External HDD freezes on Firewire, Fine on USB?

[lieb39]

Hello everyone,

I recently brought a fairly cheap kit to convert a 3.5" Desktop HDD to a External, with USB 2.0 and 2x Firewire 400 ports. However, when connecting it to my PowerPC Mac-Mini running latest 10.4 via Firewire (400) the hard drive will have no issues for the first 2 minutes. However, after this period the hard drive will suspend or similar activity.. and as a result all the programs using it freeze until i unplug the hard drive, and than it's fine.

I don't get the same problem on USB 2.0..

Is there a solution to this?

Cheers,

lieb39

 

[jeremy.king]

Try a different case to see if its a problem with yours.

 

[superleccy]

This is a bit of a longshot, but I think the symptoms you decide sound like it could be an overheating issue. Ie... the enclosure can run for so long before the heat generated by the HDD knocks out the firewire controller (but oddly, not the USB controller). Is there any way you can chuck some extra ventalation in there... or try running it with the enclosure open?

Hard drives, especially the faster ones, can generate an awful lot of heat, and I've seen some really tight & pooly ventalated cheap 3.5" enclosures.

SL