[Steph]

I just got a Maxtor 40GB Firewire hard drive... It works fine, though to make it work at all, you have to install a Maxtor FW extension...

Anyhow, here's my dillema. I bought this because it was only $450 (Canadian) and because I just plain couldn't find any empty Firewire Hard Drive cases here in Canada at anything resembling a reasonable price. My initial plan was to remove the 40GB drive from this enclosure, install it in my iMac as the main HD, then use the enclosure to hold various other HD's I have. The enclosure opens easily enough, and inside is a Maxtor DiamondMax 5400 RPM IDE hard drive.

My problem is, no matter what drive I put into this enclosure, it always appears to the computer, as a 40GB, except with the other drives, it always is 'unreadable / unusable' and cannot be initialized. (When trying to initialize, the device always reports it's size as 40 GB, i.e. options are HFS+ 40GB, HFS 40GB, DOS 40GB, then it fails when any option is attempted)

So... Is there some 'secret' anyone might know, some alternate extension or hack or resedit thing that can be done...anything at all, to get this dang FW / IDE enclosure to recognize that the drive inside it is not the one it came with? I've tried 2 other drives, coincidentally both Maxtors, one the 10GB Maxtor / Apple HD that came with my iMac, and the other a 4.3 GB Maxtor that is left-over from my Windows days.

I'm using OS 9.0.4 and have the Firewire extensions version 2.3.3

--Stephanie

[Fredo]

FireWire extensions are at version 2.7. I think you'll find updates here: http://www.apple.com/swupdates/ You'll also need up to date extensions from Maxtor. Get those from their website.
You may need to have both your Mac and HD fired up before attaching them. If you go to 9.1, you'll get the full update.

[Steph]

Thanks, I went to Apple but only found Firewire 2.5, not 2.7. I've upgraded to that, but the Mac still won't see the Firewire drive without the special Maxtor extension, so maybe the drive is 'nonstandard' or something? Is it possible that the size of the drive is 'hardcoded' into the Maxtor extension, or 'hardwired' into firewire enclosure?

I have very limited experience with this kind of thing, but I am wondering if, when replacing the 40Gb drive with say a 10Gb drive, if the Firewire enclosure needs to somehow have like an fdisk operation to update it's brains as to what drive is now inside it, instead of always reporting 40Gb regardless of what is inside.

--Stephanie

[Fredo]

Steph, You will update to FireWire 2.7 if you go to OS9.1. Get up to date Maxtor extensions, and maybe it'll work. Good luck.

[This message has been edited by Fredo (edited 01-28-2001).]