Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 29, 2003 5:17 PM |
nick.ashton |
This isn't directly related to XPF but is something that any of us hoping to run Panther could encounter. There are a large number of credible reports on the Apple discussion forums and on MacFixit which highlight a potential problem when using external FireWire drives on a machine running 10.3 Panther. It seems that doing a reboot (soft restart) while running Panther with an external FireWire disk connected can result in the FW drive being corrupted to the extent that none of its contents may be recoverable. The problem does not affect all FW drives but neither is it restricted to any particular make/model of drive nor to any particular Mac. The symptoms are that after the restart 10.3 reports that the FW drive has no mountable partitions and asks you to "eject, initialize or ignore" Typically the drive is not repairable by Disk Utility, Disk Warrior or Norton. The only utility that has been reported to have even limited success at recovering files is Prosoft's Data Rescue X. Having said that, I have Panther installed on an external FW drive on my PB-G4 without any current problems. All the affected systems had Panther installed on the internal ATA disk. It seems likely that during the restart procedure the partition map of the FW drive is being corrupted. If you want to read more about the problem here is the thread on the Apple discussion forums "http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?13@@.599b4a59/84" I'm hoping this URL doesn't get garbled by the dodgy XPF forum software. |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 31, 2003 10:37 AM |
nick.ashton |
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OWC, LaCie and Wiebetech have all issued firmware updates for their FW800 drives which are intended to eliminate this problem. Check out the firmware on your FW drives before installing Panther. |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 30, 2003 7:15 PM |
nick.ashton |
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Here's the latest update on this problem from the MacMinute site : Apple on Thursday responded to concerns that Mac OS X 10.3 Panther disables external FireWire hard drives. "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 said in a statement provided to MacCentral. "Apple is working with Oxford Semiconductor and affected drive manufacturers to resolve this issue, which resides in the Oxford 922 chip-set. In the interim, Apple recommends that you do not use these drives." It's funny how this problem with the chipset never showed up under 10.2 |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 30, 2003 9:51 AM |
smurray11 |
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Yup, this exact problem happened to me over the weekend... drive got messed up as I was attempting to reboot to my cloned 10.2.8 system on the firewire from Panther... nothing (tried Drive 10, Norton's, Disk Utility) could fix it in OS X.... I had to boot into OS 9 off my other partition, and a combo Norton's/Disk First Aid got it back up and running. Thanks OS 9. So, yeah, drive carefully and back that **** up. :) |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 30, 2003 6:12 AM |
gregoryy |
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There are bugs with SCSI that weren't there before. Some are saying video/monitor problems should not be there either. And that Panther was "rushed" out the door, would have been better to have waited until the end of the year, and to wait for 10.3.1 at least. Apple used driver v. 1.1 of Adaptec 39160, when v. 1.2 which works and is needed, was posted 12/2002. So I can't see drives connected to 39160. Had to switch to using ATTO UL3S to install Panther. Then reinstall drivers etc. I thought after 10.2.8 they'd test a bit more. Seems like very little testing is being done, just "ooing and ahhing" the interface and stuff. |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 30, 2003 12:50 AM |
paul_findley |
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As a safety measure, I left 10.2.8 on the internal emac drive, and installed panther with archive and install on a cloned firewire drive (external). I've been running panther from the external drive since (haven't found much reason to go back to 10.2.8, because 10.3 is faster and more stable, and the firewire's Western Digital 200GB drive with 8MB buffer is faster). I will be VERY CAREFUL when I finally commit panther to the internal drive. In fact, after your warning, maybe I'll wait a while. Thanks! Only downside of staying with my present config is the extra fan noise of the firewire enclosure and the extra electricity (I would usually just turn the firewire on when editing/storing video). |
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RE: Beware testing FireWire Drives with Panther |
October, 29, 2003 9:18 PM |
powderhaus |
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$10 says that when I get panther and Firewire booting working with XPF I will be hit with that. |