[NewOldbie]

I tried to do a search but didn't find the right messages.

I remember a few guys reporting Panther nuked their firewire drives. Has this been addressed/fixed? The last I heard some people had no problems when they disconnected their FW drives while installing Panther. It also seemed someone else got nuked when they plugged in their FW after installing Panther.

I can't risk having my backup drives nuked.

Please update.

[voodoo]

Fixed in 10.3.1 AFAIK.

[CaseCom]

It's fixed with 10.3.1, but that's in combination with a firmware update for the drive; updates are available from most major manufacturers.

LaCie
OWC

MacFixIt has a pretty good overview on the issue:
Mac OS X 10.3: The FireWire Debacle

Although the MacFixIt piece indulges in a lot of speculation about this issue affecting FW400 drives, it's been confirmed (by Apple, Oxford Semi and various drive manufacturers) as affecting only FW800 drives.

[Spheric Harlot]

Unfortunately, that is bullshit.

My friend's G4 iBook (10.3.1) is not seeing ANY Firewire hard drives (FW 400). That includes LaCie d2 drives and my iPod.

That is, the System Profiler sees them, but Disk Utility doesn't, nor does the Finder, nor any other program.

His Firewire audio interfaces work perfectly, as does Target disk mode.

Also, all of these drives work just fine on his 667MHz tiBook, also running 10.3.1.

Firewire 400 IS a problem in Panther, and it is NOT fixed.

-s*

[barbarian]

Neither my firewire 400 or firewire 800 drives show up in Disk Utility although both work perfectly well in the finder.

[jasong]

No Firewire 400 problems here, using 3 different firewire drives and 1 iPod.

No data corruption, no mounting/unmounting issues, no performance issues. If Firewire 400 is an issue under Panther, I wish you keep quiet about it so my Mac doesn't hear about it

-- Jason

[whop]

i have no problems here either, using a fantom external hd via firewire, works great.

[NewOldbie]

Hmmmm, so is there a workaround for this problem? (If I install and it eats my drive, can I reformat, go back to 10.2.8?)

Going to go read the links.

I guess for now I'll sit on it until things are sorted out.

[CaseCom]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Unfortunately, that is bullshit.

My friend's G4 iBook (10.3.1) is not seeing ANY Firewire hard drives (FW 400). That includes LaCie d2 drives and my iPod.

That is, the System Profiler sees them, but Disk Utility doesn't, nor does the Finder, nor any other program.

His Firewire audio interfaces work perfectly, as does Target disk mode.

Also, all of these drives work just fine on his 667MHz tiBook, also running 10.3.1.

Firewire 400 IS a problem in Panther, and it is NOT fixed.

-s*

The specific problem we were talking about is where the drive is trashed because its directory is overwritten by zeroes. What the problem is with your friend's iBook I don't know, but it sounds like the FW drive itself is undamaged.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by CaseCom:
The specific problem we were talking about is where the drive is trashed because its directory is overwritten by zeroes. What the problem is with your friend's iBook I don't know, but it sounds like the FW drive itself is undamaged.

There is no "specific problem" with Firewire in Panther.

There was the firmware issue affecting certain Firewire 800 drives.

There are apparently SEVERAL other issues affecting Firewire 400 drives, and there has been a lengthy thread discussing them in this forum already.

All of these issues save the firmware/FW800 one appear unresolved at this time.

-s*

[sovereign]

So, if one were in the market for an external HD at this time, would it not make the best sense to go with a FW800 enclosure since there is a firmware update that specifically addresses a known problem?