I have an external FireWire Drive (120GB - Oxford Semiconductor) running under an OS 9.2.2 formatter(Hard Disk Speed Tools 3.5). I formatted it into 5 partitions. I am now running under OS 10.2.6 which certainly "sees" the partitions. However, I have several problems:
1) Even though four partitions are empty and the fifth contains OS 10.2.4, interrmittantly, the FW drive will spin up while I am performing some task. It appears that the drive spins down when not in use.
2) If after applying power, I then turn on the Mac, if I do it too quickly, the FW icons do not appear on the desktop although I can see them in disk utility but I cannot mount them. I have sucessfully mounted them by turning off the FW drive and then turning it back on. The drive does not mount immediately, but a few seconds after turning it back on, the partitions mount.
My question is how do I keep the FW drive alsways ready. Is it something I dshould have done in foematting the drive or is it something that should be done to the hardware via connecting certain external pins?
I know it would be best to reformat the drive using OS 10..x formatting, but I would then lose OS 10.2.4 which is the only OS 10 version that allows me to use my laser printer.
Thanks for reading,
MamaMoose