Greetings to all,
This post is a continuation of an older post. (the forum wouldn't let me reply there)
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...es-on-leopard/
I thought I'd provide my two cents on this issue as it is similar to what I'm hearing here. For what it's worth.
Equipment: Dual 2.5, Power PC G5 with 8GB RAM.
Seagate 300 GB Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a)
and a Seagate FreeAgent 750 Firewire 400
My story starts with OS 10.4.9, Tiger, which by the way has been a solid OS all the way through the last couple years. This January however, the system kept locking up for no apparent reason. Kernel Panics as they are called, where you get the gray screen of death. So since I was suspicious of the internal HD and wanted to upgrade anyway, I purchased Leopard, and a 1TB hd (for $130 at best buys, couldn't believe it!) - installed and did a fresh install of the new OS on the new drive, keeping the old drive in tact so I could transfer the settings over.
Since the new install. I was surprised to find that the system still froze. So I started eliminating pieces in my trouble shooting effort. First I decided that just in case there was an issue with the other drive, I made a back up of it, and then erased that drive just in case there was something in that older drive, which seemed to help. Then I also made sure all the RAM checked out. Using a free app called Rember. (
http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/ ) - all checked out fine. Then I unplugged all the peripherals. I have a Keyspan USB hub, a wacom tablet, and two external drives that I use for backups. Primarily the Seagate 300. Though I use them individually.
After unplugging everything, I noticed the system ran much smoother. Except when I would wake it up after putting it to sleep. This seems to be another issue with Leopard that I've read other posts about. it seems to do much better on a shut down. Consistently, after waking up the system from being asleep, I'd say within 3 hours, it goes into a kernel panic for no apparent reason. I'm not doing anything processor intensive. When I boot up from a shut down, it seems to run fine for much longer.
After running Leopard for a couple weeks now, going through this process of narrowing down the offending panic. I'm pretty confident to say that there are two issues. One is the sleep issue. The other has something to do with the Firewire connection.
I've fortunately been able to get in more than several Time Machine backups on the Seagate 300. However, if I leave it plugged in, I get the frozen screen eventually. Where as if I leave it unplugged, there is no crash.
By the way, both of my external drive, I connect directly to the computer, not in a chain and only one at a time. And neither drive has any trouble mounting.
The Seagate 750 FreeAgent, I'm still trouble shooting with. I started a Time Machine back up on this drive, but it did not complete without freezing the entire system. So I'm not sure what's going on there. I'll have to try it in USB mode if another attempt also fails.
I have zapped the PRAM, and also reset the BUS by unplugging the CPU for 5 minutes, and then holding the power button for 10 seconds to hear the beep. I'm still in progress with this test because I need to plug the drive back in to see how it does. I have also run disk utility more than a few times on all my drives. And all check out fine.
The suggestion I read somewhere about the firewire BUS being handled differently in Leopard, seems to make sense to me.
I've been extremely frustrated with this, and had I known about the firewire issue, I probably would not have upgraded yet. It debilitating to my work to have my system be unstable. And Tiger was solid. I'm not liking Leopard so far. Even though Time Machine is awesome.
So for the moment, I'm just plugging in my drive when I need to run Time Machine, and shut it down rather than put it to sleep.
I'll post another comment here if I find out anything else. I hope there is a firmware update soon. It seems a lot of people are having similar issues.
good luck to you all.
I'm still a Mac fan. Couldn't live without it.
Top