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Quick help please - Maxtor external firewire drive unknown device
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Offline
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My internal drive is failing and I bought a Maxtor 80GB IDE 7200 drive and put it in a generic 3.5 inch usb2 & firewire enclosure but when I plug it into the firewire, it says unknown device on the firewire port. I don't know where to get generic usb2 drivers for OS X but the drive should mount without drivers under firewire I think.
I have used the enclosure before with a CD-writer and it worked fine. I set the Maxtor hard drive to master and it is still unkown. It was on CS at first and that didn't work.
I'm running Tiger on a Mac Mini.
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Moderator  Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
Status:
Online
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The drive might just need formatting. Have you tried opening Disk Utility to see if the app identifies it as an unformatted hard drive?
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2004
Status:
Offline
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The drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility. I was expecting the OS to ask to format it as soon as I plugged it in but it's not showing up anywhere.
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Moderator Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
Status:
Online
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Hrm. Have you tried swapping firewire cables to see if the cable may have gone bad? And you might want to try the USB2 ports just to see if those work. If you can get the drive to mount via USB, then that helps narrow down the problem.
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2004
Status:
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Yeah, I tried USB too and that didn't work. However I had a Lacie external enclosure with a DVD-Writer in it and I put the hard drive in that and I was able to format it in Disk Utility no bother and I've backed up my drive using SuperDuper.
I then tried my DVD-writer in the enclosure I just bought and I get the same unknown device problem. The light doesn't come on. Under some Windows discussions, it says if you get an unknown device error, it could be a power supply problem. But what is strange is that the fan on the enclosure turns on and my hard drive was spinning. The only other thing I can think off is if there is a problem with the IDE cable.
As I've used IDE drives in the same enclosure model (though a different one) and they worked fine, I'm guessing it's the enclosure that's the issue.
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Moderator Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
Status:
Online
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From all you've done, it sounds like the device is defective in some way. Hope the place you bought is easy to return things to. 
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2004
Status:
Offline
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I think it'll be ok to return. I got it from a local store today and I have the receipt. They also have technicians so I'll ask if they can test it to see if it is broken.
Update
I got it working somehow. I don't know how but like most of the machines I own, they just die and start working without rhyme or reason.
I daisy chained the HD to my DVD writer and I have a good backup system now.
(Last edited by osxrules; Jul 25, 2005 at 08:08 PM.
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