Firewire HD just quits!
I've been using an external FW HD (Lacie D2) on an old G4 (733) and its been fine.
In the last couple of days though, its taken to quiting whilst in use.
The drive power cuts and there's a message about not having been quit correctly. If I take out the FW or power cable, it re mounts and works fine again for another hour or two, Then it happens again.
Any ideas...its driving me
In the last couple of days though, its taken to quiting whilst in use.
The drive power cuts and there's a message about not having been quit correctly. If I take out the FW or power cable, it re mounts and works fine again for another hour or two, Then it happens again.
Any ideas...its driving me
Comments
Possibly the cable in from the mains is failing.
The power lead seemed more likely, except that I have swapped it for another one (for an ext DVD drive) and the same thing happens.
I have 'upgraded' through to 10.3.9 recently. Have Apple screwed-up Firewire I wonder?
Do the lights actually go off? If the power light goes off I would think that rules out a software problem. It would be the same as pulling the plug. OS X would complain that the drive had been removed without properly unmounting it.
If you have a drive sitting idling, and you're only transfering the odd file back and forth, it'll stay relatively cool. But if you are constantly working the drive, throwing huge amounts of data back and forth, that same drive is going to get very hot, very quickly.
You aren't working the drive harder when it quits are you?
Another thing, and my problem is kind of solved, albeit I don't know what happened or whether it'll happen again...
I changed the Firewire port that I was connected to on the back of the Mac. This seems to have solved the problem - no more cut outs (PSU, cables, location of drive and usage same as before).
That's good but why did it happen?
My connections hadn't changed since I first connected the drive and the setup was working great.
Can a port develop a malfunction that would cause this?
I suspect a software issue but don't know how to find out.