Big Crash With Firewire!!!!, I'm desperate Options

[iroiri]

Hi Guys!

First of all, thank you so much for the insights on Panther 10.3.9 - you guys are geniuses!

On a more frustrating note, today something REALLY strange happened to me:

As I was backing up some files from my OS 9.2.2 hard drive to an external firewire drive, the computer crashed. So I restarted and I got that frightening blue folder with the little question mark blinking, obiviously looking for the boot up drive.... After a few restart with the same results, it automatically booted up on my second hard drive, that has X on it. No firewire on sight, and no OS 9 either!!!!!
What's going on???????????

Please, S.O.S. big time, I have to deliver a project by tomorrow!!!!

Grazie!
Iro

[dixiechicken]

If possible do a search on your firewire-drive to try to establish wich controller-chip it has.

Firewire drives with the "Oxford 912"
( at least I think it was the 912-chipset) chipset had severe troubles and corrupted the file system on lots of fw-drives with datalosses as a consequence.
That was under Jaguar OS-X 10.2 era.

Check the manufacturer website for firmware updates to your firewire drive.
Check this link out from Maxtor: (Oxford 922 chipset actually)
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor....hp?p_faqid=1811

Problem:

Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive". *

Users' experienced problems when booting the machine with a FireWire drive attached, Panther reports that , "...you have inserted an unrecognized disk," with the option to eject, initialize or ignore.* After pressing ignore users are unable to utilize the drive.

Solution:

Maxtor Firewire hard drives are not affected by this problem because Maxtor 1394a FireWire drives use the Oxford 911 Chipset (see Maxtor Knowledge Base Answer ID: 991 for details). Maxtor 1394b (FireWire 800) drives use the Oxford 912 chipset. Apple said the problems only affect FireWire drives that use the Oxford 922 bride chip-set with firmware version 1.02. *

Perhaps my memory is lapsing - anyway try to find out - and try to do a firmware update - IF such exists - before putting new data on your fire wire drive.
Cheers: Dixiechicken