[marky_boy]

the hardware in question:
-Tibook 667, 512meg ram, combo drive bla bla
-Western Digital 120gig drive (details here) enclosed in a New Motion 3.5" usb2/firewire aluminium enclosure (details here)

software:
OSX 10.2.8

problem:
the drive mounts mine when i turn the device on, however if i dont access the disk for awhile, it goes into like a sleep mode. on the desktop the OS is still showing the drives mounted, but when i try and access them i get the beachball of doom and the computer becomes unresponsive.

the only way to remedy this is to turn the drive off, then back on again (the nasty 'you should unplug your device' error comes up aswell)

i have unchecked 'put the hard disk to sleep whenever possible' in energy saver but problem still occurs. any suggestions appreciated!

[icruise]

I have this exact problem with an older firewire drive, and the only solution I've found is to not use it all the time. That is, only it in when I need to use it. This basically means that it is relegated to backup-disk status. I have a newer drive that works perfectly.

[marky_boy]

so you think its the hard drive and not the firewire cage?

interesting....ill try get my hands on a newer drive and see what happens.

thanks!