Really. I hate it. If you disconnect a firewire device without unmounting it, it screws everything up. I'm really getting sick of booting into 9 to repair disks that won't mount in OS X after being disconnected. It is far too annoying.
Really. I hate it. If you disconnect a firewire device without unmounting it, it screws everything up. I'm really getting sick of booting into 9 to repair disks that won't mount in OS X after being disconnected. It is far too annoying.
Then quit being a lazy bastard and unmount it first. you know the limitation, so its your own dammed fault.
Then quit being a lazy bastard and unmount it first. you know the limitation, so its your own dammed fault.
Well, once a fuse blew, another time the girl accidentally flipped the switch on the surge protector. Granted, this morning I was being lazy and thought I could just swap the plug from one power strip to another one and have it remount. I had a render running with one of the drives, didn't know which power cord was which and just gambled hoping it was one of the firewire drives plugged in elsewhere. But this problem happens regardless of whether a task is running or not.
But go to any apple store and try to check out the ipods. Both times I went to the apple store almost none of the ipods were working, apparently because they had been disconnected before they were unmounted.
And what's up with OS X not mounting disks that show up in 9 just fine? When I run a disk repair in 9 all it says is that the icon is corrupted, and yet somehow this makes it not mount in X?! Sure I can fix it OK, but it's really, really annoying to have to boot to 9 and do a fix every time it accidentally gets disconnected.
I just got an iPod and Powerbook and notice that if I leave my iPod connected to my computer for an extended amount of time, it perpetually goes in, "Do Not Disconnect" mode.
To keep this from happening I seperate the iPod immediately after the update.
As far as the firewire cable, should I disconnect the cable when its not actually in use? What's unmount?
Or if you're used to Windows right-click and Select Eject.
giant I accidentally forget to unmount before unplugging my iPod and external hard drive all the time. Probably hundreds of times. Hasn't caused a problem yet.
giant I accidentally forget to unmount before unplugging my iPod and external hard drive all the time. Probably hundreds of times. Hasn't caused a problem yet.
Well at the michigan ave apple store in chicago it certainly has caused problems. One of the times I went there was not a single ipod that could remount. I think the employees had to reboot every one of the machines to get them to work again.
Anyway, I don't really hate firewire. I just wish it could deal with this in at least a semi-normal way.
Reader Tip for OS X Drives not Mounting - (from a recent reader post)
"I've had two different external drives fail to show up on the desktop, but were mounted and accessible from the /Volumes folder. Both drives were functioning normally until I disconnected the drives before unmounting them. They would work normally on my home system so I knew there wasn't anything with the drives and had to be my work system.
I noticed in my work /Volumes folder I had an invisible file
"._volumename"
for each drive that wouldn't show up on the desktop. I deleted these files before I re-attaching the drives and now they show up on my desktop.
What I'm wondering is how you guys with machines that don't boot OS 9 would be able to deal with it. In OS X it tells me I need to reinitialize the drive. In 9 it mounts, I run repain and it just sets the icon back to default. It seems to me that if I couldn't boot into 9, I'd be out of luck.
umm, this isnt just a "problem" with firewire, any storage device that is removed without being properly unmounted in mac os (classic or x) will cause errors in the drive that will need to be repaired.
iPods are less bad than normal FW drives to disconnect without unmounting. Because they are battery-powered, the hard drive isn't going to scratch and spin and generally f*** up, because power isn't suddenly yanked out.
Although if the OS is in the middle of writing stuff to an iPod, obviously bad things can happen, and the iPod's file system will be corrupted. DiskWarrior fixed my iPod the one time this has happened.
umm, this isnt just a "problem" with firewire, any storage device that is removed without being properly unmounted in mac os (classic or x) will cause errors in the drive that will need to be repaired.
Ahh, but OS X can't even read the disk to repair it, not even when rebooted. It knows that somethings connected, but as the error message states, it's not readable.
Ahh, but OS X can't even read the disk to repair it, not even when rebooted. It knows that somethings connected, but as the error message states, it's not readable.
You know, back at MacWorld New York a number of years ago, Jobs was on stage with one of those tiny VST FireWire drives. He was showing off how cool FIreWire hard drives were, because they could be bus powered, and you could just unplug them whenever. To demonstrate, he was playing a QuickTime movie off of the VST FireWire drive. Then he unplugged the drive, and the movie stopped. He plugged it back in, and the movie began playing again.
Too bad it never worked like that in the real world.
iPods are less bad than normal FW drives to disconnect without unmounting. Because they are battery-powered, the hard drive isn't going to scratch and spin and generally f*** up, because power isn't suddenly yanked out.
Actually modern drives don't scratch their platters when power suddenly fails. The spindels keep turning for some seconds and a mechanics moves the arm to the park position and lands it there softly.
Unfortunately, MacOS has traditionally done a lousy job to ensure files are actually written and the catalog info is updated. Whenever I disconnect my USB stick without thinking, I have to move it to a windows machine to reformat it .
I don't think there's anything you can do, on any OS, to completely remove the hazards of disconnecting a drive of any sort while that drive is being written to.
However, the odds of bad things happening can be reduced. I don't know if OS X does this or not, but it seems to be that after a few seconds of drive inactivity, all pending updates should be finalized, and all caches (both in the system RAM and the drive's own cache) should be flushed, putting the drive into as consistent a state as possible.
There's nothing that the OS can do if other software leaves files open for long spans of time in inconsistent states, but at least such software typically can only corrupt its own data, and won't harm the consistency of the file/directory structure of the drive.
OS X could use some more smarts on the handling of bad media and drives. A possibly applicable example: I got a CD-RW into a corrupted state by cancelling a burn. When I tried to erase it, my CD drive made awful sounds for a few minutes trying to write to the disc, but failed to accomplish anything. I took the same disc over to a PC -- erased the disc right away, without any unnerving drive noises either.
The only reason I had to cancel the burn in the first place was that iTunes couldn't understand how to use an external USB CD-RW drive that Toast had no problems using. Once the disc was corrupted, neither the internal or external drive, via OS X utilities or Toast, could fix the disc.
Just like with Smircle's USB stick, it was Wintel to the rescue.
I just got an iPod and Powerbook and notice that if I leave my iPod connected to my computer for an extended amount of time, it perpetually goes in, "Do Not Disconnect" mode.
My iPod does exactly the same thing with my PowerBook -- was wondering if anybody had a consistent solution. The new software (2.1) hasn't helped either. So far the only thing that works is to sync the iPod with iSync before opening iTunes if you're just waking from sleep or booting up. And if it's already in the "perpetual Do Not Disconnect Mode," running iSync usually fixes this (just use the control in the menu bar and "Sync Now").
Comments
Originally posted by giant
Really. I hate it. If you disconnect a firewire device without unmounting it, it screws everything up. I'm really getting sick of booting into 9 to repair disks that won't mount in OS X after being disconnected. It is far too annoying.
Then quit being a lazy bastard and unmount it first. you know the limitation, so its your own dammed fault.
Originally posted by The General
Then quit being a lazy bastard and unmount it first. you know the limitation, so its your own dammed fault.
Well, once a fuse blew, another time the girl accidentally flipped the switch on the surge protector. Granted, this morning I was being lazy and thought I could just swap the plug from one power strip to another one and have it remount. I had a render running with one of the drives, didn't know which power cord was which and just gambled hoping it was one of the firewire drives plugged in elsewhere. But this problem happens regardless of whether a task is running or not.
But go to any apple store and try to check out the ipods. Both times I went to the apple store almost none of the ipods were working, apparently because they had been disconnected before they were unmounted.
And what's up with OS X not mounting disks that show up in 9 just fine? When I run a disk repair in 9 all it says is that the icon is corrupted, and yet somehow this makes it not mount in X?! Sure I can fix it OK, but it's really, really annoying to have to boot to 9 and do a fix every time it accidentally gets disconnected.
How do you unmount firewire?
I just got an iPod and Powerbook and notice that if I leave my iPod connected to my computer for an extended amount of time, it perpetually goes in, "Do Not Disconnect" mode.
To keep this from happening I seperate the iPod immediately after the update.
As far as the firewire cable, should I disconnect the cable when its not actually in use? What's unmount?
thanks for any tips.
Originally posted by iMale
How do you unmount firewire?
1) Drag the drive's icon to the trash. The trash will spontaneously change in an eject icon. Drag it on there. The disk will be unmounted.
2) Select the drive's icon. Under the menu 'File', choose 'Eject'.
3) Select the drive's icon. Press command(a.k.a. apple)-e
Those are three ways you can unmount a drive.
giant I accidentally forget to unmount before unplugging my iPod and external hard drive all the time. Probably hundreds of times. Hasn't caused a problem yet.
Originally posted by Aquatic
giant I accidentally forget to unmount before unplugging my iPod and external hard drive all the time. Probably hundreds of times. Hasn't caused a problem yet.
Well at the michigan ave apple store in chicago it certainly has caused problems. One of the times I went there was not a single ipod that could remount. I think the employees had to reboot every one of the machines to get them to work again.
Anyway, I don't really hate firewire. I just wish it could deal with this in at least a semi-normal way.
Reader Tip for OS X Drives not Mounting - (from a recent reader post)
"I've had two different external drives fail to show up on the desktop, but were mounted and accessible from the /Volumes folder. Both drives were functioning normally until I disconnected the drives before unmounting them. They would work normally on my home system so I knew there wasn't anything with the drives and had to be my work system.
I noticed in my work /Volumes folder I had an invisible file
"._volumename"
for each drive that wouldn't show up on the desktop. I deleted these files before I re-attaching the drives and now they show up on my desktop.
-mysterfxit"
[edit: this had nothing to do with my problem]
What I'm wondering is how you guys with machines that don't boot OS 9 would be able to deal with it. In OS X it tells me I need to reinitialize the drive. In 9 it mounts, I run repain and it just sets the icon back to default. It seems to me that if I couldn't boot into 9, I'd be out of luck.
Although if the OS is in the middle of writing stuff to an iPod, obviously bad things can happen, and the iPod's file system will be corrupted. DiskWarrior fixed my iPod the one time this has happened.
Barto
Originally posted by ThunderPoit
umm, this isnt just a "problem" with firewire, any storage device that is removed without being properly unmounted in mac os (classic or x) will cause errors in the drive that will need to be repaired.
Ahh, but OS X can't even read the disk to repair it, not even when rebooted. It knows that somethings connected, but as the error message states, it's not readable.
Originally posted by giant
Ahh, but OS X can't even read the disk to repair it, not even when rebooted. It knows that somethings connected, but as the error message states, it's not readable.
And what does that have to do with FireWire?
My pants are soiled, ****ing FireWire!
Too bad it never worked like that in the real world.
Originally posted by Barto
iPods are less bad than normal FW drives to disconnect without unmounting. Because they are battery-powered, the hard drive isn't going to scratch and spin and generally f*** up, because power isn't suddenly yanked out.
Actually modern drives don't scratch their platters when power suddenly fails. The spindels keep turning for some seconds and a mechanics moves the arm to the park position and lands it there softly.
Unfortunately, MacOS has traditionally done a lousy job to ensure files are actually written and the catalog info is updated. Whenever I disconnect my USB stick without thinking, I have to move it to a windows machine to reformat it
However, the odds of bad things happening can be reduced. I don't know if OS X does this or not, but it seems to be that after a few seconds of drive inactivity, all pending updates should be finalized, and all caches (both in the system RAM and the drive's own cache) should be flushed, putting the drive into as consistent a state as possible.
There's nothing that the OS can do if other software leaves files open for long spans of time in inconsistent states, but at least such software typically can only corrupt its own data, and won't harm the consistency of the file/directory structure of the drive.
OS X could use some more smarts on the handling of bad media and drives. A possibly applicable example: I got a CD-RW into a corrupted state by cancelling a burn. When I tried to erase it, my CD drive made awful sounds for a few minutes trying to write to the disc, but failed to accomplish anything. I took the same disc over to a PC -- erased the disc right away, without any unnerving drive noises either.
The only reason I had to cancel the burn in the first place was that iTunes couldn't understand how to use an external USB CD-RW drive that Toast had no problems using. Once the disc was corrupted, neither the internal or external drive, via OS X utilities or Toast, could fix the disc.
Just like with Smircle's USB stick, it was Wintel to the rescue.
Originally posted by iMale
I just got an iPod and Powerbook and notice that if I leave my iPod connected to my computer for an extended amount of time, it perpetually goes in, "Do Not Disconnect" mode.
My iPod does exactly the same thing with my PowerBook -- was wondering if anybody had a consistent solution. The new software (2.1) hasn't helped either. So far the only thing that works is to sync the iPod with iSync before opening iTunes if you're just waking from sleep or booting up. And if it's already in the "perpetual Do Not Disconnect Mode," running iSync usually fixes this (just use the control in the menu bar and "Sync Now").
Anybody else try anything?