Firewire HD not detected

[radhak]

i had an old firewire HD of 80 GB lying around (Buslink FW80, bought in 2000 for Windows 2000). i connected it to my iMac but did not see it detected. i checked on the internet (lost its documentation) and found its specs only mention various versions of Windows, no Mac OS at all.

is it possible that this particular HD is built only for Windows? i thought Firewire (IEEE 1394) is a universal protocol not bound to the platform?

is there any driver that i can download to make it work with with the Mac?

 

[Rower_CPU]

Does the drive mount on PCs? If not, then it's probably an issue with the drive itself.

Also, does it need a separate AC power cable hooked up and did you have that?

 

[Horrortaxi]

Open disk utility and see if that sees the drive.

 

[true777]

-- Edit: Sorry - just noticed your current model iMac in your .sig - so the post below doesn't apply. Apologies, should have checked before replying.--


Are you using a flat panel iMac, or a G3 CRT iMac?
I know some older G3 based systems have problems with high speed firewire drives. After some emails my drive manufacturer (QPS) admitted that some early firewire Macs aren't working properly with high-speed drives. They sent me a free additional firewire card, and it worked well.

 

[MacBandit]

10.3.x disabled a lot of firewire drives as well. This was because of tighter standards in 10.3 which caused non-standard compliant drives to become corrupted. So with 10.3.x they disabled these drives unless they received a rom update.

 

[virividox]

check if the manufacterer has a firmware upgrade

 

[radhak]

the drive does have a separate power-cable, but funny thing, the drive comes on with just the firewire cable connected; does not wait for the power cable to be connected (though i connected it all the same). i guess it is taking its power from the firewire port?

disk-utility does not see the drive. even in the system-profiler, i see 'no firewire devices found'.

i am still on 10.2.8

the manufacturer's website (Buslink) does not even have this drive model (FW80) showing up now (though i can see it coming up at many of the webshops). all their drivers / updates are marked for later models.

i shall try the drive with my (windows) laptop to check it is still working.