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Panther Eats FireWire 800 Drives

Posted by pudge on from the oooo-scary-data-loss dept.

the_webmaestro writes: "Apple has announced that Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) may cause corruption with external FireWire 800 drives (anything with an Oxford 922 chip). Fortunately for me (unlike the poor souls who've already had problems), I guess I'm glad I ordered a lowly a 250GB Firewire 400/USB2.0 Combo Drive..." maccw reports that Firewire 400 customers are also reporting problems, as detailed from this Wired story.

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Re:2 for 2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just FYI -- the Panther issue just ruins data, not the hardware. It's not clear where the problem is but it seems to affect a lot more chipsets than Apple is acknowledging right now.

  2. Updates by dynayellow · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to this Apple page the problem is with the chipset.

    OWC has posted a firmware update for their drives, as has Wiebetech. It looks like the Wiebetech requires you to update the firmware in Jaguar, and then they don't recommend using it IN Jaguar afterwards... Sheesh.

    1. Re:Updates by pjcreath · · Score: 3, Informative

      Note that while OWC's firmware update has only been tested with their drives, other people in the forums have successfully used it to update other vendors' drives using the Oxford chipset.

      Their updater will also tell you which chipset (911 or 922) your drive has and which firmware it's running. Note that some FW400 drives use the affected Oxford 922 chipset rather than the 911.

      As of this writing, nobody's quite sure yet whether Oxford 911 (FW400) chipsets are also affected. Some evidence indicates that they are, Official Statements to the contrary.

  3. APS Pyro Firewire drive enclosures? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have three different models of Pyro Firewire enclosures (3-port transparent, 2-port transparent, and an opaque model). None of them support large (>137 GB, >128 GiB) drives.

    I haven't purchased Panther yet (or is it pronounced "Pan-there"?) but this does recall a problem I had running Final Cut Pro under Mac OS X 10.1.x. It had the nasty habit of destroying the partition tables of random Firewire drives on launch, presumably in its attempts to find and communicate with Firewire video devices. Upgrading to Jag-wire resolved the problem.

    AFAIK, Apple never acknowledged there was a problem with FCP and 10.1.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  4. Re:Pudge's 250 gig FW drive by geekwagon · · Score: 2, Informative
    Sorry to reply to an offtopic post, but.. I have the same drive (it was the cheapest 250GB option when I bought it, I didn't buy it for the lights) :)

    The lights are neon, there's a red one and a blue one. No, you can't turn them off. The bridge chip seems to be a custom jobby as it gets reported as a WDC Firewire400/USB2.0 in system_profiler. It might be an Oxford but WDC has custom written the ROM to hide that fact, if so.