[posthumanus]

re: LaCie Porche Firewire400 Mobile HD

and the damn thing won’t mount on my iMac400/OSX.3.2
(a slot loader with Firewire400 ports & 320Mb RAM)

(it) must be powered up ‘cause the little light’s on
and i tried the additional USB power cable anyway

tried plugging/unplugging/restarting

tried both firewire ports on the ‘puter and both on the ext.HD and a combination of all 4

tried Pacifist on my Panther CD’s but couldn’t find anything that made sense

tried searching MacNN

tried updating firmware as in http://www.lacie.com/au/support/drivers/
which shouldn’t be necessary
and says it has worked but hasn’t

repeating the update gets the same result

[posthumanus]

system requirements for porche mobile firewire HD =

MacG3 or greater, with FireWire 400/IEEE 1394a interface card

surely i must have this?

the bloke at the shop said it would work

anyone else got a clue?

[posthumanus]

woke up this morning and there it was

all is well

the end

[pfapfap]

I'm having this same problem!

I have an older 40GB LaCie pocket drive. I hadn't used it in a while because I lost access to a firewire computer and couldn't find my power supply for USB, but last week I got a new iBook. I updated the firmware before I installed 10.3.2 and it worked fine for a week. Then this morning, it stopped. It gets the green power light, but won't mount, and nothing will see it.

I used the LaCie firmware update tool again, and it saw it as a "blank firewire device". I had to tell it what sort of drive it was, and it told me the firmware was updated and that it would mount, but it didn't. Tried again, and it said I needed to update again.

As I just got this machine, I didn't have a chance to backup everything that was on this drive, and I'd be very sad if it was completely dead. Any ideas? I hope it suddenly decides to start working again, at which point I'll immediately copy over everything important and make multiple CD backups. I've never had a harddrive die on me before. This is very sad.

[posthumanus]

well all was not well because 2 days ago it shat itself, then yesterday it turned up cooperative

there doesn’t seem to be much consistency here, so literally repeating the sequence of events is impossible

general impressions are about all i can get a hold of:

* ext.HD really doesn’t like being rushed with curser clicks. this launches the spinning beachball of death

* ext.HD won’t support drag&drop. only silverkeeper v1.1:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14521
and even this hasn’t always worked

* the http://www.lacie.com/au/support/drivers/ UpdateTool ReadMe is the only place i can find specific (initial) instructions for OSX/Panther users.

(it is assumed that Panther cooperates flawlessly with LaCie ext.HDs without any additional installations. in this respect, LaCie’s own pamphlet is worse that a pre-school lesson in ‘join the blocks’ - a waste of ink)

*ext.HD won’t tolerate staying plugged in through a restart (must dismount in an orderly fashion beforehand - which totally screws everything if the ext.HD/software has already frozen the system

force-quit doesn’t cut it (it demands a force-restart from the side button; remember OS9 days)

then, of course, the ext.HD doesn’t show up on my desktop until the ‘puters been put to sleep again for half an hour. and then only maybe

i think it’s lulling me into a false sense of security because it seems to be cooperating - at least for the last few ‘wake from sleeps’

in any event, this thread is serving as a record of complaint encase i need it replaced, and a record of bugs for LaCie’s benefit: most people seem very impressed with their LaCie.HDs - which is why i bought one in the first place

feel free to add to this bug-list

posthumanus

(PS: or could this possibly be a Panther OSX.3.2.bug? - i am meticulous when clean installing and updating my OSs, but perhaps something might have slipped under the radar)

[posthumanus]

here's a cross-thread of possible interest:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...26#post1804426

posthumanus

[posthumanus]

disk utility previously showed a LaCieHD then beneath it, the disk1s1 is ghosted and

Repairing disk for “disk1s1”
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
Repair attempted on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired


now lately (after renaming it ‘vault’)

Repairing disk for “vault”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume vault appears to be OK.
Repair attempted on 1 volume
HFS volume repaired

but then every second time i try backing up with silverkeeper i get this with an .app freeze

The device you removed was not properly put away. Data might have been lost or damaged. Before you unplug your device, you must first select its icon in the Finder and choose Eject from the File menu.

this is without using, removing or ejecting it at all

now, i can’t empty trash because

“LaCie BackUp Support is in use”: this seemingly innocent psuedo.app & dialogue box could be important but i’ve no idea

it’s popping up at this worst of possible times on my desktop and won’t let itself be trashed.

have to restart to get rid of it. then ext.HD does not reappear

damn i’m sick of this. this is the only piece of hard/soft ware i’ve ever had this much trouble with

[posthumanus]

much later:

& i’ve managed to keep the thing mounted long enough to wipe it and start anew

then i noticed an ‘Ejectable: No’ listing when doing the ‘disk utility: info’ thing

(tried it 3 times: same result)

so i change tactics and instead of trying to eject via the Finder or menu, i try dragging my ext.HD icon from desktop to trash

guess what? it works every time!

haven’t a ‘disk device was improperly put away’ message since!

it mounts, dismounts, turns up after short naps and does its job without complaint

am considering emailing this whole sorry saga to apple (who’ve hopefully fixed it already in 10.3.3)

it’s gotta be a Finder thing

posthumanus

ps: have trashed finder prefs on numerous occasions - to no avail

ps: i'm cross-threading here with another MacNN post. apologies if it gets confusing