I bought a WD Passport studio back in January to serve as a Time Machine backup for my old PBG4 as well as for extra storage as the internal 60GB HD was filling up. I had originally purchased a Toshiba USB portable HD but found that the USB ports on my 15" PBG4 could not power the drive without using dual USB ports. I sold that drive and bought the Passport instead which had FW800 so plenty of juice.
It ran with no problems for months until recently when I upgraded my laptop to a MBP13". I purchased a Time Capsule around this time too so back up the MBP13" using that but I still use the Passport for external storage. I did not repartition or reformat the external drive when I stopped using my old mac, simply just ignore the Time Machine backup on it (I'm keeping that around until I sell the PBG4 on craigslist) and use the other partition I put on it as usual. However, I have noticed recently that when I'm using the drive via FW800 (like I prefer) sometimes the drive totally locks up the computer. It will happen when I am transferring large data from the internal to the external drive.
I have run it using the USB 2.0 connection instead and I don't seem to have the same trouble. I can more reliably transfer large files to/from the drive using the USB cable vs. FW800.
I read online that I am not the only one with this problem. But does anyone have a fix? Or am I forced to use it via USB until there is some kind of fix? Ideally I'd like to keep using it on FW800 since I leave the short USB cable that the drive came with hooked up to the Time Capsule where I occasionally connect the hard drive to for network access. Besides FW800 is faster than USB2 and in particular this drive seems to perform better using the FW800 connection (except for the freezing now!)
It was working with no problems with my old mac and only recently on the new mac did I notice these freezeups. They are pretty severe too as they hard-lock the entire computer requiring a hard reboot.
I bring this drive to and from work every day and use it to sync up some folders between my laptop at home and an iMac at work. Since the iMac has FW400 port I leave the FW400-800 cable that came with the studio at work and connect it to the iMac using that. At home I use the FW800-800 cable. I've been doing this ever since I had the drive and have not had freezing issues on the iMac ever. Sometimes it stays connected to the iMac for many hours as I hook it up in the morning and disconnect it in the evening when I leave and never any trouble.
Since the iMac at work is a C2D, it doesn't seem to be an intel-mac thing... but I used it with no problems on my PBG4 for so long?
Anything I can do? Perhaps I should contact WD support.
Ruahrc
It ran with no problems for months until recently when I upgraded my laptop to a MBP13". I purchased a Time Capsule around this time too so back up the MBP13" using that but I still use the Passport for external storage. I did not repartition or reformat the external drive when I stopped using my old mac, simply just ignore the Time Machine backup on it (I'm keeping that around until I sell the PBG4 on craigslist) and use the other partition I put on it as usual. However, I have noticed recently that when I'm using the drive via FW800 (like I prefer) sometimes the drive totally locks up the computer. It will happen when I am transferring large data from the internal to the external drive.
I have run it using the USB 2.0 connection instead and I don't seem to have the same trouble. I can more reliably transfer large files to/from the drive using the USB cable vs. FW800.
I read online that I am not the only one with this problem. But does anyone have a fix? Or am I forced to use it via USB until there is some kind of fix? Ideally I'd like to keep using it on FW800 since I leave the short USB cable that the drive came with hooked up to the Time Capsule where I occasionally connect the hard drive to for network access. Besides FW800 is faster than USB2 and in particular this drive seems to perform better using the FW800 connection (except for the freezing now!)
It was working with no problems with my old mac and only recently on the new mac did I notice these freezeups. They are pretty severe too as they hard-lock the entire computer requiring a hard reboot.
I bring this drive to and from work every day and use it to sync up some folders between my laptop at home and an iMac at work. Since the iMac has FW400 port I leave the FW400-800 cable that came with the studio at work and connect it to the iMac using that. At home I use the FW800-800 cable. I've been doing this ever since I had the drive and have not had freezing issues on the iMac ever. Sometimes it stays connected to the iMac for many hours as I hook it up in the morning and disconnect it in the evening when I leave and never any trouble.
Since the iMac at work is a C2D, it doesn't seem to be an intel-mac thing... but I used it with no problems on my PBG4 for so long?
Anything I can do? Perhaps I should contact WD support.
Ruahrc
