[DavoMrMac]

OK, I searched for this but could find no answer.

I have an iMac, and two external hard drives daisy chained and connected to the firewire 800 port.

My Sony HDV camcorder connected to the firewire 400 port.

When I have finished capturing into Final Cut Express (under 10.5.x or 10.6.1), I turn off the camcorder... all is fine. However, when I pull the cable, the two hard drives unmount.

Is there a way of unmounting the camcorder, or a procedure in FCE to do this without causing this problem everytime. The problem is exaggerated by the fact that I use the hard drive to capture to and edit from, so I find myself having to permanently leave the camcorder connected.

[jmiddel]

Drag the camcorder's icon to the trash to eject it before turning it off. One should do this whenever disconnecting an external device. Or you can right click and eject, same thing.

[DavoMrMac]

Yes, I had thought of that. However, it does not appear on the desktop.

It is a Sony HDR-HC7 Mini HDV cassette based unit.

[jmiddel]

Do the 2 externals have their own power supply or do they get juice from the FW bus? I am thinking that maybe there is not enough power, and that when you disconnect the camcorder, it somehow affects the whole FW bus. Either a powered hub, or power directly to the drives might help, just a thought, can't promise anything

[DavoMrMac]

Hi again,

Thanks for your continuing help on this.
All the devices involved have their own power supplies.

[jmiddel]

I am kinda stumped. You can shut off the power to the cam, and everything is OK, but after you have shut it down, you disconnect the cable and the problem appears. So it is not the cam's fault this happens, it must have something to do with the FW bus. Once you turn it off, there should be no interactions between it and the computer. What do you have to do to remount the externals?

There is no AppleStore in Kent, I would call Apple support, and ask. I hope you have Applecare, it can save you a lot of money if there is a hardware problem!

[reader50]

Does it matter which end of the camcorder cable you disconnect? ie - I'm assuming you unplug the iMac side of the cable. If you unplug from the camcorder first, then unplug the (disconnected) cord from you iMac, does the problem still happen? If so, during which disconnect?

If you use your FW ports a lot, it is possible they have expanded a trifle and become a bit loose. Minor movement in the connectors when you pull the cable on the iMac side might momentarily interrupt the cable going to the hard drives. If this were the case, disconnecting the cable from the camcorder would work as expected, because the iMac ports would not experience any movement.

[DavoMrMac]

Thanks for all the advice.

I will contact Apple and ask (out of warranty though).

Basically I disconnect the camera end and leave the cable plugged into the port of my iMac, ready for next time. Even if I unplug whilst the iMac is sleeping, it doesn't wake up, but the problem of the two disconnected FW drives appears.

[jmiddel]

Based on reader50's post, how about trying a new cable? The fact that this happens even when the computer is sleeping suggests to me that this is hardware related.