Author Topic: Panther and certain external FW drives warning (Read 2690 times)

krissel · « **on:** October 30, 2003, 06:49:47 PM »

Macfixit has had many reports of people losing use of external FW drives after upgrading to Panther. Apple has now noted this problem and is working on a fix. If you have the certain bridge and firmware involved you should not use the drive for now.

Firewire/Panther issue

CyberPet · « **Reply #1 on:** October 30, 2003, 08:27:14 PM »

According to MacFixIt there is no relation between 400 or 800 firewire, they all have the problem if booting up while having a firewire attached.

I never do this however, so my 2 FW drives are fine, but I'm now a lot more careful than before (also scared of a crash that might cause a problem). So my use of my FW drives has been cut down to about 5% for now.... and only plugged in and turned on when 10.3 is running and also put back to bed before I put my PowerBook to bed.

krissel · « **Reply #2 on:** October 31, 2003, 10:33:13 PM »

Apple is blaming the bridge and fixes are in for firmware from OWC and LaCie.

links to firmware fixes

krissel · « **Reply #3 on:** November 05, 2003, 07:37:55 PM »

Many FW 400 users have had disk loss but no fix for them.

The latest:

Panther firewire issues

RobW · « **Reply #4 on:** November 05, 2003, 09:22:43 PM »

I've also been reading about these issues. I was planning to get an external drive before moving up to Panther, but for now I'm putting everything on hold. It really seems pretty confusing on how or why this is happening--and nobody seems to be in agreement on any of the issues. For now, I'll keep rolling along nicely with Jaguar.

Thomas S. England · « **Reply #5 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:16:12 AM »

As I noted in another thread, I use external Firewire drives quite a bit (these digital image files add up quickly).

So these issues are very disturbing. It looks like it will be quite a while before I switch to Panther--there's too much dust to settle.

Pascalin · « **Reply #6 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:38:35 AM »

I have one question...

Isn't the iPod a Firewire Drive?

jcarter · « **Reply #7 on:** November 06, 2003, 07:18:16 AM »

I have an external FW LaCie drive, and it has all my original digital photos on it.
I have not yet gotten OS X yet. I have heard enough that I am a bit leery of trying to put it on my G4, I will stick with OS 9.2.2, as everything works fine.

But when I get my new Mac soon, I assume it will have Panther, but I would like to be able to use the ext hd. This would be a disaster for me to lose what is on that ext hd, so I shall wait until this has been solved.
I usually fire it up after the computer is on, add or move my pictures, then shut it off right afterwards. I wonder if that would work, but I am not going to experiment with this.
Thank you for the warning!
Jane

Pascalin · « **Reply #8 on:** November 06, 2003, 07:10:08 PM »

I have one question...

Isn't the iPod a Firewire Drive?

Gary S · « **Reply #9 on:** November 06, 2003, 07:50:22 PM »

Pascalin,

The iPod for Mac is a Firewire device. For Windows it can be either Firewire or USB 2.0.

On the Apple forums I have seen where a few people have lost the data on their iPods too but it's not been determined if it's Panther that's doing it.

Since Apple developed the iPod I would think their chip set should conform to the standards.

There seems to just be a generalized panic over at the Apple forums concerning Firewire.
The post that is dealing with it is about 580 posts long and you have to go backwards to read it. I haven't found a way to read it from the beginning.

News:

Author Topic: Panther and certain external FW drives warning (Read 2690 times)