Upgrade LaCie Mini Firewire drive...

I currently have a 160 GB LaCie mini firewire drive for my Mac Mini Core Duo. I recently saw an ad at a local Fry's that is selling Maxtor 500GB retail box had drive for $99 in either SATA or Ultra ATA versions. I would like to replace the 160GB drive in my LaCie with the 500GB drive but do not know which version to buy, SATA or Ultra ATA. Does anyone know which version is in the LaCie mini firewire drive? I looked at LaCie's support page but they do not show what type of drive is in the LaCie mini firewire. It shows 7,200 RPM, 8MB Cache, and 40MB/s transfer rate.
Has anyone taken a LaCie mini firewire drive apart? Any hints will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Tony.

Hi,
That is exactly what I did with my LaCie Mac Mini companion drive. Disk Utility will give you the information you need. For instance, select your Mini Drive and go to Info to find out the Media name which is the Media model number. In my case, a Seagate ST3160023A. This is a Ultra ATA 100 Hard Disk. The actual upgrade is very easy to perform. Remove the screws neatly hidden under the rubber pads of the drive. Open it up (be careful with the front LED assembly). Change the HD and re assemble. That is it! OSX will recognize the drive and ask whether it should be initialized. Answer yes and then go to disk utility to create a OSX partition. Done.
Cheers,

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LaCie Ext Firewire drive issues... Strange voodoo...

So this is kind of a mystery to me... and complicated... bear with me. I am running Mac OS 10.4.4 (Tiger) and I have a Bigger Disk LaCie Firewire 400/800 d2 drive. I ran a version of Tech Tool Pro that wasn't compatible with Tiger (I know - stupid). The result was a completely unrecognizable drive to the OS. Disk Utility wouldn't even initialize it at first. I had to start up from my Panther disc and run Disk utility there and zeroed the data on the drive after recovering the data.
Now everything seemed to be peachy however, every so often, usually when I am running an application that requires the drives attention whether it be Pro Tools, iTunes, Garageband - basically any app that needs to access the drive from time to time, forces the drive to not only freeze that application, but also freezes the Finder and makes it impossible for me to restart or do anything until I literally turn the drive off. The I get the usual device removal dialogue and everything returns to normal. Force Quit does not work in this case. I literally cannot get any application affected by the drives stalling to to Force Quit until I turn the thing off.
Then when I run Disk Utility or Disk Warrior (I wont let Tech Tool do anything now) it reports that there is nothing wrong with the drive. In addition, in the Disk Utility S.M.A.R.T. status it says that is "Not Supported" when I could have sworn that before I reinitialized the disc it would always say "Verified."
In order to perhaps help the problem I have diabled Hard Disk spindown as well as turned off Spotlight for that drive. I disabled spindown because it seemed that when the drive would go to spindown that it would freeze the Finder then too.
Could it be extreme fragmentation that is causing the problem? There are no weird clicks or mechanical sounds coming from the drive. The only thing that occurs is the blue light on the drive blinks continuously - when it does that and I get the beach ball of death I know I am screwed.
So sorry for the long post but if anyone could help me with this problem I figure they would have to have the whole story.
Unfortunately I am leaning towards the dying drive theory - it would be the third drive to die on me this year alone.
Any and all help is much appreciated.
Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi Andrew
Firstly I don't believe the S.M.A.R.T. status will show anything other than "Not Supported" because FireWire drives are not supported - only internal drives.
Secondly your description makes me think there may be something wrong with the power supply (not exactly unheard of with LaCie drives). However I am not 100% sure - but it may still be worth checking out even if it is just to eliminate the possibility.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.7) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, iPs, AEBS, AX

Lacie D2 Firewire drives not responding.

I'm tearing my hair out trying to resolve this problem. Both of my Lacie D2 drives have stopped mounting on my desktop for some reason (see spec of my mac in my sig below).
In System Profiler, when either of the devices are plugged in, the message under 'Firewire' is 'No information found'. When they're not plugged in it reads 'Firewire 400' or something like that...
HOWEVER:
1. My other Lacie 10GB External Drive (that runs using power from the mac via Firewire, not a seperate power supply) does show up in the profiler and mounts/operates properly.
2. Other devices (e.g. original ipod, printer) work fine with the Firewire ports on my mac.
3. The problem drives work and mount fine on my G5.
4. Have tried using different power adapters for the Lacie Drives and no change.
5. Drive mounts if I use a USB connection.
*THINGS I HAVE TRIED SO FAR:*
1. Reset PRAM
2. Reset NVRAM
3. Unplugged all devices, shutdown mac, unplugged from mains for 30 mins, then rebooted and reconnected devices.
4. Repaired disc permissions, reinstalled 10.39 combo update, repaired permissions again.
5. Used Lacie Updater to add latest firmware for the drives but these were already up to date
So as you can see, I've tried a few solutions that I read about on these boards and still no joy. The only thing that I think I have changed on my mac since this starting hapening is updating iTunes to 7.6. Apart from that, nothing else has changed.
Think that's everything. If I remember any more info, I'll post it up.
Hope someone can help me!!
Cheers.

It seems you have tried most things in my firewire faq; I'll post it here in case you missed something.
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 didn't 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.
If that still didn't 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.
Here's another
Fw Faq.
 Cheers! DALE

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.

Audio cutting out when using D2 external Firewire Drive

Hi,
I have just upgraded to Logic Studio, using the following setup:
Macbook Pro
Motu 828
AMT 8
Logic Studio
D2 Lacie 500GB Firewire Drive
As the MacBook's internal hard drive is not sufficient to record and playpack efficiently, I was advised to get an external Firewire Drive. Given that I have very little space on my laptop - (am running windows on a partition also) I am trying to save my logic files to the external HD. When creating tracks specifically using Audio Instruments, the playpack keeps cutting out.
I am connecting the HD via usb 2. I am also having to freeze the tracks in order to record more layers. There is lots of clipping and latency. I thought by using the external, this problem would be resolved.
The HD is not playing back the tracks fast enough, and keeps cutting the audio out. The audio cuts out everytime the blue light on the drive flashes.
I cannot save the files to the MackBook HD as there is notenough space.
Is there something very wrong with my setup?
any advice would be really appreciated.
ps. I am a bit of a newbie
thank you in advance.
Spy

Connect it via firewire 800. USB2 is not good for audio or video streaming.
I have 3 D2's connected to my mac pro, works like a charm.
good luck.

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

Disk utility Q: setting up RAID with 2 firewire drives

Hi,
I tried setting up a redundant RAID with two LaCie 250gb firewire drives in Apple's Disk Utility. All was OK until I restarted. The RAID didn't show up, and both disks came up as unreadable. I was unable to reformat, erase, repair, or partition either of the LaCie drives. I tried new cables and both the front and rear Firewire ports. No matter what I did, I got an input/output error.
I was able to erase and reformat one of the drives on my powerbook running 4.6. The other drive appears to be DOA, as it clicks and blinks and does little else.
So what gives? I'm going to exchange the dead drive, but I don't want to have the same problem with setting up a RAID if the same nonsense is going to happen again. Any thoughts?

FW RAID on G5s is PITA and very poor performance. You would also need a PCI FW800 controller to get a boost or anything like normal. If you want any type of RAID, invest in Serial ATA drive/case/controller.
SeriTek if you want it to be bootable. SeriTek or Sonnet for direct connect. Sonnet if you think you might need more than 4 drives and use Port Multiplier.
There is only one FW channel that has to be shared if you don't invest in one or more FW800 controllers.
My bet is the drive could be fine but needs to be zeroed and could have damaged boot blocks at this point.
I am not a fan of mirrors. Backups, yes, lots. Stripped for scratch and even a dedicated boot OS/apps, yes. I've run with Disk Utility and SoftRAID (3.5) for 4 yrs now but mostly SCSI and one FW800 RAID which only gets about 75-80MB/sec. Even a single drive gets near 60MB/sec and a mirror would cut that in half.

Firewire drives

I have a Lacie 500gb firewire drive which is no mounting on the desktop of my computer. I have a total of 11 drives including the Lacie. I have not had any problems with my set up until now. The drive still cycles to seem like it was going to mount on the desktop. Any ideas on how to get files out of the drive. Is the drive still useable. Please let me know all what can be done or do I have to bring it to a computer still.

Hi Brian Fass-
If you have another identical drive enclosure with the same power supply brick, try swapping the power supply with a known good drive and see if that works.
I have a lot of experience with LaCie drives. It is possible for the power supply to fail, yet the little blue light still comes on and the drives still spin up.
If you find it is the supply you can actually order it directly from LaCie for around $20.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Macbook causes external firewire drive to operate constantly

I have a Macbook 1.83MHz with 2GB of RAM installed. Whenever I connect my 80GB LaCie external firewire drive, the drive commenses to do a rapid cycle as if I were copying a large file to it and does not stop for the duration of being attached to the computer. Searching through files on the hard drive is very slow, and if I click on a file in column view, the finder beachballs for several minutes while the info or preview is being generated. The drive is the only device in the chain and worked great with my previous machine, a dual 867MHz G4 mirror drive.
Any thoughts as to what might be going on? Thanks.

well, i attached my other firewire drive and it started doing the same thing, but i was able to add it to spotlight's "ignore" list and the problem went away. so this is probably the issue, but i can't make it stop on the original firewire drive because whenever i try to add it to spotlight's ignore list, the beachball spins for a few seconds then nothing shows up in the list.
checked firmware, everything up to date. next step is to reformat...
too bad spotlight doesn't default to NOT indexing everything you stick into the computer... (or at least dump indexing way back in the priority queue so it doesn't get in the way like this)

Changing permissions on PC-formated firewire drive

I have a Lacie external firewire drive formatted as a PC drive. I would like to reformat it as Mac but I do not have the proper permissions to erase the drive. I have checked the Mac Help for how to change permissions on a drive, but none of the options that are described show up under Get Info for this drive. I also cannot trash the contents because I do not have permissions.

Do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. 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.) 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. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.

Starting up from external partitioned firewire drive

Hi all,
I have a lacie external firewire drive. I have it partitioned. One partition has a copy of OSX. If i start up on my main drive and set the "start up disk" preferences to the OSX partition on the external drive my G5 will start up on the OSX partition.
However, if i don't set the "start up disk" preferences to the partitioned firewire drive and i try holding down the "option" key during a cold start the G5 won't recognize the partitioned OSX as an option.
I want to have this external copy of OSX as an emergency start up using the "option" key during a cold start.
For the last two years i've used a non-partitioned external firewire drive with OSX installed as an emergency start up disk and the G5 has always recognized the drive while holding down the "option" key from a cold start.
Now that i have OSX on a partitioned external drive, a cold start holding down the "option" key won't recognize the external OSX.
Any ideas?
Also, if i'm not able to start up from this partitioned firewire drive, are there any special instructions for creating a DVD copy of OSX to use as an emergenct start up disk?
Paul

Allan,
I can boot fine from the external, partitioned firewire drive if i first set my "start up disk" preferences to the external drive.
But i if have my "system startup disk" preferences set to the internal drive (as it is normally), shut the machine down, then try a cold start holding down the "option" key, the G5 won't recognize the external drive (partitioned) as an optional system from which to start up from.
In the past, i've dedicated an entire external firewire drive (NOT partitioned) as my emergency start up disk and when i did a cold start of the G5 holding down the "option" key, the G5 had no problems recognizing the external (not partitioned) drive as an optional system for start up.
I'm wondering if by partitioning the external firewire drive i have some how rendered the external drive useless as an alternate start up device.
Questions, questions ...
Paul

Original Mac mini and LaCie firewire drive

Hi all,
I've tried looking through previous posts but can't find anything that seems to relate to my problem.
I've bought a LaCie 250Gb external drive and a DVD burner - both firewire and tried hooking them up to my mini but I can't get either to work.
Tried them individually and swapped cables - also tried with a different cable but still no joy !
I know the port is ok because I connect a video camera and my iPod through it.
I'm guessing that the firewire is 400 and the devices are probably 800 - could this be causing the problem ? Do I need new/different cables ?
Thanks for your time
Alan
Beige MT333 with Sonnet 500Mhz G4 mac mini 1.42 with 256Mb ram Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Ahhh...
I found the answer myself - a PMU reset. Sorted everything.
regards
alan

Firewire drive no longer recognized after upgrade?

having an onset of problems the last 2 weeks.
first upgraded to 10.4.6 on mac mini 1.42 non-duo, worked a few days than acted weird with apps crashing. had to reinstall from 10.4 disk. seemed ok. repaired permissions, ect. after reinstall (and a subsequent power outage) a firewire drive attached at time was no longer recognized by mac mini or connected imacG3. reinstalled 10.4.2 on mac mini. installer unable to reinstall 10.4.6., I would like to have firewire drive recognized again. when attached to other firewire drive in daisy chain, says device unrecognized, other wise unable to get any info on drive. what to do?

I am having nearly the exact same issue as you are experiencing. My Western Digital Dual-Option Media Center 160 GB FW HD is going in and out big time. It seems to be there for a time but then conks out. I have to disconnect the power and now the drive seems to be malfunctioning.
Same story with my LaCie 52x CD Burner. I placed the Disk Warrior CD in there and the computer recognized the disc at first but then spinning beach balls galore!
This has to be one of the worst updates to an OS X system I can remember. I can only think PowerPC QA testing has gone through the toilet since the Intel move was completed.

LaCie D2 Firewire 800 drives not mounting.

Hi guys,
After an OS upgrade to 10.5 I can't mount any Firewire drives to desktop. In fact, they're not even listed in System profiler, the message "*Warning:Unable to list FireWire devices*" comes up in Firewire bus section.
They worked fine under 10.4 etc, and still mount on older G4 towers all running Tiger/Panther
Any help appreciated.
System: MacBook, OS X 10.5, LaCie D2 FW800 external drives

Not likely a problem with your LaCie drives, but something related to the FireWire drivers inside your upgraded OS X 10.5 installation.
From your own words, system profiler is reporting that it is unable to list any FireWire devices.
You may want to try resetting your FireWIre bus as a first step:
shutdown your computer, and disconnect drives
remove AC power from your drives as well as your computer for a few minutes; with laptops, also remove the battery
reconnect AC to just your computer; reinstall battery if a laptop
restart computer; confirm that there is no problem in the FireWire section of your Apple System Profiler report
connect power to your FireWire drive, and reconnect to the computer. Confirm that drive is visible to both Apple System Profiler as well as Apple Disk Utility. Apply First Aid to confirm drive is OK.
If drive does not appear, or there is a problem reported with the FireWire bus, then suspect a fauly installation of OS X. Youc an boot from your Leopard OS X DVD, and use Apple Disk Utility and Apple System Profiler while booed from the DVD. This will be a clean version of the OS, and probably overcome any problems with the installed OS X.
If drive appears fine while booted from the DVD, then you will need to reinstall your OS X.
Mike

10.4 Installation on External Lacie Firewire Drive

Hi -
I have a number of Macs running 10.4 and each has an external Lacie firewire drive attached, with a partition for an external startup drive. I recently bought a new Lacie 250 GB Porsche firewire drive to rplace a smaller Porsche model, but I cannot install OSX 10.4 on it because the install disk does not recognize the external drive as an installation source. I have upgraded the firmware on the drive but that has made no difference. Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem might be and help me figure out how to install the operating software on the external drive? Thanks for your help.
Shelly

Thanks for your reply. The drive is actually being used on a G4 tower that's about 6 years old. I partitioned the drive into two sections: about 7GB for the operating system and the remainder of the 250GB for backup purposes. Neither volume shows up on the Tiger insdtall disk as a source for the installation (by the way, I also tried it on my G3 iBook, with the same results).

Upgrade LaCie Mini Firewire drive...

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