External Firewire 800 drive and Thunderbolt display

[glux]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a refurbished thunderbolt display and ever since then ive had issues when my seagate firewire drive is plugged into the display.

The system gets extremely sluggish. Sometimes timemachine will not complete the backup. It throws an error (if it comes up again i will make sure to post the exact error, i didnt write it down)

Ive also had an issue of various native apple apps freezing. For example system preferences freezes as well as finder.

The strange part is that when the drive is plugged directly to my early 2011 macbook pro the system runs smooth. Also the moment i unplug the drive from the display the system regains stability almost instantly.

I'm running lion 10.7.2 with all updates installed.

What gives? Should I demand a refund and try another display or is this a configuration issue.

 

[paulisme]

That's strange. I've got a Seagate GoFlex Desk hooked up to my Thunderbolt display using Firewire 800 with no problems. Do you have another Firewire device you can try out?

 

[glux]

I do not unfortunately. I just updated to 10.7.3 and seems ok for now.

It successfully completed the time machine back ups for the past day.

mhmm go figure.
I'm still debating of exchanging it but it seems like it would be a hassle sending it back and waiting another week to get a new one.

 

[Richdmoore]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Do you live near an apple store? You could try your drive on a display thunderbolt display (using your macbook) to try and isolate the problem to either a bad drive, or a thunderbolt display incompatibility.

 

[bdodds1985]

well it's either the refurbished display or the seagate drive itself. I have two seagates one for ntfs and one mac os. then i bought a western digital my studio 1tb, and it is considerably faster than the seagates. I pretty much stopped using my go flex's because of some freezes and the slower speeds. not too pleased with them.

 

[jterp7]

well it's either the refurbished display or the seagate drive itself. I have two seagates one for ntfs and one mac os. then i bought a western digital my studio 1tb, and it is considerably faster than the seagates. I pretty much stopped using my go flex's because of some freezes and the slower speeds. not too pleased with them.

did you test fw vs fw? I do like the studio's (mostly for the ability to daisy chain) but at 199 they're almost twice the cost per gig compared to the seagate even when you factor in the cost for the adapter. Costco recently had the 1.5 as low as 130 and BB has the FW800 for 20.

Still waiting for more info on the TB duo's from WD...and from the WD forums, the live duo is still not ready for the main stage, DLNA still not working correctly.

 

[bdodds1985]

did you test fw vs fw? I do like the studio's (mostly for the ability to daisy chain) but at 199 they're almost twice the cost per gig compared to the seagate even when you factor in the cost for the adapter. Costco recently had the 1.5 as low as 130 and BB has the FW800 for 20.

Still waiting for more info on the TB duo's from WD...and from the WD forums, the live duo is still not ready for the main stage, DLNA still not working correctly.

I strongly believe the fact that seagates prices are dropping so much on the drives is the fact that they are not reliable and based on reviews I have seen everywhere, they have a high failure rate. I was sold on the sata adapters as well and, like i said, I think that is the only thing the drives have the advantage on.

After I received the WD Studio I was convinced why I paid what I did. That drive is sturdy aluminum, quiet and has yet to get hot. And I keep it in a case logic case.

and I am not sure what you mean by test fw to fw. can you explain? do you mean test as far as a benchmark test?

Sorry for straying off topic OP, but I do think it could be the drive if not the fact that the monitor is refurbished (always a risk with refurbished equipment) and I recommend the WD drive any day over the seagates.