flaky firewire hard drive

[suzerain]

hey there.

i have a fantom external firewire drive hooked uyp to my powerbook 12". it is holding, among other things, my itunes library.

thing is, every once in a while itunes just stops playing, and it seems like the hard drive just stops feeding data. i shut off the hard drive, and get an error message about the peripheral disappearing, and quit itunes, and i can continue to work.

also, the drive takes two or three times of turning on (sometimes, and sometimes not) to mount. i can't seem to figure out what variable controls whether it will mount or not.

so my question is this: is os x just flaky with external firewire drives? are fantom drives known to be flaky? is this a sign of the drive dying (i.e., should i get another one immediately)?

is there anything i can do, generally, to just make it "work"?

 

[Natobasso]

Check your iBook: repair permissions with Disk Utility.

Your drive may just be getting old.

See if Fantom has a new driver. Have you upgraded the system on the laptop recently?

 

[suzerain]

hi there. never installed a driver for it, as i recall.

i'm running 10.3.7. should have mentioned that before. this is an aluminum powerbook 12" with 768 MB of RAM.

 

[Natobasso]

Hello!

You might want to check the manufacturer's website to see known issues w/10.3.7.

Unfortunately, and I'm not 100% sure, apple's updates fix some problems and then cause others. The general rule I follow is to only upgrade when the NEXT version is out. So I won't upgrade to 10.3.7 till .8 or Tiger comes out.

Depending on the age of the drive it could just be it's crapping out on you now. Back up everything on it and if there's no firmware update you could have it tested by a tech.