External HD Troubles

Jason H · Dec 26th, 2005, 12:34 AM

I just got a Vantec NexStar usb2/firewire drive enclosure, and I put the 120 gig drive out of the b&w into it. Everything works fine on my ibook but when I go to plug the drive into my b&w it freezes when I go to open one of the partitions. Sometimes it slowly opens the drive in finder. I have tried connecting with usb and firewire, I have a usb 2.0 card installed in the b&w. If I try to connect via usb I dont get anything at all.

The drive was partitioned on the b&w, internally. It works great on the iBook. I'm all out of ideas.

MACSPECTRUM · Dec 26th, 2005, 02:57 PM

remove the USB card from the b/w and whatever sfw. it needed
then try using the external hard drive with FW only
don't even try USB

also make sure that;
1. external hard drive is plugged into mac via FW and is powered on
2. then turn on mac

report what happens

Jason H · Dec 26th, 2005, 03:56 PM

Alright, I tried that.

The usb card didnt need any software. I turned everything off and plugged it in and started up. Same problem.
I restarted/ shut down/ unplugged in a number of ways. Still the same problems.

I've tried the first and second firewire ports, tried chaining through the dvd burner, tried unplugging the dvd burner, everything.

MACSPECTRUM · Dec 26th, 2005, 08:59 PM

what is the OS X on your b/w and your ibook?
more details on each mac could be useful

Jason H · Dec 26th, 2005, 10:33 PM

10.4 on the ibook
10.3 on the g3

what more details do you need?

MacDoc · Dec 26th, 2005, 11:12 PM

Your case uses the Prolific PL3507 Combo Device bridge and it does not get along with early Firewire versions- one reason we went to Oxford 911 on our drive cases.
The Prolific is fine on later Macs but can cause issues on earlier machines as you can see.

	Quote:
	Vantec NexStar 2 external FireWire enclosure with Prolific PL-3507 chipset One reader report: "The problem started when I tried to use Disk Utility to 'restore' a disk image onto one of the partitions. It never got past unmounting the partition, though no error was reported. I was attempting to access files on other partitions at the same time, and the whole Firewire bus seemed to get stuck; Disk Utility froze, but because I was doing file copies the Finder froze too.

http://www.macintouch.com/tigerrevie...atibility.html

Sounds familiar eh.

Jason H · Dec 26th, 2005, 11:16 PM

Sounds like I might be able to solve my problems by dropping in my pci firewire card?

But, whats the deal with usb not working?

MacDoc · Dec 26th, 2005, 11:19 PM

Probably all chip related but it's USB 1 so why bother ( the Mac is ).
The card may well solve it.

HowEver · Dec 27th, 2005, 12:18 AM

I used that exact external enclosure with a 160GB 7200rpm 8MB cache drive in it, and it works great using either FireWire or USB2. (I'm selling it, though, since I have other storage options now.)

Why not just connect the external drive to the iBook via FireWire, and *also* connect the B/W to the iBook via FireWire?

MacDoc · Dec 27th, 2005, 12:25 AM

HW it's usually only a problem on very early FW bridges.