[rkv]

It's not a case of theft or magic, I can physically see them. However, Mac OS X 10.6.1 will not mount them. DiskUtility does not even see the drive. The firewire section of System Profiler seems to be reporting them as an "Unknown Device".

All of the drives were used last wthin the past two weeks. They were not connected to my MacPro since then. In case one is wondering about lightning bolts or the like three of the drives in question had no power or fire wire connections at all. They were sitting on a shelf.

All six of the disks were bought at various times between two to five years ago, but they are of the same type Lacie Big Disk Triple Interface 500gb or 600gb variety. My MacPro continues to be able to access three Lacie d2 Quadra and three Seagate Freeagent drives so I believe the MacPro's firewire capabilities are working. I have also tried the drives using their firewire 800, 400, and USB interfaces. I've also tried the drives separately with no other firewire devices mounted. And lastly, I have tried them on a Powerbook G4 under Mac OS X 10.5.7. I've also swapped power supplies for the drives.

If this were one drive, I would suspect hardware failure. However, one would hope it is a low probability event for six drives to fail simultaneously. Especially since they have not been used together in the same environment. They are for offline storage and I power up and mount them only as needed.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I haven't been buying Lacie since I switched to the Seagate Freeagent 1.5tb drives. I had problems with a couple of Lacie drives two years ago and decided to try something else.

[jonn804]

I upgraded my various Mac's to Snow Leopard and the LaCie hard drives (3 of them) all vanished. LaCie has only offed basic trouble shooting ideas. Currently I have 3 TB's of data on hard drives I can't see. I am considering downgrading at least one of my Mac's to Leopard to see if this resolves the problem.

[pra9ab0y]

Tried switching the cables or ports round? That fixes most of my issues.

[mkerr64]

my LaCie 1tb also died on me. i simply just transferred the drives to another case.

I just bought their NAS server, hopefully they have done something to prevent these problems from occuring

[CharlesS]

Crack the case open, take the drive out, get an external enclosure, and put the drive in that. You’ll probably get your data back, and it’ll probably work better than it did before. LaCie’s enclosures suck.

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Crack the case open, take the drive out, get an external enclosure, and put the drive in that. You’ll probably get your data back, and it’ll probably work better than it did before. LaCie’s enclosures suck.

Not necessarily, since LaCie are big on creating larger disks from two raided smaller ones. Most 500GB big Disks are in fact two 250GB drives. You can't mount these in new enclosures since the data is spread over both drives and needs the raid software built into the drive enclosure to work. This is most likely the problem, incompatibility between your Mac and the drive interface.

Try to find another mac, mount the drive and copy the data off onto a reliable make of drive that uses a single disk. Repeat after me (and every other LaCie user in the past five years) "I will never buy LaCie again... I will never..."

[mkerr64]

Sure we have our rough times with LaCie, i still wouldn't say its that bad of a product.

[Eug]

See my post here.

It's basically an issue with 10.6's Firewire kernel extension. If you swap in the Firewire kernel extention from 10.5.8, the problem should go away.

I have the same problem with my external FW optical drive. I haven't tried this yet though, as I'm hoping Apple will fix the bug, and I only rarely use that drive anyway. However, I may try it just for fun.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Eug 

See my post here.

It's basically an issue with 10.6's Firewire kernel extension. If you swap in the Firewire kernel extention from 10.5.8, the problem should go away.

I have the same problem with my external FW optical drive. I haven't tried this yet though, as I'm hoping Apple will fix the bug, and I only rarely use that drive anyway. However, I may try it just for fun.

Confirmed. The fix works.

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by mkerr64 

Sure we have our rough times with LaCie, i still wouldn't say its that bad of a product.

I would.

[rkv]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Confirmed. The fix works.

How exactly do you swap 10.5.8's fireware kernal extension.

Also, note I did try reading the disks on a Powerbook G4 running 10.5.7 with no luck.

[Eug]

Dunno why those drives weren't seen on the PowerBook in 10.5. My issue was strictly a 10.6 issue. The drive worked fine on 10.5.8, so maybe your issue is somewhat different.

Anyways, what I did is exactly what was recommended in that Apple Discussions forum post to get that drive back under 10.6.

1. Backed up then deleted that kext in 10.6.
2. Took the same kext from 10.5.8 and put it in the same spot in 10.6.
3. Repaired permissions.
4. Rebooted.
5. There is no step 5.

P.S. I later reinstalled the 10.6 kext with the same procedure and the drive disappeared again.

[jonn804]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Dunno why those drives weren't seen on the PowerBook in 10.5. My issue was strictly a 10.6 issue. The drive worked fine on 10.5.8, so maybe your issue is somewhat different.

Anyways, what I did is exactly what was recommended in that Apple Discussions forum post to get that drive back under 10.6.

1. Backed up then deleted that kext in 10.6.
2. Took the same kext from 10.5.8 and put it in the same spot in 10.6.
3. Repaired permissions.
4. Rebooted.
5. There is no step 5.

P.S. I later reinstalled the 10.6 kext with the same procedure and the drive disappeared again.

This sounds like it will resolve my issue. I have searched the Apple site for the instructions but do not see them. Could you please provide the link. Many thanks in advance.

[Eug]

Be aware this is a hack, not an Apple-supported solution.

The instructions are in my post in the other thread.