iPod iPod looses power while syncing with FW drive

[rugger]

My daughter who has a 3G 40GB ipod reports the following problem.

She has a 1ghz 12" PB with insufficient disk space for her itunes library, so she keeps her main (30GB)library on an external FW drive. (She also keeps tunes on her PB and switches back and for with Libra.)

The problem is that when she connects her charged iPod to the external FW drive which is connected to the PB and tries to sync that 30GB library to the iPod it seems to suck the power out of the Ipod before the sync can be completed.

The battery life on the iPod is not terrible, maybe 6-8 hours of playtime.

Is there something about this connection setup where the daisy chained FW drive does not supply power to the iPod during syncing? The FW drive has its own power supply and is not drawing from the PB.

 

[yellow]

Out of curiosity: Does the external FW have it's own power supply?

 

[rugger]

Yes it does. I edited the original post just after posting, but you were indedd quick.

 

[Sun Baked]

Is there something about this connection setup where the daisy chained FW drive does not supply power to the iPod during syncing? The FW drive has its own power supply and is not drawing from the PB.

But there is nothing that says the FW drive has to also supply enough power to the iPod either.

It is probably a pass through device that may still use a bit of bus power, not everything functions as a powered hub -- which may be a way around it.

Look at the Apple System Profiler to see how the OS sees the device, if it still sees the device as a bus powered unit the added draw of the iPod could cause the OS to shut the port down.

 

[rugger]

Thanks. I'll have a look when I see her next week.

In the meantime, do you have any recommendations for powered hubs? I assume on of these will supply power to the iPod via 6 pin FW.