Serious issues setting up a firewire Hard drive

D

dshope007

Registered
I have a emac 700mhz, 640Mb Ram.

I am trying to attach a Samsung 160 Gb harddrive, it is in an external coolmax firewire enclosure.

here is the deal:
When I connect the drive it is recognized and the little window pops up asking me to initialize the drive, so I click initialize.

disk utility opens and here is where it gets funky.

the only action I can do that won't lock up the computer is to create 2 or more partitions. Everything else will cause me to have to force quit disk utility and then power cycle the hard drive so that I can start over.

If I go to erase, verify, etc. the progress bar will appear and look like its doing something but nothing ever happens (I left it for a day and a half just to check)

so anyway, I create two partitions, but heres the deal only the first one gets written. The first one will appear on the desktop and I can copy data to it fine. However the second partition still needs to be formatted (erased).

So I open disk utility again to erase the second partition for use and if i can get to the erase tab without disk utility locking up, then I get the infinite progress bar while the second partition is erasing and nothing ever happens...


I know that the HW is fine because I put it my XP box to check and it worked like a charm...

help...........................................
 
" worked like a charm "
Did you mean you attach the HD in its FireWire case to the XP system, or remove the drive from the FireWire case and install internally to the IDE bus in the XP system?
Using the FireWire box on both systems is the only valid way to compare here (your Koolmax box may not be ATA-6 compliant - the only way to use the full capacity of that big hard drive (larger than 128 MB)

If it turns out to be the case, maybe you can return it for one that is ATA-6 compliant.
 
Yes, the windows test was internal out of the FW case.


here are the specs on the cool max box.

NEW Chipset! Now support up to 200GB Hard Drive** COOLMAX External 3.5" ( IEEE1394) Aluminum Enclosure - Model CD-309-FW Retail.
Specifications:
Supports up to 200GB Hard Drive.
Interface for IEEE-1394
OS Supports Win 98 / SE / ME / 2000 / XP
Mac OS 8.6 / 9.X / 10.X or above
Work with both PC and Mac

(ATA-6 is not listed, but it does support up to a 200 Gb drive)

should I return it for the ATA compatible enclosure??


Thanks!
 
All I can add is: the slave/master jumpers on the HD must be set to Master (and not cable select or slave). There should be information with the Samsung drive, either a user guide, or printed on the drive label for proper jumper setting, or go to Samsung's web site for info on that. I briefly looked at their user guide, and the real setting seems confusing, except your drive is larger than 32 GB, and not limited in size.
If it is set properly for a master drive, then either the case is defective (actually the bridge electronics inside the case) or the hard drive just doesn't like your Mac (another good reason to stay with the major brands) Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, or IBM (now Hitachi) Many opinions about whose drive is better, I like Seagate, the next poster may curse Seagate to Hell. Most should have something good to say about at least one of these 4.
Just the same, hope the jumper settings get you going.
Might be the good reason why coolmax recommends getting a case with a drive pre-installed.
 
It was the jumper settings.


I got a previous response on another forum that told me to remove the jumper selectors.

oh well...

thanks again.:D
 
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