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gabber · Oct 28, 2003, 07:10 PM

this is what terminal looks like when I type df

Last login: Tue Oct 28 14:59:47 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[s-Computer:~] brewmast% df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s5 58598312 26612184 31474128 46% /
devfs 181 181 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
<volfs> 1024 1024 0 100% /.vol
automount -nsl [494] 0 0 0 100% /Network
automount -fstab [497] 0 0 0 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [497] 0 0 0 100% /automount/static

which is my 120g fw hd???
or is it not showing up?

SMacTech · 07:34 PM

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Well, one has to wonder. Of course, if you recall, Panther builds in the 50-ish range couldn't be installed on firewire drives due to bugs with the installer and firewire... Makes you wonder.

It does make me wonder as well. I tested Panther since July, all with FW external drives, all LaCie.
There must be specific drives models that are failing. Why would one brand work flawlessly, and another fail?

SMacTech · Oct 28, 2003, 08:04 PM

Originally posted by gabber:
this is what terminal looks like when I type df

<snip>
which is my 120g fw hd???
or is it not showing up?

They are not even showing up. My externals show up after the automount info.
The 867x is my internal IDE drive and x2 is the second partition on an external. x1 is the name of the boot partition on an external and doesn't show using df command with its name but just /

/dev/disk0s9 152905216 91741480 60651736 60% /
devfs 197 197 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
<volfs> 1024 1024 0 100% /.vol
/dev/disk1s5 120093120 87680008 32413112 73% /Volumes/867X
automount -nsl [287] 0 0 0 100% /Network
automount -fstab [292] 0 0 0 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [292] 0 0 0 100% /automount/static
/dev/disk0s10 167238416 111049288 56189128 66% /Volumes/x2
/dev/disk2s2 206768 107560 99208 52% /Volumes/iDisk

gabber · Oct 28, 2003, 08:54 PM

any other ideas? I tried data rescue 10.3, hoping for improvements but it didn't even see the drive and 10.2 did...Data Rescue SUX! What do the pros use??? Or is it just screwed? Should I give up yet?

zacharydz · Oct 28, 2003, 11:40 PM

I left my FW harddrive (generic case with Oxford 911 and WD 80 GB HD) disconnected when I installed Panther and it now shows up on the desktop and I have no problems with it.

malvolio · Oct 29, 2003, 01:21 AM

Originally posted by memento:
It can't be a problem for all FW drives. I had 3 connected when I upgraded and had no problem. I guess I got lucky somehow.

I also have a connected-while-installing Firewire drive that is in perfect health. It's a Macally enclosure, Oxford 911 chipset, with a Maxtor hard drive in it.
In my case, Panther was actually installed on the Firewire drive before I installed it on my internal hard drive (being cautious

).
I wonder if that could have been a protecting factor.

Sam Venning · Oct 29, 2003, 01:43 AM

I tried taking the HDD out of the Firewire 800 case and putting it in a G4 450MHz as a slave device. Disk Utility sees the HDD (hardware) but doens't list a Partition Map... I fear Mac OS 10.3 destroyed the Partition Map on the drive. I really need the data on that drive. I'll be really, REALLY angry if Mac OS 10.3 is responsible for this.

The drive has performed well for several months. Under Mac OS 10.2 I checked it regularly using DiskWarrior 3.0 - no problem until after Mac OS 10.3 install (and it wasn't connected *during* the installation).

I'll sit tight for a few days to see if a fix turns up... does anyone know of a utility that might get around a missing Partition Map on a drive?

daveinlondon · Oct 29, 2003, 06:46 AM

My 80 GB Maxtor firewire drive has also been toasted. Wasn't plugged in during install, and mounted correctly under panther the first time. This drive was partitioned into two as well, so I agree that partition corruption could be whats causing this - would make sense that that is why none of the disc utilities can read the data. I wish I had waited until 10.3.1 and would recommend anyone with a firewire hard-drive avoid Panther for now. I may have lost a lot of DV footage.

gabber · Oct 29, 2003, 04:08 PM

Found this on macfixit fir those who haven't...

FireWire drive issues We previously covered reports of FireWire drives becoming inoperable after installing Panther. We have received a good number of similar reports, and the issue is being discussed in numerous places around the Web, including a lengthy message thread in Apple's discussion forums.

After examining these discussions and reports, it appears that there is more than one issue with FireWire-related drives. Some people are experiencing FireWire drive issues, both minor and major, that seem to be unrelated to this issue. Most of these have been reparable using utilities such as Alsoft's DiskWarrior and/or Apple's Disk Utility.

On the other hand, we have received numerous messages -- and the Apple forum thread referenced above is full of similar posts -- describing a particular situation in which the affected FireWire drive incurs severe directory damage. It will no longer mount or function on any computer, regardless of the operating system (OS 9, Jaguar, Panther, etc.), and Utilities such as DiskWarrior cannot rebuild or salvage the disk's directory. The drive is not even recoverable by installing it internally into a Mac. In most of these cases the only recourse is to use Prosoft's Data Rescue X to attempt to recover files. Reformatting the drive allows it to be used again. One MacFixIt staffer was in fact affected by this issue and lost a FireWire drive.

The constant in this latter group of reports is that the user had installed Panther on an internal drive, and then restarted with FireWire drive(s) connected. The drive(s) worked fine in Panther before the restart; it was only after the restart that the drive became unusable. So far, the issue doesn't seem to be related to manufacturer, drive size, FireWire 400 vs. 800, or how the user installed Panther (clean vs. update vs. archive) -- a wide variety of such configurations have experienced the same problem. Apple is apparently asking users affected by the problem for more details on their systems, including machine model/configuration, peripherals, and the FireWire bridge chipsets used in their FireWire drive enclosures. One reader speculated that the issue may be related to Apple's iSight, which was implicated in FireWire problems soon after its release. However, we haven't confirmed that an iSight was present with all of the reported drive failures (although our system did indeed have an iSight attached at the time). As we get more information about this issue, we'll pass it on immediately.

To be clear, this problem isn't happening to every Panther user with an external FireWire drive. However, until more information on the exact combination of factors that contributes to this issue is discovered, if you have Panther installed on your internal drive, and have one or more external Firewire hard drives connected to your Mac, we recommend unmounting and disconnecting FireWire drives before shutting down or restarting. This may be a hassle, but it seems a prudent course of action to take until Apple is able to identify the precise cause. (It appears as though reconnecting your FireWire drives after startup is safe, as we have no reports of drives being damaged at that time.)

Thats quite a BUG...

gabber · Oct 29, 2003, 05:28 PM

.. does anyone know of a utility that might get around a missing Partition Map on a drive?

ANYBODY??? Theres got to be one? Right? Lets hope...because nothing else has helped what so ever!

kovacs · Oct 29, 2003, 06:14 PM

This is the link for the message thread in Apple's discussion forums.

Apple is apparently asking all affected users for system info, type of drive, type of mac, ...

Glock21 · Oct 29, 2003, 09:21 PM

This issue affects many people who upgraded to Panther and later found that after restarting with a FireWire drive connected that it no longer had a recognized format or any data whatsoever. The apple discussion for this currently has some apparently successful attempts to recover the lost data that in this situation is not gone, just inaccessible: http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]%0A

If you are having this problem I would strongly recommend reading through this list before attempting any data recovery that may be incompatible with Panther or that could put critical data at risk of being overwritten or otherwise lost permanently.

-An Apple Technician

gabber · 01:23 AM

I've read that apple thread and I've posted my problem, but there are NO SOLUTIONS to the real problem that people are have with partitions being corrupt in that thread, and if your an apple tech, why aren't you posting a solution here instead of just a link to everyones complaints??? Its will great hearing about everyone else's problems, but we should be talking solutions.

How about a solution to repair the partitions....

gabber · Oct 30, 2003, 01:17 AM

DATA RESCUE BLOWS

mkldev · Oct 30, 2003, 02:34 AM

Originally posted by diamondsw:
In my case fsck said I had a corrupt superblock (incorrect magic number). However, I still managed to salvage the files. So give it a shot. I'll say up front that I think it's unlikely to work, but you have nothing to lose and just might get your data back.

That's actually normal. You need to run fsck_hfs to check an hfs volume. The standard fsck (in Mac OS X, anyway) only knows how to deal with FFS (UFS) volumes. Well, that's not quite true. If you are in single-user mode, it is true. If you're in a terminal window, it talks to disk arbitration and figures out the volume type and runs the correct utility. *sigh*

If the partition table is being destroyed, you should be able to recover it with Norton by telling it to add either missing or custom disks, I forget which, and have it search the drive for partitions. I did this a couple of days ago when I got two drives mixed up and tried to recover files from my TiVo's old drive, but anyway... it should be able to find the partitions.

gabber · Oct 30, 2003, 02:41 AM

Norton didn't even see my drive so I couldn't tel it to do anything...I was using Norton Utilities 7 you?

Big Mac · Oct 30, 2003, 04:33 AM

I've never heard of fsck_hfs. I, and everyone else I know of, run fsck from the single user prompt.

daveinlondon · Oct 30, 2003, 05:55 AM

My problem is that when I now plug in the panther-hosed FW drive, fsck_hfs is invoked (I see this using top), and then hangs. So any disk utility never gets to even see the drive.
I cannot kill the fsck_hfs process using kill -9, the only way to stop it is to unplug the FW drive again, and then I see the "You have inserted a volume Max OS cannot read Initialize Ignore" message.
Does anyone know how I can either:
1) Temporarily disable fsck or fsck_hfs so I can mount the drive and use disc utilities
2) Cancel the fsck_hfs process so I can do the same.

Its a vicious circle - First Mac OSX 10.3 destroys your partition table, then its OWN file check program hangs and prevents 3rd party apps from having a go at fixing the data.

I am at a loss and would welcome any and all advice here.

moowriece · Oct 30, 2003, 09:25 AM

This is what I get when looking up Console's log on NOT mounting my journaled FW drive.
Anyone got a clue???

===== Thu Oct 30 2003 ===== 14:21:57 Europe/Amsterdam =====
Oct 30 14:22:02 localhost kernel: com_maxtor_IOFWMaxtorPowSec0E overriding init
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost kernel: jnl: replay_journal: from: 4418560 to: 4443136 (joffset 0x4c7000)
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost kernel: jnl: replay_journal: bad block list header @ 0x43ac00 (checksum 0x994772a6 != 0x53e006d0)
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost kernel: jnl: journal_open: Error replaying the journal!
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost kernel: hfs: early jnl init: failed to open/create the journal (retval 0).
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost diskarbitrationd[90]: unable to mount /dev/disk1s3 (status code 0x00000001).
Oct 30 14:22:03 localhost diskarbitrationd[90]: disk1s3 hfs CCE15D45-F274-309B-80BA-DE52D7D2A3D0 Maxie [not mounted]
Oct 30 14:22:14 localhost /usr/libexec/fix_prebinding: fix_prebinding quitting for now.

malvolio · Oct 30, 2003, 11:36 AM

A couple of comments:
I recall reading that the "fsck" command, at least in Jaguar, actually invoked fsck_hfs. Makes sense, since it worked on my HFS+ boot drive.
To run fsck on a journaled volume, you need to add the "-f" flag.
I wonder if it is possible to use safe-boot (Shift key) to prevent fsck_hfs from running when trying to mount a Firewire drive. Anybody know?

cchobo · Oct 30, 2003, 06:19 PM

I had the same problem after having a crash installing the Security Update. My Lacie 500 gig FW drive and iPod were no longer recognized (in addition to losing all Safari bookmarks, mailboxes in Mail, and all personal settings. Subsequent re-installs of Panther, first using Archive and Install and then Erase and Install did nothing to help with FW recognition.

Apple support had me reboot to console and dictated firmware resets to me and the problem was solved. There were several commands and I didn't transcribe them so I'm sorry I can't give the specifics.

No problems since wasting 24 hours or so, but the guy at Apple support said that all external drives should be ejected and disconnected for Security or OS updates!! Has this ever been recommended formally???

@#$!$##^!$%^$^@$%

cc

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 30, 2003, 06:51 PM

Apparently some folks missed the warning in the Panther installer that said:

"System installation/upgrading requires disconnecting all external FW drives."

Oh, wait, that was a prophetic dream about 10.3.1. Sorry.

phantomo · Oct 30, 2003, 11:10 PM

Could this be it for the FW800 users? http://www.apple.com/macosx/firewire...almessage.html

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 30, 2003, 11:45 PM

And how shall we know if we have firmware 1.02?

"Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Apple is working with Oxford Semiconductor and affected drive manufacturers to resolve this issue which resides in the Oxford 922 chip-set." �Apple

phantomo · Oct 30, 2003, 11:57 PM

I don't have my PB with me, have you tried System Profiler? Then again, you don't want to plug in the external drive if unsure because of what Apple said.

t_hah · Oct 31, 2003, 12:06 AM

Can someone explain how can one tell what type of chipset the external drive has. Thanks,

t

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 31, 2003, 12:10 AM

That's a good thought (and good warning).

In Jaguar, at least, sytem profiler doesn't give firmware info. Just Device serial#, revision, and model#.

[ I'll not be upgrading to Panther till I know that it's safe for my FW drives & can network satisfactorily ;( ]

t_hah · Oct 31, 2003, 12:18 AM

Originally posted by t_hah:
Can someone explain how can one tell what type of chipset the external drive has. Thanks,

t

I found it!

In the Terminal just type the following:

system_profiler

if you would like to save it to your Desktop:

system_profiler > ~/Desktop/output.txt

t

ryarber · Oct 31, 2003, 03:14 AM

My problem:

I have a LaCie external FW800 drive that contains all my iMovie files that I've been working on for months. After installing panther, I can see the drive just fine, but when I try to open one of the movie files that I have been working on, it tells me that the file is unreadable. It also trashed the quicktime file that was there showing all the work that I'd done and replaced it with an empty quicktime file. Please help Apple.

I need to connect it to a mac running Jaguar to see if the data is still readable. If anyone has a similar problem, can you tell me if there is hope that my file is still readable?

Before I found out about this problem, I used disk warrior to repair the volume. Had to use another FW 400 drive to install Jaguar on so that I could run disk warrior and then I booted back into Panther to see if it helped. Still couldn't open the file. Guess I'll just let my FW drive sit for a while until I find out if there is hope of recovering these files.

barbarian · Oct 31, 2003, 03:22 AM

Your data is on the drive but neither diskwarrior nor norton can get at it...

The only solution I know of is Data Rescue... which can grab all your data and save it somewhere else (run data rescue from jag).

Simon · Oct 31, 2003, 05:10 AM

OK, there seems to be some more hard info on this problem.

MacNN put it on their page today.

Apple has a very short comment on this page.

LaCie offers some info on their investigations.

According to LaCie, people using their external FW drives are only in trouble if it's a FW800 drive. So anybody using a d2 FW400 HD should be OK.

But, they also claim that regardless of the FW800 drive being plugged in or not during Panther install, chances are you will run into problems sometime. Therefore, they advise people to unplug their FW800 drives and NOT use them with Panther AT ALL.

I will proceed with the Panther install now, since my LaCie is a 120GB d2 FW400 model. I expect it to work flawlessly, but just to be safe, I will back it up before. If it get's hosed after all, I am going to be very very pissed with LaCie.

Macpilot · Oct 31, 2003, 10:56 AM

As far as I know, you should NEVER leave a hard drive mounted, powered, connected, etc to your Mac when shutting down or restarting or starting up.

This is the way the iPod works as well. I backed up my whole machine under Jaguar and then did a format/write zeros/clean install of Panther. I never thought to leave my Firewire 800 drive attached to my Powerbook when doing my install of Panther. And my drive is fine.

I even unhooked my USB mouse when I installed Panther as a precaution.

My printers work fine and I have had no data loss, just minor Panther bugs that everyone is reporting.

Are there cases of people losing data on these drives who have followed these precautions?

djjava · Oct 31, 2003, 11:14 AM

I installed Panther (clean install) with my lacie d2 160gb plugged in (i was told it didn't matter).

When Panther was running, it found the drive fine.

After rebooting for security update, the drive was fine.

I have since unmounted and unplugged until this all blows over.

I guess I'm EXTREMELY lucky. I could have lost everything. And i'd be floating in the Charles River right now.

diamondsw · Oct 31, 2003, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by daveinlondon:
My problem is that when I now plug in the panther-hosed FW drive, fsck_hfs is invoked (I see this using top), and then hangs. So any disk utility never gets to even see the drive.
I cannot kill the fsck_hfs process using kill -9, the only way to stop it is to unplug the FW drive again, and then I see the "You have inserted a volume Max OS cannot read Initialize Ignore" message.
Does anyone know how I can either:
1) Temporarily disable fsck or fsck_hfs so I can mount the drive and use disc utilities
2) Cancel the fsck_hfs process so I can do the same.

Its a vicious circle - First Mac OSX 10.3 destroys your partition table, then its OWN file check program hangs and prevents 3rd party apps from having a go at fixing the data.

I am at a loss and would welcome any and all advice here.

Well, this is dangerous and all, but could you move the "fsck_hfs" process somewhere outside the normal paths? That way when the system tries to run it, it will fail.

I take no responsibility, though, for what happens when it tries to do this and "fails". I certainly would not leave your system this way during boot!

diamondsw · Oct 31, 2003, 05:09 PM

Originally posted by Macpilot:
As far as I know, you should NEVER leave a hard drive mounted, powered, connected, etc to your Mac when shutting down or restarting or starting up.

Oh, come now. Other than this bug (which is clearly what it is - a bug that needs fixing), why should you disconnect everything on an ongoing basis like that? Seems like it would damage connectors over time and possibly stress the motherboard (constantly plugging and unplugging powered peripherals).

blade · Oct 31, 2003, 05:56 PM

I don't have Panther yet, but as soon as this issue is resolved to my satisfaction, I plan to get a copy.

My question is this:

I have an external Maxtor 80GB Firewire drive, and right now I can make enough room on my PowerMac to copy the contents of the FW drive to it.

If I install Panther and then reformat the FW drive in Panther, will I be immune to the problem ?

Is this a legitimate "hack" around the problem ?

gabber · 11:03 PM

Anybody have a solution to recovering the data on the damaged drive yet?

Big Mac · Nov 1, 2003, 04:22 AM

Originally posted by Macpilot:
As far as I know, you should NEVER leave a hard drive mounted, powered, connected, etc to your Mac when shutting down or restarting or starting up.

This is the way the iPod works as well. I backed up my whole machine under Jaguar and then did a format/write zeros/clean install of Panther. I never thought to leave my Firewire 800 drive attached to my Powerbook when doing my install of Panther. And my drive is fine.

I even unhooked my USB mouse when I installed Panther as a precaution.

My printers work fine and I have had no data loss, just minor Panther bugs that everyone is reporting.

Are there cases of people losing data on these drives who have followed these precautions?

Oh yeah, man, you're totally right. Whenever I use my Mac, I disconnect everything - just to play it safe. I heard that Panther can damage your monitor - so I've chosen to disconnect it before I proceed with an installation.

Your comment is just plain silly. If we can't keep our firewire drives plugged in and powered up during the booting process for fear of data loss, then we may as well go back to SCSI. Firewire drives aren't supposed to be that fragile. There is a specific bug in Panther that is causing this to happen, something Apple is apparently loathe to admit. They'd rather put the blame on Oxford, and that would work except for the fact that Jaguar had no trouble with these drives. Apple's trying to cover their rear, and it's really a poor PR move, IMO.

gabber · Nov 2, 2003, 08:31 PM

Can't someone make a proper utility to recover or fix the firewire hd's that got screwed up???

Macpilot · Nov 2, 2003, 09:04 PM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Big Mac:
[B]Oh yeah, man, you're totally right. Whenever I use my Mac, I disconnect everything - just to play it safe. I heard that Panther can damage your monitor - so I've chosen to disconnect it before I proceed with an installation.

Your comment is just plain silly.

Whatever. I hope you don't think I meant disconnect the monitors too! How the hell would you monitor the installation process? By the way, if your took the time to see my signature, I have a Powerbook and therefore could not disconnect the monitor if I tried!

You might think it is silly, but it is a precaution that is not inconvenient when installing a major upgrade to the OS, which happens, ONCE A YEAR. How long does it take to reach to the back of your Mac, unhook a couple of cables? A minute? Get over it.

You must have lost some data. Sorry.

Palafo · Nov 3, 2003, 01:12 AM

Yeah, I'd love to unplug on the fly... but I'd settle for unmounting my firewire drive w/o having to give the administrator password. I only have one account on the computer, and can't figure out what I did to require the password every time. It wasn't like that until today. Weird.

There is probably some obvious explanation but I can't see it...

Big Mac · Nov 5, 2003, 04:46 AM

(I don't want to support the establishment of redundant threads on this topic when we already had a perfectly fine one; that's why I'm bringing it back.)

I just got Panther in the mail and while I do want to install it, the firewire bug scares me. The only firewire drive I have is an iPod, and it doesn't use the 922 chipset. iPods shouldn't be affected, according to what Apple is saying about the issue, yet I have heard that they've been wiped too. Thoughts?

gabber · Nov 7, 2003, 02:07 AM

Just don't have your ipod connected while installing or restarting or shuting down...which has been repeated multiple times. The real reason for this thread was to find a solution to recovering data corrupted by Panther...Still no good suggestions. BUMMER.

geekwagon · Nov 7, 2003, 05:02 AM

Originally posted by gabber:
Just don't have your ipod connected while installing or restarting or shuting down...which has been repeated multiple times. The real reason for this thread was to find a solution to recovering data corrupted by Panther...Still no good suggestions. BUMMER.

Writing a program that is capable of restoring data from a drive with a lost partition table is no easy task. Certainly not on the same level as making a backup program or an image viewer. Because the drive is damaged, normal API calls aren't going to do you any good, so you would have to have a deep understanding of how the filesystem does things (which is documented, but I doubt acurately enough to truly understand how it is used in the latest version..)

That said, there was a utility posted in this thread that has helped people, Data Recovery X. Other than that, unless Apple decides to devote a couple of their FS engineers for a couple of weeks to try to pop something out, I doubt anyone else is going to bother to create a utility that will only help a few hundred people who lost data during the small window between Panther's release and when the problem was fixed by Oxford.

As for the iPod, I have rebooted different machines with both a 2g and a 3g iPod attached and never had a problem. I also have a WDC branded FW drive that has never had a problem after multiple reboots. I really don't think the iPod is susceptible to this problem.

Big Mac · Nov 8, 2003, 04:50 AM

Thank you, geekwagon, for another insightful post - much appreciated.

theolein · Nov 8, 2003, 09:05 AM

I bought Panther a week ago on the same day I bought a Firewire400 momobay drive (looks damn cool btw), and after having read all these comments I think I'm going to wait with the Panther install until Apple releases a definitive fix in the from of a 10.3.x upgrade. In the mean time I'm going to burn all my data to CD's so that it won't get lost in the event of a calamity.

I was one of the people that stated that I was going to wait a while in the "Upgrade now or later" thread and I'm glad I was a wise enough this time around to not rush in where angels fear to tread. This isn't the first time that Apple has released some incredibly bad update that destroys data (anyone remember the iTunes update a couple of years ago?).

On a professional level I find it appalling that Apple's QA let a bug as major as this get through, and that for a number of reasons: Firstly, can you imagine what a bug like this would do to design bureaus that keep their images etc on external firewire drives? It could cost them their business. Secondly, I am amazed that Apple didn't do extensive testing with many external firewire drives prior to release. The ease of use of firewire on the Mac is a major selling point for all the varied drive manufacturers and they are extremely popular. It's not as if it's an obscure technology that is only used by a small number of users. Thirdly, a bug like this detracts from the attractiveness of OSX as a platform "where it just works" and users of Windows XP can rightfully point out that Microsoft is not the only company that releases buggy updates.

Apple has a hardware compatibility lab and would be well advised to start a "certified for Mac OSX" programme as Microsoft does in order to avoid problems like this in the future. The marketshare is simply too small to allow blunders like this to get through. The PC news media will rip Apple to shreds for probelms like this.

SMacTech · Nov 8, 2003, 10:09 AM

Originally posted by theolein:
On a professional level I find it appalling that Apple's QA let a bug as major as this get through, and that for a number of reasons: Firstly, can you imagine what a bug like this would do to design bureaus that keep their images etc on external firewire drives? It could cost them their business.

If a design bureau went out of business because of a drive failure, something is wrong with the person in charge of their computers.
Apple did screw up, bad. I wonder though, why didn't any of this occur or was reported with all of the pirating of Panther and ADC members.

Big Mac · Nov 9, 2003, 02:54 AM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
If a design bureau went out of business because of a drive failure, something is wrong with the person in charge of their computers.
Apple did screw up, bad. I wonder though, why didn't any of this occur or was reported with all of the pirating of Panther and ADC members.

Indeed that is the $64,000 question. According to some reports, the issue wasn't present in previous builds (or was corrected by them) but cropped back up in the GM. It's strange, though, that no one said anything about it despite the pirating of the GM. I really have no plausible explanation for it, although maybe people were discouraged from talking about dataloss because of the denouncement they would receive on boards such as these. After experiences with the PPP bug and the iTunes installer oversight, I don't think it's wise to place that much confidence in Apple's QA.

Southpawz · Nov 11, 2003, 12:19 PM

I have an AcomData 80GB external Firewire/USB combo drive.

It was shut off when I installed Panther. Later, I turned it on and was able to read it. I always only turn it on for a brief period of time, move data over to it (or from it) and then unmount it by ejecting it and turn off the drive.

I downloaded 10.3.1 and other various updates over the past several weeks.

Last night, I turned on my drive to use it and it just never showed up. Not at all. I don't know much about how to "see" it other than seeing it on the Desktop and in the Finder.

How do I find out what chipset is in it if I can't see it on the desktop? Does anyone know if this is one of the drives affected by all this? Is my drive ruined for good? I bought this drive to back up my data prior to my Panther install so it's still relatively new. I'd hate to have lost $130.

Thank you.

- - e r i k - - · Nov 11, 2003, 12:38 PM

I lost all data on my FW800 LaCie 200 GB. I could not apply the firmware patch from LaCie it at work due to only having FW400 ports. Coming home on Panther, boom, the drive is gone. Real nice.

Lost days of DV-work and a lot of movies.