PROBLEM! 1MB/s write speeds to LaCie external HD via Firewire...??

[Flying Llama]

Here's a tricky problem that maybe someone can solve...

I have two LaCie hard disks connected to my iMac G5. I need to transfer everything from the full hard drive to the empty one, because the empty one has a USB 2.0 port (and my new laptop has no firewire, so this is how I'll get my files onto my new laptop... by moving everything to a compatible hard drive).

Since Firewire 400 is somewhat faster than USB 2.0, they're both connected to my iMac via Firewire for now.

Drive 1: LaCie 250 GB, almost full. Has a Firewire 400 port. Reads/writes very fast.

Drive 2: LaCie 250 GB, completely empty. Has Firewire 400 and USB 2.0. Reads just fine, but writes at about 1MB/s, whether using FW or USB.

What's going on?

Some extra notes: Both are formatted as journaled, but reformatting the empty one as not-journaled makes no difference. Daisy-chaining the empty one to the full one via Firewire also makes no difference in speed.

Help!!!! What's wrong with this empty hard drive?

 

[Flying Llama]

any ideas? do you think the hardware is broken?

 

[iBookG4user]

If you daisy-chain the good external to the slow one and then connect the slow one to your Mac, does the good one write at the same slow speed?

 

[Flying Llama]

That's a great idea, unfortunately the bad hard disk only has one firewire 400 port

it has two firewire 800 ports, but I dont have any of those on my computers

 

[iBookG4user]

Well, the next thing to try is connecting the problem external hard drive to another computer. If you have one handy, is the write speed still slow? If so, then it is the hard drive at fault and you should consider RMA'ing it.