Hot external Lacie 250gb Hard Disk drive, help

[Gabrielc]

Hi, I got an external 250gb Lacie HDD, since 5 years I´ve been using this on the same way and it has been always warm/hot (when I touch it), but now that I passed from a G5 PPC to a C2D intel I realised something is wrong, when I use Win XP SP2 (bootcamp) for playing games or sufring the net, this HDD is cold, but when I use Snow Leopard is warm/hot (even over the night when I don´t use the mac - sleep mode) why is this happening?
Thanks

 

[hughvane]

Is the drive externally powered or USB powered? I have read about LaCie drive owners changing the fan inside to provide better cooling.

 

[Gabrielc]

Hi Hughvane, the HDD is externally powered and plugged on USB (previously was using firewall, but as the new imac has the mini firewall I had to connect it using USB port).

But the strange thing is that on bootcamp is cold and running over mac (even don't using it) is warm/hot.

WHY? how WIN XP works with an external HDD and how does OSX do it?

 

[hughvane]

I don't know about bootcamp except that it runs Win on Mac computers. Why it lets your external drive run cooler is a mystery to me, and I can only guess at a reason. I do know that Mac-USB is not the greatest thing in the world, but that wouldn't explain why, in MacOS alone, your LaCie runs hotter.

I read here Firewire to mini-Firewire adapters? - iLounge Forums that there is an adaptor for mini firewire available from here Cables for Less | HDMI, VGA, RCA, Network Cable and More!. As I don't really know what I'm looking for - you'll know better - perhaps an adaptor would suit your situation and allow you to use firewire connection to your LaCie again.

 

[Gabrielc]

I don't know about bootcamp except that it runs Win on Mac computers. Why it lets your external drive run cooler is a mystery to me, and I can only guess at a reason. I do know that Mac-USB is not the greatest thing in the world, but that wouldn't explain why, in MacOS alone, your LaCie runs hotter.

I read here Firewire to mini-Firewire adapters? - iLounge Forums that there is an adaptor for mini firewire available from here Cables for Less | HDMI, VGA, RCA, Network Cable and More!. As I don't really know what I'm looking for - you'll know better - perhaps an adaptor would suit your situation and allow you to use firewire connection to your LaCie again.

Hi Hughvane, I don't know the reason neither. I know I should get away from USB port, but when I used firewire port on my previous imac it happened the same, so I don't think this is a USB fault or issue.

I'll have a look at it and also give a buzz to Apple customer care and see what's the story with it. Cheers.