LaCie FireWire drive failed...need help

[dmetzcher]

My LaCie mobile firewire drive just failed, apparently. It was working one minute, and then iTunes locked up (I keep my library on the drive). I restarted my iBook, and the drive would no longer mount. I can see the drive itself in Disk Utility, but the single volume on it will not mount. I ran a verify and repair on the drive itself, but, after running through both in about two seconds, Disk Utility told me that nothing needed to be repaired.

So...is there anything that I can do to try and get the drive back?

And, if not, how can I get the two new games that I just bought from the iTunes Music Store, which are on my iPod, onto the backup drive that contains everything (except these two new games) that is also on the external drive? I know that you can move files from one computer to another, so long as the computer is authorized, with the new version of iTunes...so, I guess I'm going to be the first one to test if this works with games.

All I can say is I'm glad I made a backup of the drive yesterday morning. The backup drive kicked in as soon as the other one didn't mount, and iTunes went along and converted my library to the new version 7 format, as it had done earlier with my now-dead drive. I just want the games off the iPod, though. They were $10, and I don't want this failure to cost me another $10, in addition to the new drive I'll have to buy tomorrow.

Thanks for your help!

[dmetzcher]

Figuring that there was nothing that I could do about the two games I just bought on iTunes, I decided to plug my iPod into my iBook and see what happened. iTunes launched, and presented me with a message telling me that the iPod has purchased items that were not in my library (the backup library I am using right now), and asked me if I wanted to copy them from the iPod to my library. WOW!

The games are back, and so are a few music files that I must have purchased yesterday. I just have to buy a new external hard drive for a trip I am taking this Sunday, and I'll be all set. I took apart the existing external drive, and it would be easy to replace, but I just don't think I'm going to. The case itself, by LaCie, is nice looking, but it offers little protection from bumps while in a bag. It's very easy to crush, and that's probably what happened about a year ago on a trip to California. After I arrived, it made a few weird noises when I connected it to my iBook. I thought it might be failing then, but it lasted almost a whole year. I suppose it finally just gave out.

[smalltiger3]

hi;
i have the same external HDD problem
shows in disk utility (which says it is working fine)
but will not mount

did you end up sorting yours out or is it a case of lost data?

cheers,
mb

[dmetzcher]

Originally Posted by smalltiger3

hi;
i have the same external HDD problem
shows in disk utility (which says it is working fine)
but will not mount

did you end up sorting yours out or is it a case of lost data?

cheers,
mb

I had a backup that was less 24-hours old, so I was OK. I ditched the drive and bought a new one. Had it shipped overnight from Other World Computing, so I could go on my trip.

If you are going to get a new drive, here is what I recommend. I loved dealing with OWC, and the drive looks cool, and is rugged.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MOFWU100GB54/

That is the FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 model. They have another one that is the same as the one above, but also supports FireWire 800.

Here is a listing of all the On The Go drives that they sell.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

The one I liked to is the only one with a 16MB cache, so that's what I went with. I didn't need FireWire 800, because it's for my iBook (and my Mac Pro won't be using it much), so I went with the cheaper of the two that included FireWire and USB.

If you already have a drive, or want to buy one elsewhere, you can also just buy the enclosure, which is really nice, because I thought of getting another one for my iBook hard drive that was left over after I upgraded the iBook's internal drive.

Good luck. The only thing you can do about the data is send the drive away and try to get it recovered. It's expensive, but if you have a business that depends on it, and don't have a backup, it might be worth it. I suggest getting two drives from OWC, and using one just to back up the other one, or get a very large external hard drive from somewhere, and us it to clone all the drives you have on a weekly basis. I can't tell you how relieved I was that I had a backup of my data. I'm willing to spend a little cash to get a new drive, but my data is too important to mess around with.