Firewire 800 Drive isn't "seen?"

[majordude]

WTF?

I have two firewire 800 drives. One is a Fantom 1TB and the other is a Western Digital 500GB.

The WD is connected directly to my MBP and the Fantom is connected to the WD.

My Mac sees the Fantom but the WD is gone!

I mean, there is data on it but my Mac doesn't see it. It's like it's not there.

It was working great. I booted into Mac, rebooted into Boot Camp to play a game, and then back into Mac. XP is set up so that firewire is dead (so it will never try to access the drives).

I've unplugged the drives, turned off the MBP and NOTHING. It doesn't pop up anywhere.

Any ideas?

 

[e12a]

have you checked if it shows up in disk utility?

 

[majordude]

have you checked if it shows up in disk utility?

Not there.

I can't imagine that it's dead. I mean, it's less than a year old, there wasn't - or isn't -- any clicking or grinding and it was working great an hour ago! But it's GONE!

 

[e12a]

It could be either the enclosure or the drive itself. Does it still have a warranty? If not, crack it open and see if the drive mounts outside of the enclosure (you're going to need another enclosure or a USB adapter of some sort).

So it sounds like you're daisy chaining the Fantom drive through the WD. Can you switch the WD and the Fantom and see if that works? or does the Fantom only have 1 FW800/400

 

[majordude]

So it sounds like you're daisy chaining the Fantom drive through the WD. Can you switch the WD and the Fantom and see if that works? or does the Fantom only have 1 FW800/400

I think I'll have to try that on the next reboot in the morning.

This is really irritating.

I'd hate to think that WD is as bad as their reputation on the XP side of the world... especially since I still have data it!!!

 

[majordude]

Western Digital Drives SUCK!

It could be either the enclosure or the drive itself.

Well, I had a thought in my sleep: try using the Firewire 400 or USB. I can't find a Firewire 400 wire so I just tried the USB.

It works!

So the connector died but NOT the drive itself. That is good (so I can get all the data off of it) but sucks because this is the SECOND Western Digital product in one year that had died on me. The first was a bare-bones USB My Book 250 and this one was their top of the line (at the time) 500GB My Book. The first one just DIED altogether. No way to get data off of it.

(Expensive) lesson learned.

 

[alphaod]

Well, I had a thought in my sleep: try using the Firewire 400 or USB. I can't find a Firewire 400 wire so I just tried the USB.

It works!

So the connector died but NOT the drive itself. That is good (so I can get all the data off of it) but sucks because this is the SECOND Western Digital product in one year that had died on me. The first was a bare-bones USB My Book 250 and this one was their top of the line (at the time) 500GB My Book. The first one just DIED altogether. No way to get data off of it.

(Expensive) lesson learned.

Good to know USB works; just a heads up that sometimes the computer/enclosure acts funny, the port doesn't work; you plug it in to another computer, plug it back and it all works....

As with retrieving data, well if the connector broke you can get a new enclosure; if it's a dead drive, data recovery, but of course that's expensive--it is an option.

 

[operator207]

I bought a firewire cable a few years ago because it was a foot long. I was tired of toting around a 3 foot cable. I was using it with was a dual FW400/USB external enclosure. It died. Well the enclosure and drive were fine. Even the ports. The cable died. I still use the enclosure and drive 3 years later, I now use a new cable.

Check the cable. FW400/FW800 cables are pretty cheap.

 

[majordude]

Check the cable. FW400/FW800 cables are pretty cheap.

I changed around the cables the first night. The cables are fine. Oddly (to me anyway), when daisy-chained, the Fantom works whether or not it is the master or slave (running off of the WD).

But today, while connected to USB, the WD didn't mount when I started OSX. I had to unplug the power and reconnect it. Now it is working again.

Obviously, I'm not going to use it much longer. It appears to be dying an early death.

 

[operator207]

I changed around the cables the first night. The cables are fine. Oddly (to me anyway), when daisy-chained, the Fantom works whether or not it is the master or slave (running off of the WD).

But today, while connected to USB, the WD didn't mount when I started OSX. I had to unplug the power and reconnect it. Now it is working again.

Obviously, I'm not going to use it much longer. It appears to be dying an early death.

Makes me wonder if the chipset is prolific. If so that seems par for the course with them. If you can buy an enclosure and trade the drive out. I bet the drive is fine. Your describing another problem I had with an enclosure that has a prolific chipset. Works fine on my windows laptop. Does what your describing in os x.