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440 Forums _ Comments _ Panther's FireWire Data Loss Problem.

Posted by: articles Mon 5 Apr 2004, 10:58

Comments about:

http://www.macmusic.org/articles/view.php?lang=EN&id=84

Posted by: keepsound Mon 5 Apr 2004, 10:58

It's a fake, I never had problem with mi Fw hds. Choose a good Fw box with a right chipset.
To see what Fw to buy see on http://nav.440network.com/out.php?mmsc=forums&url=http://www.digidesign.com.
You can startup with the Hd on, whitout connect the fw cable after the os is running, and it's not necessary to unmount the hd before the shutdown!
Only for the Fw 800 drive it's better to update the firmware.
regards

Posted by: Hawkins Mon 5 Apr 2004, 13:11

I've had a problem. When I started using Panther I shut it down and lost everything. I had just spliced an audio track to three video tracks, syncing it all together. (Which took two days to do) Afterwords I reformatted it as journaled and it worked fine.

Posted by: Music for Fleas Mon 5 Apr 2004, 15:23

I've had no problems - 3 drives through a powered hub, an 828MkII and a DV camera always plugged in. I turn them off and on while plugged in. At the University where I teach, the students are required to have their own FW drives (most are 400s) and they plug and play with ease.

Some folks seem to have had a problem. But not in my small world...

John

Posted by: snow Mon 5 Apr 2004, 19:01

My system includes two EZQuest Cobra 120GB Firewire400 HDs.
i installed panther about a week after it came out.
no problems whatsoever.

Posted by: guest_pb12sh Mon 5 Apr 2004, 19:02

I was under the impression only FW800 drives using the Oxford 911 bridge chip were the affected ones, which has subsequently been fixed by a firmware upgrade.

Posted by: PristineRec Mon 5 Apr 2004, 19:10

It's actually not possible for FW800 to work with an Oxford 911 bridge, it needs the 922.

The problem may not surface immediately for some people, but someday =everything on the drive may just suddenly become inaccessable. Very soon after Panther was released, all of the major drive manufacturers posted firmware updates on their websites to fix the problem they had with Panther. If you bought your FW800 drive since last fall, it was most likely updated by the manufacturer. If you have a FW800 drive that predates Panther, contact the manufacturer to find if they have an update for the firmware on your drive.

Posted by: jnasato Mon 5 Apr 2004, 21:47

For me, Panther unmounts and handles my FireWire drives much better than OS 9 does. I have not experienced any loss of data on my FireWire 400 drives, due to Panther.

Posted by: guest_nuskyn Sat 10 Apr 2004, 19:51

Buy good stuff, and it will never fail..............

i'm using a Lacie 120 Gig FW-HD and it works all the time without data-loss
on panther 10.3.3

Posted by: jnasato Sat 10 Apr 2004, 23:42

.....Though a few days ago I hooked up a bus-powered FireWire 400 drive, and it's no longer readable... I am wondering if this is because of Panther or because the drive just died? Luckily, I don't think I had anything too important on that drive.

Posted by: snow Mon 12 Apr 2004, 21:18

i have heard of many FW800 LaCie hard drives failing.
there are other good HD makes out there, but that does not matter. just the right firmwire.
are any ppl STILL having these FW800 problems ? even efter the firmwire update?

Posted by: guest_invol8 Mon 10 May 2004, 20:28

I had this problem on one of my machines. Just sure you update to the latest version of Panther before hooking up your firewire drives. This WAS a serious problem with 10.3.0, especially with Lacie drives.

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 12 May 2004, 17:47

It's real, and it's a problem if you use FW400 drives from OSX to OS9 and back. I've had it almost once a week till I found the solution : keep the drives under OSX and don't ever power them under OS9 (I suppose the reverse is ok).

If you loose Gigs with that you understand. It fucks up the directories big time. Then Diskwarrior and Drive10 are your friends.

The fact Apple doesn't aknowledge it doesn't mean it does not exists. the article comes from http://nav.440network.com/out.php?mmsc=forums&url=http://www.tidbits.com/, you can count on them they are not nutties.

Posted by: adriancom Fri 4 Jun 2004, 19:11

I am using the LaCie BigDrive (500 GB) wih FW 800 and 10.3.4 with no problems. Make sure (as with ANY soft- or hardware) that BEFORE you first use it you check the manufacturer's site for updates; in my case (drive bought last December) the firmware was up to date. The FW 800 Oxford chip megaproblem was real and was - they say - solved via firmware updates last fall.

Any drive requires some maintenance: for OSX the Apple Disk Utility + e.g. the free onyx for privileges repair every week or at least evey few weeks would do. At the first sign of erratic disk behavior stop and use the big guns: Diskwarrior or Drive10 (the Norton Utilities will no longer be updated as of now).

Posted by: Scott Wed 23 Jun 2004, 02:44

Hi, I got munched by panther too, but now I don't trust it, even though it might be my fault. Seagate 160gb with oxford 911 chipset, upgraded OS from 10.2.7 to 10.3 while having the drive hooked up, only did I learn of the problem, who would have thunk to check for that one prior to purchase, sorry I expected more from Apple in this regard. Still love that I switched. Just don't want to trust the problem is solved.

Posted by: snow Wed 23 Jun 2004, 20:08

hey scott
i understand you concern about retrusting panther.
it very hard to loose data thats hard to loose.
although i personally do not have firewire 800, from what i read/hear it seems that problems have been solved, provided you do the neccessary upgrades in software [latest panther upgrade] and firmwire [check seagate for a firmwire update].
welcome to the club.

Posted by: Presto Sat 14 Aug 2004, 19:43

I've got a LaCie FW400 80G external drive. I use OS9.2 on the ibook and OSX 3.4 on my emac and my DSL Freebox keeps me on the internet (and provides free phoning to national numbers and 3 cents/min to New Zealand. Do you get that too? I'm in France - oops off topic).

I downloaded the LaCie Update Tool (OSX) and ran it with the FW400 drive on and loaded. The tool said I didn't need an update so I didn't get one.

I unloaded the FW drive before closing the update app and immediately got a "Fatal" message concerning the drive.

Oops! I thought I'd buggered it.

I switched the drive off and on again. There it was again with everything in. Oof!

I decided to do it all again but this time following the LaCie instructions to the letter (almost). I unplugged everything other than the FW drive and ethernet, and tried to run the update app.

Damn! The keyboard and mouse didn't answer now. Oh yes, I had unplugged them. Oof!

Then I wrote all this in here and was just going to click on 'add reply' when a pop up add came on screen. I closed the window. Oops! It wasn't a pop up so I'd lost my reply to you.

Still, my soft disk memory had retained the jist so I've now retyped it.

I'd unplugged ethernet so no ads would replace my reply screen, but I clicked on Add Reply before plugging in again. The button went grey so I plugged in but it stayed grey. I thus clicked on the http thing up the top thinking it would send of the reply but it just went to the forums list. Oops, I'd lost the reply again.

No, this time I'd copied it. Ooof!

Conclusion: my brain, heart and FW drive are still intact and I'm finally getting this reply off.

Still, I have a sneaky feeling I should update, and brave the unknown.

Posted by: glenzo Tue 5 Oct 2004, 13:25

Since updating to Panther in July I have had the following die:

EZQuest 120 GB
LaCie 160 GB
LaCie Data Bank 20 GB
LaCie 250 GB Porsche
Western Digital 250 GB
Two (2) MOTU 828 mkII's
One (1) MOTU 828

For the units out of warranty, I took the drives out and checked them internally on my G4 - all data seems to be intact on the drives. It's something in the firewire bus within the drives that is getting fried. Any suggestions?

Posted by: glenzo Wed 6 Oct 2004, 01:17

Add to that list a Rocstor 250 and a Buslink 120 FW400 that I had for 3 years.

Apple won't help - I spent an hour on the phone waiting for a human to speak to...local tech shops haven't heard of the problem. And even when I start to get the replacement drives - then what?

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 6 Oct 2004, 04:11

I've had last week the "familiar" drive disapearance. that is: the drive don't mount, I don't even hear it turn up, and it's nowhere in OSX and OS 9 (even in maintenance software).

I tried all the tricks:
- let things quiet down a few hours.
- move from one enclosure to another.
- reset the motherboard (did some cleaning too, it was needed…)

Result nothing.

Then…

For the Nth time I was checking the other drives with the disk utility and they mounted… No loss this time, but some white hair in my starting baldiness.

I've noted a few strange things before and right after. Just before, I was in Disk Utility and the drive was showing the repair permissions buttons available which was not normal. And after the reappearance the name of the drive on the desktop was twinkling if selected (white rectangle on top of the name but the name was selected but not modifiable).

Uh?

Posted by: keepsound Sun 6 Feb 2005, 05:14

Internal HD settings in FW cases:
Be shure to set the HD to Master.
Setted to Slave or Cable Mode would work but problems can be come after few days or Mbytes.
keepsound

Posted by: lepetitmartien Sun 6 Feb 2005, 05:54

Thanks keepsound but my drives are in proper order regarding to this.

Bridges are not build to support slave mode, and Macs don't understand cable select anyway, better to avoid them altogether.

As an update I can say now that the cocktail: BW G3 with old HD enclosures was a mess, part of the problems could be traced either to some "choke" of the system, or too much heat for the drives. On the G5 with brand new enclosures (aluminium, no fan this time, a modern bridge) it work perfectly ! (well heat can sometimes be a problem, best is to be sure some fresh air comes on it… with the G5 breathing and a slightly open window about a meter from it, it's ok for heavy jobs).

Enclosures are 2 types of IceBox.