new firewire hd won't transfer files - any ideas to help?

edX

edX

mac shaman
ok, i finally tried to install my new acom 40gb external firewire hd last night. it comes with same setup utilities as my maxtor so i didn't do anything but load the 9 driver with those. i reformatted with disk utility. icon appears normally. but any file transfer over a few mb just stops before completion. the finder goes into endless spinning wheel. eventually relaunching the finder always results in forced restart being neccesary. I have reformatted twice, run disk repair utilities many times, and still no luck. my maxtor continues to function flawlessly. I was able to comlete transfers between the two in 9 after doing the repairs. any ideas before i reformat this to pc and return the thing?:confused:

oh, mac will not boot in osx with it plugged in. I have to hot plug it after boot to get recognition of it. unmounting it and unplugging then replugging freezes osx as well.

disk utility id's it as "intio"

tia:)
 
well now it works great in 9 but will not be rcognised in x. imac boots and then new drive keeps its read/write light on continuously (not even an occasional flicker) with no icon appearing on desktop. all three drives pass diagnostics except new drive failed a surface scan. problem is drive setup in 9 will not recognise the drive to do a full reformat and i can't see how to do one with disk utility in x. if it was just one bad sector to replace and then it works i would take my chances and keep it.:confused:
 
Don't take this wrong! If you have access to a PC and can remove the drive from the FireWire enclosure, try and reformat it there. I have had success doing that, then place it back in the Mac and try to reformat it again. I am assuming it is an EIDE drive.
Something is wrong with the drive and I would not trust it, doesn't mean I wouldn't use it though.
Bad sectors can be mapped out during a low level format, but this sounds like a calibration problem with the drive.
 
I had problem with a Mitsumi USB floppy drive that didn't always appear... now it looks stable. I just restarted several time with different OS versions (8.6,9.2 and X.1) and I installed the drivers for each OS.
 
it's an external firewire drive that is brand new. i have no access to a pc that is any closer than the store i bought it at and i am not about to take it apart and risk not being able to return it. if this was an older drive that just started behaving this way, i might think about your suggestion seriously. I also really want drive to be mac formatted for diagnostic and repair purposes.

thanks anyway. I really appreciate any suggestions at this point.
is there any other way to do a low level format other than drive setup in 9? this is what i would like to do before i give up on it.

:confused:

any terminal way? drive is named 'acom 40 GB HD' so you can be specific with commands if there are any?
 
Well, didn't know it was new. Certainly don't want to void a warranty. That would be my option now, to exercise the warranty :eek:
I don't know about using a command line method to format drives in Terminal.
I try to keep a PC at arm's distance, but have too many to babysit all day long. No PC here at home either.
 
i just dont get why it would work in 9 but not in x. it's firewire - it should work better in x. i should be pulling my hair out trying to get it to work in 9. If it was calibration or bad sectors, wouldn't it be consistently screwed up. btw - a second surface scan with drive10 revealed no bad sectors.

if i was just using 9, the drive would be fine. but of course i default boot in x by now.

and chevy - i believe i have installed drivers in 9. i do have two copies (2.1 and 2.2) and have only installed in 2.2. perhaps i will copy the extension and move to 2.1 folder and see what happens. x shouldn't require additional drivers should it?
 
When you do something which makes the drive puke itself (yeah, getting serious with the technical terms), is anything logged in /var/log/system.log or /var/tmp/console.log?
 
blb -ok, i understand the puking part but how do i find the other things you asked? I am a newbie to linux end of osx.
 
Easiest way: open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app which should open (I think this is the default) console.log; to open system.log, do a File - Open Log... and type /private/var/log (and enter) in the 'Go to' part of the resulting Open dialog. This should list a bunch of logs, select system.log.

Once Console.app has these open, scroll the two windows to the bottom (so you know where the new stuff will show up), then do the action the FW drive doesn't like.

If you like Terminal, you can also watch the logs this way: open two Terminal windows, in one run tail -f /var/log/system.log and the other tail -f /var/tmp/console.log which will follow (the -f flag) the log files as they update.
 
blb - ok idid the console windows and first tryed moving just one file, normally it does this ok. but instead i am getting the spinning ball in finder and nothing new is coming across console. i can use other apps ok as long as they are already mounted or i can get to them from the dock.

also first attempt to mount the disk to do this experiment resulted in frozen finder relaunch until i turned drive off and then relaunch went smooth.
 
ok, when i shut off drive this appeared in system log:


Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c0100
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0100
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0100, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c0500
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0500
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0500, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c0400
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0400
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0400, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 33 quads
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 31 quads
Dec 27 01:53:14 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 22 quads
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c0100
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0100
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0100, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device

0x0x18c0400
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0400
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0400, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c0500
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c0500
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c0500, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 31 quads
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 33 quads
Dec 27 01:53:16 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 22 quads
Dec 27 01:53:17 localhost mach_kernel: disk3s9: media is not present.

looking back over logs, these line also appear with the others several times in other places :
Dec 27 01:31:41 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x262cf00:Need to extend ROM cache from 0x1b to 0x1c quads, gen 1
Dec 27 01:31:41 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x262cf00:Need to extend ROM cache from 0x1c to 0x22 quads, gen 1
 
and after a full fledged puke the console says:
2001-12-27 02:46:15.091 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"
2001-12-27 02:46:15.092 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"
2001-12-27 02:46:15.103 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"
2001-12-27 02:46:15.104 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"
2001-12-27 02:46:22.829 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"
2001-12-27 02:46:22.829 loginwindow[289] Can't connect to pbs object "RulebookServer"

and the system says:
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2100
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2100
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2100, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2500
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2500
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2500, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2400
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2400
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2400, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 33 quads
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 31 quads
Dec 27 02:47:07 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 22 quads
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2100
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2100
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2100, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2500
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2500
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2500, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Found old device 0x0x18c2400
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice, ROM unchanged 0x0x18c2400
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: IOFireWireDevice 0x0x18c2400, ROM generation zero
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 33 quads
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 31 quads
Dec 27 02:47:09 localhost mach_kernel: Rereading ROM up to 22 quads
Dec 27 02:47:10 localhost mach_kernel: disk2s9: general error.
Dec 27 02:47:10 localhost last message repeated 7 times
Dec 27 02:47:10 localhost mach_kernel: disk2s9: media is not present.
Dec 27 02:47:10 localhost last message repeated 34 times

i had to turn disk off during finder relauch is why media is suddenly not present.
 
That doesn't give too much in the way of error messages, does it (other than when you turn it off, of course)? I'd say there's either a subtle Firewire bug in OS X or some kind of incompatibility with the drive's implementation of it, if it works fine in 9. OS X has been known to be more picky with memory, maybe the same goes for Firewire?
 
blb - well, i just got off the phone with acomdata's tech support. 1st guy i talked to was full of sh*t so i called back and complained to his supervisor. He worked with me, took the info you had me gather and is sending it to chip maker who is closed this week. he promises to get back to me by monday. he is also going to try putting up a firmawre update for the drive and letting me download it by tomorrow to see if that helps.
he says they don't get many calls about x and my bug was the first of its kind reported so far. they are also offering to replace my bridge if nothing else works (they have already changed manufacturers from the time mine was made). so thanks for the help - turned out to be potentially helpful and i learned about a new tool.:)

of course if anyone has any other ideas please speak up.
 
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