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genuine · Sep 29, 2004, 07:53 AM

Hi,

can someone help me?
I am working on a Mac G4, 2x1,2gHz with OSX - version 10.2.6

All the electricity in my office suddenly dissapeared, and my Mac-equpment went dead. Now the electricity is back, Mac starts fine, no new errors, all programs etc. works fine!

BUT: my two external firewire-disks wount mount. They are not even visible in the system-dialog boxes.. can't see them in "start-station-panel" and "Disk utility/repair" can't regonize. I have checked one of the firewire disks on another mac here at my office - with regular OS 9.2 - and it mounted as usual. Tried it back on my newer OSX-mac, and still not visble anywhere - not even in OS9 classic at the same computer.

What do do? I am kind of new on OS X...
I need the files on the disks ASAP.
Thanks in advance.

Best regards
Espen.

Fredo · Sep 29, 2004, 10:47 AM

First off, try shutting down and disconnecting the external drive. Fire up the hard drive and wait 15 seconds before plugging in to the firewire port. The icon for the device should show up . If not, disconnect, and repair permissions, (disk utility in utilities folder in applications folder). Zap p-ram. (Restart, and hold down command-option-p-r) Try reconnecting. If you still can�t access the drive, you can reach it through the other Mac at your office by way of �target disk mode�.
To do this, connect the firewire device to the machine running 9.2 and make sure its icon appears on the desktop. Shut down this machine, and use a firewire cable with a standard six-pin connector on each end to connect to the one running OSX. Start up the first machine, holding down the t key. The icon for this hard drive and the external hard drive icon should both be accessible. Good luck.

Tsilou B. · Sep 29, 2004, 12:24 PM

First, open "Utilties->Disk Utility" and look if the hard drives are displayed there. If they are, you can mount them. If they are not, open "Utilities->System Profiler", click on "Firewire" and look if they appear in the list. Does the Mac still see the Firewire-Bus?

You can also try to remove the drives, switch them off, shut down the Mac, restart it, connect the hard drives again without turning them on first, and finally turn on the hard drives.

If nothing helps, write again

zwiebel_ · Sep 29, 2004, 01:28 PM

If your FW ports are in working condition, than it must be a failure on the drives. The same happend to me some time back and I used DiskWarrior to rebuild the drive(s) successfully.

CharlesS · Sep 29, 2004, 05:59 PM

Hopefully the power failure did not cause damage to your FireWire ports...

Have you tried plugging the drives into another Mac?

genuine · Sep 30, 2004, 05:07 AM

Thanks for replies everyone, I still have no sucsess mounting the disks.

I have talked to a technician at a local Macintosh dealer, we came to the conclusion that the FW-ports may have been destroyed. And he said that to replace the FW-ports I would need to replace my entire motherboard - is that true?

I will still try some more troubleshooting before handing it over to my local mac-dealer. To bad I just have theese two disk that are FW-units at my office - I would like to try some other FW-unit to se if the ports are gone.

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
First, open "Utilties->Disk Utility" and look if the hard drives are displayed there. If they are, you can mount them.

They are not visible there,

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
If they are not, open "Utilities->System Profiler", click on "Firewire" and look if they appear in the list. Does the Mac still see the Firewire-Bus?

They do not appear in the list under "firewire" It displays "no units connected" (or somthing like that - I have a Norwegian OS)

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
You can also try to remove the drives, switch them off, shut down the Mac, restart it, connect the hard drives again without turning them on first, and finally turn on the hard drives.

I will try this last one as well. I have tried many different things, but not exactly like this.

Best regards
Espen.

genuine · Sep 30, 2004, 05:10 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Hopefully the power failure did not cause damage to your FireWire ports...

Have you tried plugging the drives into another Mac?

That is what I am afraid of, that my FW-ports are damaged

I have plugged one of the drives into another G4 Mac (with OS9), and it displayed just fine - I didn't open any files, but could open the folders and browse the disk - so I guess its ok.

genuine · Sep 30, 2004, 06:18 AM

Hmmm.. I been doing some research...
Could it be a solution to buy a "iXpand Firewire 3-port PCI-card" and install?
I mean, instead of replacing the entire motherboard, just insert a new PCI-unit with new FW-ports.

genuine · Sep 30, 2004, 08:51 AM

Update:

I just installed a LaCie Hi-speed USB2 & FW PCI-card on my Mac, and now the disk mounts just fine. So I guess my original FW-ports are damaged from the electric blackout. Anyways - problem solved and everything is running as it should

Thanks for your tips and help anyways - I am new at this forum, but I guess I'll be browsing it in the future on a regular basis.

Br
Espen.

JKT · Sep 30, 2004, 09:14 AM

There is one option that you can try that may restore your original ports (if they haven't been hosed) - reset the power management unit. This is usually achieved by pressing a red button on the motherboard of the desktop macs - search the knowledgebase articles at the apple.com support website to find out the precise procedure for your model Mac (it isn't just a case of pressing the button... you have to do some preparation first and will also have to reset some settings afterwards).

Dr. Smoke · Sep 30, 2004, 01:38 PM

Hi, genuine.

I agree with JKT's suggestion that a PMU reset may restore the function of your built-in FireWire ports.

I also recommend you think about getting an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for your desktop Macs. I recommend units from APC. Their site also has tools for selecting the correct UPS for your Mac, display, etc. A good UPS, such as those from APC, also provides surge protection.

You would want to connect your FireWire drives that use wall-socket power to the UPS as well. Losing power on a FireWire drive can sometimes have the same effect as unplugging the drive before ejecting it: the directory or partition map can become corrupted. Tools like Disk Warrior can rebuild the directory in such cases, but if the partition map is damaged, you need to resort to data recovery tools, like ProSoft Data Rescue X, to recover the data from the drive.