Resolved Is my FW800 external dying?

Here's the setup:

iMac (late 2009) 4gb Ram
Lacie d2 Extreme Firewire 800 drive
OS 10.9.5

Here's the problem:

I'm using the iMac as an iTunes hub to stream music and video over 802.11n to various Airport Expresses and Apple TVs. It streams okay but...

The Lacie drive takes over 2 minutes to mount (if I'm lucky) and iTunes takes over 2 minutes to load as I patiently await the beach ball to stop spinning. I verified the disk but I don't trust Disk Utility telling me it is okay.

Is my drive dying? Unfortunately, this mac has USB 2.0 so I'm assuming my replacement should also be Firewire? Or is the iMac too old or too underpowered? (Since I'm running Apple's latest software and OS)

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Alrescha said:

That certainly does not sound right. Your machine should be able to mount that drive in a few seconds.

Any error messages in Console? Does your backup drive behave the same way? (oh, you do not have one? - will talk to you again when you get back from the store...

A.

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Backup drive (USB 2.0) mounts quickly... It's backing up right now in fact. I'll peer into the console, though I doubt I will know what I'm looking at!

Being on a MacBook Pro retina (at the moment) makes the iMac look like a horse and buggy, but you're right. An FW 800 drive should mount correctly.

grahamperrin said:

You could burn a copy of Ultimate Boot CD then use HDAT2 to verify the drive.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/138806/8546

If you're lucky it'll be a LaCie power supply problem, not a problem with the drive.

Whatever you do, first perform a backup of the suspect drive.

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I'm gonna swap out the Lacie power supply. I am aware they can get wonky after a few years. I still think I should find a replacement FW800 drive with the fastest RPM I can afford.

appletvbob said:

I'm gonna swap out the Lacie power supply. I am aware they can get wonky after a few years. I still think I should find a replacement FW800 drive with the fastest RPM I can afford.

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I swapped out the power supply. Mount time for the drive went from 8 minutes to 15 seconds. NO more spinning beach ball for iTunes either. I can safely assume the power supply was the problem.