FW800 conflicting with FW400?

kishankishan
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I just bought a new Western Digital MyBook Pro Edition triple interface. I specifically bought it for its FW800 capability. I already have a Western Digital MyBook FW400 drive.



My computer is an iMac 24" 2.16 Core2Duo with 2GB RAM, running 10.4.10



When I plugged in the new drive with its FW800 cable, the FW400 drive disappeared and I received an error message cautioning me not to remove drives without ejecting them first. The FW800 drive never mounted. I had to restart. Then, I plugged in the FW800 drive it mounted fine. When I reattached the FW400 drive, the FW800 drive disappeared and I received the same error message. After I restarted, I daisy chained the FW800 drive through the FW400 drive, using the extra FW400 port on the FW400 drive. Same problem again.



Anyone have any bloody idea what the hell is going on here? Is there a conflict somewhere that I need to know about? Anything I can do?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    kishankishan Posts: 732member
    update: I can use both drives if one of them is connected via USB... maybe some kind of address conflict? How can I find out and what can I do about it?
  • Reply 2 of 4
    bobmarksdalebobmarksdale Posts: 744member
    I think I've heard of this problem before with usb in desktops. Something like if a motherboard has 6 ext usb ports and 2 internal ones, but can only use 6 of the 8 at a time. Maybe the macbook has a similar thing with FW so that it has both a FW 800 and 400 port but only one controller? Complete guess though.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    kishankishan Posts: 732member
    update 2: I've been able to duplicate the failure in my old iBook G4 too. If the FW400 drive is plugged into the iBook and the FW800 drive is daisy-chained through the FW400 drive, I have the same problem with the first drive dismounting.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    kishankishan Posts: 732member
    Final Update: After receiving a reply from Western Digital's customer service, I think I have the problem fixed: Apparently, there is a problem with the way that Mac OS X deals with WD's firewire drives. It revolves around the unique ID that the OS assigns each WD drive. For whatever reason, it tends to create conflicts. WD was kind enough to point me to a firmware update for the drives that has, for the moment, seemed to correct the problem. I now have the FW800 drive and the FW400 drive running on the ports I had intended. And let me say that FW800 is faaaaaaaast! I will be buying another FW800 drive as soon as finances permit.



    PS: I was very impressed with WD's customer service. I sent an email via their support page and within four days received a nice reply in which I was asked to try a couple of things to try and narrow where the problem might have been. They asked me to reply to them with the results. Within two hours of replying to them, I had their answer which has fixed the problem. Free, painless, pleasant and effective. Would recommend!
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