external fire wire drive from the search of spotlight I even deleted the playlist file of spotlight had no effect.
it is a WD 320GB connected via Fire wire.
I don't want spotlight looking there because it slows down the whole thing plus I know exactly what is in there.
any ideas?

Gon
I had the same problem with an external drive that powers down when idle and then takes it's time waking up for a spotlight search, thus slowing down the normally instantaneous results. I was able to get it to "stick" in the Privacy Pane and would exclude results from it, but Spotlight still seemed to need to wake it up to know that it's not part of the search
You can also set (in Energy Prefs) not to power down drives when idle, but then you're stuck with loud fan/drive noise constantly if you have such a drive, (I had a TB lacie which can get loud with drive & fan running).
But since as you say it's a drive you rarely need to access and you know what's on it, why not just connect it when you need it. I moved data I use daily to my main drive and the external drive only holds iMovie projects, installers and assorted download junk that I rarely access.
Plus I freed an extra outlet on my UPS
iMac G5, PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4)
iMac G5, PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4)

IMac can't running any two fire wire hard disks at the same time . which

iMac can’t running any two fire wire hard disks at the same time . which two hard disks have extra power from power socket . If i just insert one of them .No problem . If connect two Hds at the same time. Leopard cant find it and the Hds seem no problem. the machine must be restarted and then use one . No problem . I have formated the HD many times .even if which format is Fat 32 or Mac issue persists .Boot from installation CD used the disk utility . Issue stills . If i used one fire wire HD that get power from power socket and used one fire wire device . Leopard was no problem during this time . Whether is this design problem or my machine hardware problem?My Mac has been changed the logic board by Apple service . Do you have similar case in here????
Message was edited by: KennyG1983

Hi KennyG1983-
How are you connecting these drives?
This may help: What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire or USB device
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Cloning to External Fire Wire HD

Hello
I have a new iMac and have quickly gobbled up it's internal HD with digital video imports. I want to do two things. Get these files out of my internal HD, onto and external HD, but also use the external HD as a bootable clone. Can I use a new 1tb external fire wire HD for both?
I've read that if you use an application like Superduper to clone with, you sould leave the clone "untouched" to allow a clean version in the event of a main HD crash.
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What about the rest of the space on the external HD, can I use it to store reemes of digital video files, and digital pictures while awaiting editing and processing without compromising the clone of my HD, which I want available for a clone. Or is a cloned HD a sacred place reserved only for emergencies.
Thanks
Stinkball

I've had luck with Carbon Copy Cloner. Just make sure your external HD is partitioned using the GUID scheme. I think CCC takes care of synching things.
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Im relatively new to iMac and still finding my way around it. Likewise, I've looked around the discussion forum but unable to find the key words to my problem but Im sure it has been discussed before. If so I apologise.
I have a Toshiba External (Back Up) Hard Drive which was a back up to my Windows Based PC and therefore has numerous images on there. Anyway, how do I get this set up on my iMac without loosing any of the info on the Back Up hard drive, also wish to use this as a back up for images from my IMac too. Do I also need to reconfig my images as I used Adobe photoshop in the first instance or will it change automatically to iPhoto?
Any info / assistance will appreciated but please keep advise / explanations simple as I sometimes tend to throw dummy out of the pram when I get frustrated. Just like now!! LOL.

Here's the problem, in my attempt to explain it a little more clearly. There are a number of different ways data can be written to a drive, called "partition schemes"... think of them like languages used when printing a book. Like languages, some systems cannot understand some drive partition schemes. Unlike languages in a book, however, a system may be able to read a partition scheme, but be unable to write to it.
In the case of a Mac, it can read/write APM (Apple Partition Map), GUID and FAT (an old MS-DOS scheme) drives. However, it can only read NTFS drives, and NTFS is what Windows typically uses. Most likely, this drive of yours is NTFS. (You can tell for sure by selecting the drive in Disk Utility - not the volume, with the familiar name, the drive, right above it with a name that includes the size - and looking in the info at the bottom of the DU window.)
So, your Mac can't write to that drive at all, even though it can read it. Although there is software that can give your Mac the ability to write to that drive, it will never work with the Mac's built-in backup software (Time Machine), which requires that the backup drive be GUID. That may not be an issue, as TM is far from the only backup software out there. Something like [Carbon Copy Cloner|http://www.bombich.com> or SuperDuper may be able to work with that drive, given software that lets you write to NTFS.
Whether or not you ultimately end up making this drive work for backup of your Mac, note that it is important that you have multiple backups of any data you don't want to lose. So, those images need to be stored in at least one other place (preferably two or more). That given, you may want to repartition that drive with a more Mac-friendly scheme after you've gotten some backups of those images made. (Assuming, of course, that you're no longer working with Windows... if that's not the case, keeping a Windows backup on that drive would probably be wise.)
See my [Mac Backup Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/guides/backups> for more on backup strategies in general.

Are (some) external firewire 400 hard drives just cased sata drives?

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Possible but unlikely. PATA drive remain less expensive in bulk and PATA ->FW enclosures are more mature and wide spread than SATA->FW. Larger drive cap. drives are more likely to be SATA.

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Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work! I have had no trouble with any update Apple puts out (the Combo update is what I normally choose). Are you running 9.2 like your specs. say? You are in the Tiger forum, so I'll assume you haven't updated your Macs specs.
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For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good!
Good Luck!
Cheers!
DALE

Unable to mount external fire-wire hard drive - help, please!

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