External Hard drive kills my router

[montymaverick]

I have an eMac and in order to keep it useful I just bought 2 external firewire/USB drives.

I have a DSL router (fritz!box & freenet provider).

A little background when I plugged the first drive into firewire it appeared on my desktop, then plugged in the second one into the first (daisy-chain) they both disappeared. I thought this was something to do with the eMac being over worked :-/

So I tried to plug them both separately directly into the eMac. No luck. Once I plugged the second one in the first disappeared (the second never even showed up.)

This wasn't soo bad as I thought that I could run one at a time, but then I noticed that everytime I plugged in a drive my Internet access was gone. The router light blinks & the interface says "training..." when I unplug and wait for a few minutes everything is OK again. strange...

I then tried USB and the same thing happened...

Can someone help?

 

[mad jew]

How are you connected to the internet? Is the modem connected via ethernet, USB or wirelessly?

 

[montymaverick]

How are you connected to the internet? Is the modem connected via ethernet, USB or wirelessly?

DSL Router (Fritz!Box)

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, I saw that in the first post but I'm not familiar with that brand. Can I assume you use an ethernet cable to connect the router to the Mac?

 

[montymaverick]

Yeah, I saw that in the first post but I'm not familiar with that brand. Can I assume you use an ethernet cable to connect the router to the Mac?

Yes, it is cable connected. I'm in Germany & Fritz is quite popular here it comes with most provider packs.

P.S. I have never heard of firewire or usb interfering with an ethernet connection?!?

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, that's very weird. I wonder if it could be an IP conflict issue. If you plug an external drive in with the router plugged in, go to System Preferences and under the Network pane, tell us which connection is active. Is there a Firewire connection present? If you double click on Ethernet and then check the TCP/IP settings, is there an IP address listed? Is there a router address?

 

[montymaverick]

I'll be checking tomorrow (I'm at work now ;-)

I have already ordered two new firewire cases, so if that solves the problem this will always remain a mystery.

Thanks a bunch for your input!

 

[mad jew]

No worries mate. I'll be interested to hear how the new cases go. Were the old two the same make and model?

 

[montymaverick]

Yes...

 

[dops7107]

Can you try the drives on another computer to check they are still functional?

 

[montymaverick]

It ends in a mystery ;-)

I love a mystery as much as the next person, but I'm just getting too old for this #$%$. I went out and bought a new case & everything works great.

Somethings should remain a mystery.

;-)

Thanks for your help.

 

[mad jew]

So the old case was the problem, or are you saying the old case is working again?