I'm afraid to install Panther!!

[settledown]

I have a pretty old(2+ yrs?) 80GB Lacie external firewire drive. I'm worried that the firmware is old and Panther will erase my drive.

It contains my entire iTunes library and clones of my internal drive as backups.

Will Panther kill my drive or not?
Does anyone know?

 

[iEric]

No one knows for sure. Maybe you should wait till a update is provided for the firewire drives? or not use the firewire drive until an update is provided. Your choice. But panther is sooo good..I couldn't resist when it came ONE DAY EARLIER

 

[settledown]

i have ordered it, actually the family version(guilt from past installs)

it'll be here tomorrow. I want to install it soooo bad, but.....

Imagine re-ripping 100+cds....annoying

 

[Frisco]

I thought there was a Firmware update released that solves this issue?

 

[zroll1]

That update is only for FireWire 800 drives. I have a LaCie 120 GB drive but am also afraid of losing my data. But there is no way I could resist using Panther. I'll wait for an update.

 

[bitfactory]

if you're too scared, wait for the update - but just so you know - it only affects fw800 drives... the reports that it also affects fw400 drives is BS, and has never been reproduced.

 

[zroll1]

I disagree. I have heard many reports, even from people that I know that had problems with regular FireWire 400 drives. But it may not be a problem for everyone. I won't take the chance though.

 

[settledown]

my lacie is old and that is what scares me most.
if it were new i would be confident in the firmware being new.

So id the firewire400 issue a hoax or real?

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

well this is what macfixit says about it:

FireWire 800 vs. FireWire 400 drives We have previously expressed concerns, based on numerous reports of problems with FireWire 400 drives and Panther, that this issue may not be restricted to FireWire 800/Oxford 922 drives (or, at the very least, that a different issue is affecting some FireWire 400 drives). We also reported on a claim by Oxford Semiconductor that it would be "impossible" for this official bug to affect Oxford 911 chipsets. LaCie confirms Oxford's position, stating that the circumstances and technical details surrounding the bug that Apple has acknowledged relate to specific ways in which FireWire 800/Oxford 922 drives communicate with the operating system. In other words, since FireWire 400 drives, and drives using the Oxford 911 chipset, don't communicate with connected computers in exactly the same manner as FireWire 800/Oxford 922 drives, this particular bug cannot affect them.

This does not rule out the possibility that there may be issues affecting other drives. However, it means that if other drives are indeed having problems with Panther, they are having problems for different reasons.

http://www.macfixit.com/

 

[zroll1]

MacCentral says:

"Apple Computer Inc. said last week that they had identified an issue with the Oxford Semiconductor 922 chipset used in FireWire 800 hard drives and were working to fix the issue. While Apple, Oxford and hard drive manufacturers have stated the issue only affects the newer Oxford 922 chips, users of FireWire 400 drives have been reporting symptoms very similar to the ones initially found with FireWire 800. "I lost a good deal of work-related data," author Dan Frakes, told MacCentral. "The original stuff was on one FireWire drive, and the backup was on the other." Frakes, like many other users, installed Mac OS X Panther on his new dual G5 when the new operating system became available on October 24. After installing Panther and booting the system, Frakes plugged in the FireWire drive and everything worked fine -- it was after a restart that the problems began. When the system booted up again, the drive was unrecognizable. The drive worked fine on my G4/733 running Jaguar," said Frakes. "And before I disconnected it from the Jaguar machine, I ran Disk Utility and DiskWarrior on it to make sure the drive was in good condition. In fact, the drive was fairly new, so it wasn't even fragmented. Despite several utilities being able to access the drive, nothing was able to fix it. Frakes eventually took his drive to DriveSavers, and they were able to recover the data from the hard drive."

 

[markjones05]

I have an external firewire 400 drive running with panther and have absolutely not one problem with my entire setup. Panther rocks i dont know why all theses people insist on complaining so much. Install panther you wont regret it.

 

[5300cs]

Originally posted by markjones05
I have an external firewire 400 drive running with panther and have absolutely not one problem with my entire setup. Panther rocks i dont know why all theses people insist on complaining so much. Install panther you wont regret it.

I'll second that. I have a FireWire drive and have had no problems at all. I also think Panther is cool (except the menu bar at the top, which is half OS 9 gray & half 10.1 pinstripe- it drives me nuts when I look at it.) Go ahead and install it. You said you have a mirror image of everything, yes? There's your insurance