FW800 freezes iMac ?

N

nuno1959

Registered
Hi guys !

after much success with simple USB W.Digital My Books for a number of years to store my extensive iTunes library, photos, etc… having read so many wonderful things about OWC/NewerTech Guardian Maximus Quad interface Raid box, i decided to take the plunge, ordered one & installed 2 Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB bare drives in it

using CarbonCopyCloner i copied the content to these & started using it.
right from the start i noticed my late 2009 27'' iMac i7, with 16GB RAM, constantly ''freezing'' when connected via FW800 yet when i tried it via USB it was all good !?..

i have 4 more W.Digital My Book drives, an H.P C6180 all in one printer, a Cambridge Audio DacMagic, an APC UPS connected to my computer via USB through a pair of Logitech Premium powered USB hubs + my HD plasma TV via mini-DisplayPort/HDMI adapter & a Wacom Cintiq 21UX also via an adapter

thinking it might be caused by some weird incompatibility between any one of these components or so, i unplugged EVERYTHING from my iMac, made sure EVERY power supply for the above were ALL in working order ( they are.. ) checked & double checked ALL the cables ( even got a couple of new ones just in case..) checked the USB hubs + their power supplies, you name it - EVERYTHING IS O.K. !

tried plugging in one component at a time - everything worked fine ! however each & every time i plugged in the Guardian Max via FW800 it happened, time & again....regardless if plugged by itself or in combination with any other component
funnily enough the Guardian Max connected via USB gave no problems whatsoever !?
after a little ''Googling'' i could see i'm NOT alone with this sort of problem among Mac users & that it happens with all sorts of drive makes ….as long as FW800 is being used !?

has anyone come across this quirky behavior or has any idea what might be the solution for this ?

i mean, to stream the music, USB is plenty fast but it's still frustrating to have intentionally bought a FW800 capable box & not be able to use its advantages

many thanks !
 
I've seen a very similar problem with my LaCie d2 (currently newest version) with USB 3.0/2.0, Firewire 800, eSata. It only froze the computer (!) when using FireWire. Lacie has released a firmware updater that solves the problem.

My guess is that your box might use the same Firewire controller and also came with an early (faulty) firmware. Maybe you'll find a newer firmware update on the OWC/NewerTech site?
 
Hi Fryke

thanks for your input - indeed i looked around their website but since i couldn't find anything, i have contacted them & am waiting for their answer - i REALLY hope it would be something simple like that
i'll let you guys know how it goes...
cheers
 
Also, and I realize you've already spent the money so it may be too late, but the "Green" branded drives from Western Digital are not RAID-certified and shouldn't be used in a RAIDed fashion -- unless you're simply using them as a JBOD RAID.

That's not to say that they won't work in a RAID setup, it just means that those drives do not include special firmware provisions for the synchronization that a RAID 0 or RAID 1 needs to stay in a consistent state over time.

The Western Digital RE3 and RE4 drives are RAID-certified and would be a much better choice for use in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 setup.

Since the "Green" drives are variable spindle speed drives (meaning the drive adjusts itself to changing use patterns and may fluctuate between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm dynamically), you may experience many synchronization issues across drives. Your RAID setup may spend more time than it should be correcting errors due to the fact that the two drives aren't perfectly synchronized.

Of course, there will be plenty of people that tell you that they've been using standard, off-the-shelf, consumer-grade, non-RAID-specific drives in their RAID setups since 1456 BC and that they've never experienced a problem, but that's like someone telling you that they've been driving for 50 years without a seatbelt and have never gotten into a crash. When that day comes, though, when the crash happens, they're going to be in much worse shape than someone who simply took the time to ensure proper operation in the first place.

On my side of things, I've experienced plenty of disk failures and can attest to the fact that RAID-certified drives are a good thing, and not just some marketing mumbo-jumbo to get people to pay higher prices for drives that have no advantage.

$0.02.
 
Satcomer said:
Also Reset Your PRAM to see if that helps.
Click to expand...

7 years as a computer tech tells me from experience that a PRAM reset (or BIOS) resets on computers WILL NOT in any way shape or form fix freezing issues on a computer.

Freezing is caused by a hardware fault (in cases like this) this could mean the iMac has faulty FW ports (not too surprising) or the drive has faulty ports being it works by USB just fine id assume it is a problem with either the iMac or the drives FW ports.

Personally id just use USB FireWire is not even a needed thing and outside the Apple platform is rarely even used vary few motherboards have FW ports eSATA is a faster transfer rate. Apple has forced the presence of FW since Tiger but yet lack so much Apples still dont have eSATA or USB 3.0 or meny of the other tons of features non apple machines have.

Why pay 2400 bucks for a Mac Pro when you can goto a local store a buy a computer for 300 bucks that you can do EVERYTHING with out of the box as you could with a Mac Pro? you can do WAY more with Linux than you can do on a Mac or a Windows machine combined. And for alot faster too Mac OS X and Windws since XP have always been slow as snails.
 
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Hi Guys

me again & this time i think it's good news - knock on wood !….

as someone had very rightfully suggested, i took the Guardian Maximus to a friend's place, connected it via FW800 to his iMac ( exact same model/year as mine.. ) did ALL I COULD to make it stumble like read & write several LARGE files of 20, 40, 60 AND 85GB SIMULTANEOUSLY &……NOTHING WENT WRONG !!?….then we went out for dinner, took our time ( question of giving time for the drives to go to sleep/park & perhaps create yet another situation which somehow could cause the freezing ?.. ) returned, all was good, drives woke up immediately to stream some music when prompted to...
then kept going at it for roughly 5 more hours & ALL went well..the G.MAX didn't miss a single beat/bit - how's that for a bad pun ?

so when i returned home i created a new user account on my computer, logged in & again pushed the GMAX as much as i could : this went on for about 6 hours & nothing went wrong ! after that i ejected the drive, logged back into my regular user account, ran Onyx to ''clean house'' a little, restarted it, switched on the drive & it's been now a day & a half NOTHING has gone wrong !?
maybe it was just some gremlin who meanwhile got scared & ran for his life ? who knows ? i swear, sometimes my computer seems to have a life of his own….

the only difference between then & now i can think off is that before i had the FW800 cable running right above this row of wallwarts/sockets & now it's on top of my desk - could it be this interfered negatively w/ the FW800 cable/signals ? electromagnetic fields/interference & all that ?…..

please check photos here :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13706825@N03/6820385432/in/set-72157629545606505/lightbox/

- the 1st pic shows the path of the FW800 cable as i had it before
- the 2nd shows how it's laid out now
- the 3rd's the same just behind the computer itself

later i WILL try again running the cable under the desk but will get maybe some shielding of some kind ? it's just that i just HATE having them cables all over the place, you know ?..
anyway for the time being i'm VERY happy with this outcome. now i guess only time will tell if any misbehaving *returns or not

El Diablo - what you're saying makes PERFECT SENSE & it did occur to me so before i bought the drives i searched a bit & only after coming across a customer's query to OWC Tech Support & them stating that it wouldn't be a problem using those + finding a bundle being sold by B&H ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...M3Q7H10TB64_Guardian_MAXimus_Enclosure_Q.html ) did i feel confident it would actually be O.K. to use them, you know ?

Satcomer - i di try that & also resetting the SMC & as far as i could tell it did nothing - at the time at least...

so, for the time being i'm just going to lay back & enjoy my music while i work ! ;-) if anything happens down the line i'll let you know even if just for the sake of sharing details for future reference

a big thank you to everybody who ''chipped in'' trying to help solving this, it feels good to know one can resort to this forum anytime something happens & that people WILL actually try to sort thing out !… ;-)
have a good week-end guys

cheers

Nuno
 
hi Guys

me again, just to say that ever since i last posted here, i have been using the G.Maximus w/ the W.Digital Caviars &....not a single problem ever again ! i have no clue why but sure am happy about it

so there you are, just thought i'd let you know

again thanks for your input, cheers

Nuno
 
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