Survey: Firewire HD & OS X - answer even if it works for you!

Kinniken

Kinniken

Registered
Some people on this forum, me included, have been experiencing some very annoying crashes when making large (>1 Gb) transfer to or from FW HD; at some point, the transfer stop progressing without error warning, the finder stops responding and progressively all programs do the same. Killing stuck apps changes nothing; the only solution is a forced restart. It affect transfers made in the finder, but also with other apps (like a synk utility) or made form the terminal.
The same transfers works fine under OS 9.

So, in order to try and pinpoint the problem, I would like everyone using a FW HD to reply by posting their setup (OS X version, computer, FW HD model) and if they experience the bug. That will allow use to see if it is linked to a few HD, or to some macs, or if it's just random.

I'll start:

Bug: yes
OS X: 10.1 to 10.1.5 (bug all the time)
Mac: iMac G3 600, CD RW
FW HD: e-drive IceCube, 40 gb, Oxford chipset, ATA drive in a FW enclosure
 
Yes, exactly that happened to me yesterday. I was moving a 15GB imovie project from internal SCSI to firewire. I was letting the copy happen in the background, and checking email and stuff in the foreground, and the computer gradually became molasses and finally locked up.

Mac 7500 xlr8/owc G3 400MHz upgrade (an unsupported config).
firewiredirect.com's pci-firewire/usb1.1 combo card.
OWC external firewire drive, 40GB, 5400 rpm. Purchased before Oxford 911 chipset became famous and available, so I don't know what it has. 10.1.5 was what I happened to have when this happened, but I never tried a similar transfer with an earlier OS.

The copy worked on second attempt, but it makes other tasks very slow, despite running in background. But when it was finished, everything was back to normal.
 
ok, i'll repeat myself from the other thread.
see sig for hardware

i had problems with both my firewire drives when moving very large transfers of 500mb+ in os x. I first recognized it when i got my second external - the acom 40. First it was while moving files from the maxtor to the acom. then i realized i couldn't move from my internal to either external. to make a long story short, acom helped me update my bridge. Now i can transfer from the internal to the acom no problem. but any large transfers that require the maxtor end up in disaster. (remember - only large transfers).

Acom tells me i need to update the bridge in the maxtor as well. they know the chipset used and it needs updating.

Ever try dealing with maxtor support?:mad:

When i had problems with my original setup, their answer was for me to drive 30 miles each way to return the drive and rule out a faulty drive before they would even begin to help me.:rolleyes: I finally figured it out on my own. :eek:
 
I finally got help from the taiwanese manufacturer of my drive directly (instead of trying to get it though the store); they sent me a firmware updater, and the problem is gone.
Oh, and it was very simple to do... just an app to launch in OS 9, and it was done. 2 sec.

To fully test it, I trying copying 20 Gb of files in one go, was done in 10 min without problems. :cool:
 
10 gb pod works flawlessly.

a friend stopped by with a portable VST drive and pulled a movie from of my internal HD... It weighed in around 2.1 gb.

worked fine...
 
When I had my iBook I would often transfer iMovies back and forth between my iBook 500 and VST 20 gig portable HD. No problems at all.
 
I've had similar problems with my Formac Studio DV/Analog converter. Mostly it works, and I can capture, say, 10GB of video w/o problems, but sometimes my computer dies instead.

-Rob
 
I have not experienced the same bug. Transfers seem to go fine. I did have a problem when I tried to empty the trash from my LaCie 80Gb FW HD. Couldn't empty it (had several gigs of files) until I turned off and physically unplugged the drive. Hope this helps.
 
i had it first on my quicksilver 733 with a LaCie 80GB external firewire, while transfering large amounts of data (<10GB i believe)

yesterday it happened to me with an external 5GB firefly (model JH2127). connected to a TiBook 667. the HD came free with the laptop. it wasn t a huge transfer. actually i was playing a video game that was installed on the external HD. i thought that the game was loaded into memory, so i don t think i was doing any transferring, except possibly during load time. the crash did not happen while loading the game, but rather while the game was in progress. but the crash was definitely the same kind as i had before, and it is just like kinnekin describes.
 
I recently bought a LaCie 120 External Fire HD and I have no problems transfering large files to or from that. I'm using 10.1.5. Up until lethe, I would have said it probably had something to do with G3's, since I noticed thats where most of the complaints were coming from. I dont really have any idea whats wrong though
 
On my previous machine, a DP450 G4, I had this problem. With my current machine, no problems whatsoever (see attached profile).:D
 
I am having a problem with DV Camera imports via imovies to my Lacie d2 120Gb FireWire external hard Drive. every ten minutes or so it freezes, I have to press stop on the camera (or it keep on going) and then press import again. I have an iMac DV SE 600Mhz (Flower Power) with 256Mb RAM Mac OS X 10.1.5, with a 40Gb internal hard drive.

David
 
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