[Slc57]

I have a 30GB Western Digital 1394 HD. It has worked fine for over a year! Now suddenly it died. When I have the FireWire coard pluged into the iMac it will not spin up, yet when I unplug it from the mac it spins up. Then when I plug it back in a red light comes on and stays on. The iMac niether mounts it nor detects it at all! Everything seems fine with it besided the fact it will not mount , nor be detected. I have tried different FW cables, changed the power supply but nothin works. PLEASE help me, I have way to much to loose on there!

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Alex Cuter

I'm am having the same problem with my 80GB Maxtor external firewire drive. You described my scenario exactly what's the deal. It would appear that it is something not in the drive since we have the same problem on two totally different drives.

Firewire is not hot swapable. You may try to turn off your Mac, then plug in the drive and turn the power on, then start your Mac. If that doesn't work call WD. I 've had the same problem with a 20GB WD drive.

[Paul S]

I can't comment on why the drive died, but I can comment on Valentine's response. FireWire is hot-swapable. That's what makes it so much better than SCSI. I have 2 VST and 1 LaCie external FW drives hooked up to my computer. I drag them to the trash, then disconnect them. I can then plug them back into that machine, or my other G3 and they show right up. That is not what caused your problem.

Paul S is correct. However, I would mount and unmount the WD drive as outlined in the users manual.