LOL Sorry for the confusion. The firewire is perfect! Just the permissions get messed up every once in a while.

I have been suspicious for some time now that there are some issues with firewire that have yet to be fully disclosed or addressed by Apple. I noticed some of the FW problems beginning a couple years ago and decided whenever possible to buy peripherals that were dual FW/USB so if the FW goes I can still access via USB.

It seems that every update to the OS creates new FW problems. I can't fully fault Apple for this though because I also noticed that certain manufacturers are often mentioned in the problem thread. Frequently those who have "dead" external drives remove them from the case and put them in a new one or internally and find the drive itself is fine, the bridge in the bad case had been fried or was faulty.

Perhaps there is not enough communication between Apple and the bridge manufacturers that go into these peripherals.

OK, off soapbox.

I had the same problem (G5 did not recognize the new LaCie Exteme, 1.6 Terratytes),
using Firewire 9-pin connectors) .....
This new LaCie is provided with connections for both the FireWire 9-pin and the
FireWire 4-pin. A "work-around" temporary solution is to re-connect with the
4-pin Firewire cables, and just use the 9-pin connections if you have 2 drives that need
to be daisy-chained. I would think that this "solution" reduces the read-write speeds
considerably, but at least it works......Bill Cohen, New York

Bill, thank you for your advice, but I have only one type of cable (the thick one that permits to daisy chain devices).

I have two PowerBooks and the Firewire drives still work correctly on one of them. As I explained previously, I got first the problem with a (new) iBook and then with one PowerBook. So, out of 3 machines, one is OK, the two others are definitely not.

I am wondering wether the Firewire bus is dead (or not) on these two machines. How could I be sure ? How could I test it ?
One thing that's puzzling me is that this happened nearly simultaneoulsy on two machines. Knowing that I have been using the PowerBook with Firewire drives for years without problem.

What could lead to a hardware problem on the Firewire bus ? Do you have any idea ?

Thanks for your support.

Dominique

I am having a similar problem, I think.

During a recent OS X upgrade to my iBook (dual-USB), I went from Jaguar to Panther. As soon as the upgrade was complete, my Que!M3 drive would no longer appear when connected to the FireWire port. I have tried different cables, and I have even tried using other drives (Maxtor One-Touch II drive, Yamaha external CDRW) and nothing will appear when connected to FireWire.

All three of these drives appear immediately when connected to the FireWire port on my PC running Windows XP, although they are not all accessible because they contain Mac Extended partitions. Furthermore, the Maxtor drive works fine on the iBook if I connect it through its USB port instead.

My iBook is running firmware:
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.0f4
although I am not clear on how this is feasible given that the Apple Support site seems to indicate that 4.1.7 is the highest version for this computer.

Under OS X, the System Profiler shows:
FireWire Bus:
Speed: 400 Mb/sec Speed
but it does not show any drives connected.

Disk Utility cannot see any of these drives either.

Because the drives continue to work fine on the FireWire ports of another computer, I am inclined to believe one of the following:
--the upgrade introduced drivers that don't support the FireWire port in the computer
--the upgrade is not compatible with the firmware version that I have
--the upgrade either caused or was coincident with damage to the FireWire port hardware

I have also:
--reset the PRAM (Command + Option + P + R keys while booting)
--reset the NVRAM (Command + Option + O + F while booting, and then reset-nvram and reset-all at the prompt)
--removed power, battery, etc. and disconnected everything for more than half an hour.

Any suggestions on what I might try next? I bought this laptop to see if I could lessen the burden of computer ownership by moving from PC to Mac. So far no good.

Thanks in advance.

If you had a desktop model, I would have suggested performing a normal shutdown, disconnecting peripherals, and then disconnecting the Macintosh at the wall outlet and waiting twenty minutes for the fuses that protect the FireWire port to reset. I have not seen anyone describe an analogous procedure specific to iBooks, but it appears to me that you have done all the removing and waiting that could be required.

If you have access to another Macintosh that has FireWire (either built in or on a PCI FireWire card) try testing the FireWire port using FireWire Target Disk Mode.

I bought a G4 MD - 1.25 GHZ and used an Acomdata 60 gb FW/USB 2.0 drive. it worked fine for a couple of weeks but then the computer would freeze whenever I copied large files to or from the drive. I called apple and they couldn't figure it out, the drive worked fine on an older G4.

I didn't have time or patience to send it out for service so I went to best buy and bought a Firewire / USB 2.0 card for $90. Since then everything worked fine.

But I'd love to try the powerdown, unplug the cord for 20 minutes to see if it resets everything. I'll let you know when I get home tomorrow night.

Hi I've just come across the same problem on my G4 1.25Ghz Cube, OS10.3.7. The Firewire Ports suddenly stopped recognizing anything - in System Profiler/Firewire it simply says "No Information Found." Nothing new or different was added to my machine, literally one minute the devices were recognized and then when I went back to the computer an hour later they were gone. Both my Firewire Devices (an external drive and a MOTU 828 audio device) work on my iBook.

I've tried the unplug routine and zapped the PRAM but haven't yet tried replacing the battery, but I'm pretty sure that won't be it as I think it's only a couple of years old. I tried repairing permissions bu tthat didn't work either. Any other ideas? This seems like it's starting to become a common problem!!

Firewire connectivity is definitely shaky.
I'm still using OS 9.2.2 with an external Yamaha firewire CD writer and every once in awhile the firewire connection just drops for no apparent reason. Couyld be in the middle of a burn or during verification; in one recent case it was right at the end of verification before the disk is normally automatically ejected.
I treid this firewire device both with the built-in Apple firewire ports and also with an Firewire/USB PCI card I added to my AGP G4. I get the same problems either way.
I was thinking if it could be the IDE/firewire bridge in the external drive but am not really sure what to look for.
Luckily I burn CD's seldom and for regular CD and DVD's I use the internal drive.

But if anyone has any clues or suggestions what is going on or even better, how to fix this, that would be great.

krs

Hum... Am not the only one to get trouble with Firewire but it's not making me more happy because unfortunatly I don't see any solution on the post. I think I have try all what are suggested here: switch off, unplug etc... no result !
I am using OS 10.3.7 and 10.3.8 on iBook and iMac. The 2 units can be connected together with firewire and see each other without problem, it's the External DD who doesn't appear anymore. I try to mount/see it with TechTool, Diskwarrior, Cocktail, Norton SystemWorks... none of them see the firewire ext.DD. It's a MacWay Ice Firewire 800 250 GO with all my back up and work on !
Steve where are you ?