Hi,
This is my first post - am in need of advise,
Have recently bought a new I-mac 10.5.4, and my external Iomega FW 250 gig would mount with no problem (used to use Emac). Then it stopped mounting, and now it's not even detected in system profiler, or Disk Utility. Had this problem when I had the emac and had to pay to recover the files. Am finding this very annoying and don't understand why it would detect and mount, and then stop.
Ran disk repair when it didn't mount ( but was detected ). Last time I checked disk utility, it doesn't appear.
Can't readily find the weblink right now, but you may find the following info helpful. I found it by looking for "Mac compatible firewire" and "Oxford chipset", drives using Google. There's a heap more info available about external firewire device problems.
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Firewire Conundrums
(Originally called Firewire bug page. Changed the name of the problem for better clarity)
In Mac OS X 10.5.2, there are some instances where the Finder may not load with External hard drives according to the Apple knowledgebase
In Mac OS X 10.4.9, it was found that Western Digital MyBook drives put an unsupported addon for their drives to use in Macintosh HD -> Library -> Launch Daemons called com.WD.WDDriveServices.plist. Removing that file fixes the ability of those drives to be read.
Starting with Mac OS X 10.3, it became apparent that the firmware of a Firewire hard drive case needed to be upgraded to avoid not being able to be read by Mac OS X in some cases. Turns out that this is not the only cause of a non-hardware related issue that could cause Firewire hard drives to be readable on some machines yet not others when using the same Firewire cables. It has been found that these causes are the most likely and should be tested for in this order:
1. The PRAM needs zapping. Note, if a machine is 3 or more years old, PRAM zapping should only be attempted after verifying that the clock (also known as backup battery) is fully charged. Similarly, the NVRAM may need resetting.
2. The firewire ports need resetting, or the PMU needs resetting.
3. Spotlight indexing on the hard drive needs turning off. This is only an issue under 10.4 (Mac OS X Tiger). For more on why this may be an issue see the section on this FAQ on 10.4 Issues.
4. Dust in the firewire ports.
5. Installed firmware on the Firewire bridge of the hard drive is not fully compatible with the operating system. Check the manufacturer's support line (in this case e-mail firewire AT lacie.com) for updated firmware.
6. The operating system's Firewire drivers are not properly installed. This may happen if you used system specific disks for another Mac to install the operating system, or the directory is damaged, or the preferences for the firewire are not working.
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Update: see post about "LaCie HD stopped mounting with Firewire". Most informative.
