Panther / External Firewire Drive Corruption

[Glock21]

If you've recently upgraded to OS X 10.3 Panther and within hours or days found that your external firewire drive is "unreadable" you are not alone. Here is the apple discussion on the topic with some various recovery techniques people have found: http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@191.hThAaazDjXD.2499958@.599b4a59%0A

[jxyama]

on /., one poster commented how the problem comes about if you connect a FW800 HD to a FW400 port. 400 to 400 or 800 to 800 ports don't seem to cause any problems...

[crazytom]

I must be one of the unluckiest Mac users ever.

I knew that there were problems with Firewire and Panther 10.3, so I waited for 10.3.1, where Apple said those issues were addressed.

I had to remove my 200GB drive from my G4 Dual MDD because it kept shutting down from the heat (it was right next to the heat sink--<sarcasm> Great design Apple!</sarcasm>). I put it in an external case, worked with a few files, everything was going nicely and *poof* 104 GB of video lost (well, maybe not *poof*, but the spinning beachball of doom, finder crash, tried shutting down through open terminal window, had to cross fingers and force reboot---bad things). I wish I NEVER upgraded to Panther!!!!!