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Panther Eats FireWire 800 Drives
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.
Geez, did the guys from LG get a new job already?
That's why I always make sure all my data is available in punch-card format before upgrading.
Didn't someone mention something like this in that Ars Technica forums' discussion about the "automatic defragmentation" in Panther a few days back?
Ah yeah, it's in there! Go to the discussion and search for Firewire. In short, the poster sees the automatic defragmentation very possibly being the root of the problem.
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.
Glad my iBook doesnt support FW 800... wait no I'm not glad, PLEASE SOMEONE BUY ME A POWERBOOK.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Hey Pudge, that WD enclosure (linked in article) looks pretty sweet. Is the bridge chip Oxford 911? What kind of lights are those inside the case? (LED? Neon?) Can you turn them off if you want?
a 250 GB firewire drive? just curious. how much did it cost you?
Sounds like a Godzilla-style movie.
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?
WTF, man?!?!
=^_^= P|-|33R |\/|3
If the guy bought it from the WD store for $429.99, that only confirms that Macophiles LOVE getting the retail shaft. This is a $230 drive plus $50 for a dual enclosure.
this is a funny story. I have a new asus motherboard with firewire built in. I was running windows (just to test the hardware, mind you..) and then finally got around to trying to install linux on a separate hard disk.
;)
linux (redhat 6.x and latest gentoo) and even freebsd refused to install! huh? never saw THAT happen before.
well, turns out that I had my firewire camera (not a real camera but a canopus firwire media bridge that looks like a FW camera) connected and all I can think of is that the funny asus bios considered THAT a 'disk' and when linux and bsd scanned the 'installable devices' via a probe, it found the camera device but wasn't smart enough to know it wasn't a disk/storage device. so the install hung hard.
removing the firewire cable allowed the installs to continue (all of them).
the very thought of linux or bsd trying to install itself on a VIDEO CAMERA just makes me laugh. imagine the design issues of that - when the system boots up, does it display titles on the video camera eyepiece? if it fscks, does it have to rewind the tape often? does it have the 1024 cylinder limit if you boot from mini-DV?
just kinda funny, I guess. the new motherboard bios' are trying to abstract the media type and say 'disks are disks, no matter if ide or scsi or firewire'. ha!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
First Mandrake 9.2 and LG CD-ROMS, now this. Is this something the hardware manufacturers are doing that violates the common standards (IDE, ATAPI, IEEE1394)? Or, is this software companies trying to squeeze out a little more performance by not adhering to a standard?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Not after the last fiasco. I can't understand Apple's warranty department. They're virtually no help
I have a G4 powermac, a 1.42GHz machine which worked well and for the most part kept me occupied and did the tasks I needed doing. The noise however, was something that's been driving me, my wife and my pets crazy. The dog wouldn't come in the same room as she's scared of the thing. She also attacks the hairdryer in the bathroom, and I think that's a subtle hint that the thing was too loud and what it sounded like.
Looking deeper into the machine I found a couple of fans that when running at a certain speed reached a phenomenal noise level. With the computer in its cabinet they were bad enough but I felt like I was near a jet taking off if I had the Mac up on my desk. I pulled those fans out and they looked like they could be replaced by standard, quieter fans. I took one from the last PC I'd built (yes I'm multiplatform) and it fit well, so a quick trip into town I bought a pair and installed those.
The G4 was fantastic! The reduction in noise was something I could immediately appreciate, but my happiness didn't last too long. Within half an hour the machine was locking up and crashing. I opened it once more to see I hadn't been a moron and done anything stupid, when I noticed the apple supplied heatsink was BURNING hot. I mean really hot, I couldn't bear to touch it more than momentarily. I never trusted that heatsink, the sheer bulk of it looked like it was made to be produced easily and not cool properly. I ditched that heatsink (after letting the machine cool down for an hour!) and replaced it with a Zalman flower. I'd never seen cooling like it could do, so it was the logical choice. The heatsink for the G4 attached differently, but it was easy enough to adapt the zalman with insulated wire tied underneath the CPU board.
This worked a little better and the powermac booted, and stayed working far longer. For about three days, and from then on it wouldn't boot. No chime, just fans spinning and no video. Even the hard drive barely ticked a couple of times. By now I was furious, my previous macs had given me little trouble but this one was a pain. I phoned the apple center nearest me, and as it was only a few months old I was assured everything should be covered by warranty. It turns out because I had MODIFIED the computer that my warranty was void. wtf? I added a superior cooling system to the machine, quietened it, IMPROVED it in every way, and they deny my claim? I was livid at the store manager, but couldn't get past his denseness. Know what else? Apple keep on record what you've done. I replaced the original loud fan, the original heatsink and tried once more, and again my claim was refused on the basis I'd done the damage myself.
I'm still a Mac user, but a very annoyed one still waiting on repairs to my G4 that I have to pay for myself, and that I consider are Apple's warranty responsibility that they've gotten out of having to pay for by some stupid clause. Read the fine print guys.
WTF? Do you really think a company is going to honor the warranty after you yanked out stock components and replaced them with 3rd party ones? I've never heard of any major computer manufactuer honoring a warranty after modifications like this. In fact, a lot of manufacturers won't honor a warranty if you put non-stock memory in by yourself. If you didn't like the sound of the computer, you should've taken it back... or at the very least, you should've restored your machine to the way it was before you ripped it apart and then asked for warranty service. Don't blame Apple for charging you. For all they know, you didn't properly ground yourself when making the mods and then you zapped the mobo or something like that.
It's not a lie, if you believe it.
The 18mb file-transfer troll has spent the last three days coming up with this shit, so you'd better pay attention.
FOAD
We use tons of firewires in our office - and I have been seeing a lot of failures on BIG (>200 gig) LaCie drives (mostly) - and these are running on Windows2000, and XP machines. Lost data, mount failures, eratic behaviour. I took one of these drives and hooked it to my PowerBook G4 and had a kernel panic... this is fully repeatable.
I was about to post about this very same discussion on ars tech.. Those are some smart foolios, been correct about a lot of things in the past.
I fear nothing but my government. Vote Libertarian.
I work at a small sound studio. We use macs for their stability and simplicity. I had been trying to figure out what to do with the 4 dead WD Caviar 30gig drives, 5 dead Maxtor 80 and 160 gig drives, and 4 dead Que! CD-RWs. They are all external firewire devices. After getting no where with Maxtor or Apple, and not being able to pinpoint the failure to a single G4 or circumstance, I took apart the damn things.
ALL the drives were still perfectly good. The firewire bridges were bad. ALL the drives were advertised as hot-swappable. Almost all of the brideges died during, or after a hot-swap procedure. Indigita, a bridge company, has been gracious enough to test some stuff for us.
I suspect that the problem isn't just with panther or bridge firmware. I think there is a problem with the mac firewire interface generally, expecially when hot swapping.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
That's nothing!
I eat Ultra320 SCSI drives for breakfast.
I love to sprinkle some pixie dust for added texture and flavor.
Mmm... platters...
And I get my daily requirement of Iron, too!
~Joe
This just goes to show the hideous complexity of all the myriad permutations of software, platforms, and peripherals that defines modern computing environments. All software for a mainstream platform is beta when it is first released because it is impossible for the maker to test every possible combination (or even most of the common ones). Even with lead user groups and the developer community testing the so-called "betas", there are always missed combinations of equipment. Only when millions of people try something do you see the real problems appear.
So don't buy new software the day it appears. Wait and see what problems it causes and then buy the x.x.1 update after a suitable wait to see if that's safe.
BTW, this rule applies to new pharmaceuticals. I'd recommend waiting at least 10 to 100 million doses and 5-20 years before taking any "new" medication unless it is a total blockbusting lifesaver.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Panther has managed not only to lose my iTunes Library and my iPhoto Library, but also their backups kept on -- you guessed it -- my external FireWire hard disk,"
I once reinstalled a Compaq server. I copied all data to the externally connected SCSI raid and I only wanted to reinstall WinNT on the 2 internal disks. I felt safe. How wrong I was...
Because the Compaq 'System erase' tool erases not only things like the date/time, internal disk, BIOS settings etc., but also partitions/disks on all connected SCSI controllers it can access without any special drivers (3rd party FC is thus safe). When the external RAIDs disks flashed up, I knew what happened.Moral of the story: have a backup in a safe place, not connected in a way like this. Especially if you actually care about the data.
this bug has me so pissed off. i lost all my work!@# argh!@#!@$
they knew about this bug in early betas but they didnt fix it.. wtf
Um . . . the drive is both Mac and Windows compatible.
I have an external FW800 drive case[..:.. example...], with a 120gb Seagate. Connected to a 1.25GHz G4.
For the record, I've had no issues with Panther and this external drive. I checked the firmware, and it was the suspect 1.02.
Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded and applied the firmware update from WeibeTECH, again, with no issues.
At an Apple store on release day, I nearly went against my better judgment and snapped up the not-ready-for-primetime Panther. I was backed up, after all, to my firewire drive... Then I thought, "Wtf, Zhe, you horn dog, do you want to pay to find bugs for Apple?"
Whew. Saved by a momentary flash of discipline. ;-)
The drive the author of the post cites IS one of the effected drives.
I did a lot of research the other night because I have panther and a western digital firewire 400 80gb. Turns out if your firewire drive is from western digital AND it's a combo USB/Firewire then you're using oxford 922. The drives that are just firewire 400 and no USB are oxford 911.
So don't plug that drive of yours into your mac until we see the WD patch.
Over at macfixit.com there are reports that it's not just the firewire 800 people that are being bit either. Turns out they've seen the same thing on firewire 400 drives too.
So even thought I'm on an oxford 911 drive, I'm not plugging the thing in until I get confirmation that I'm safe.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Steve Jobs eats out assholes...
big news day here on fagdot.
I have a first generation Quicksilver 867mhz and I am noticing massive IDE (Not Firewire connected) hard disk corruption problems with 10.3.
I first noticed it when Safari would lose all its preference settings and the Itunes Music Library file would corrupt itself.
I aso noticed that when downloading some apps like Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger they'd be corrupt the first time I downloaded them, and then I'd redownload them and they'd work the next time.
Today I did a large amount of ftping, and I was unarchiving and sifting through what I downloaded earlier, and it was viewable and all that. Now, I can't open these files, and when I open some of the text files I read earlier, they are filled with binary gibberish.
Today, I lost a lot of data... a lot.
Not...f'ing... good.
mazama at absent dot org
While not totally related to Firewire 800 not working. This is my Panther horror story.
Over the summer, I got a dev seed of Panther while it was still in beta. I decided rather than wiping out my existing partition on my Powerbook's hard drive. I would instead install it to my iPod. I installed it, ran great. Until that is, I went to listen to my music. All there according to iTunes but not according to my now dead iPod. It appears Panther overwrote the software on my iPod and the "secret" music partition. Everything is fixed now. (thank you iPod restore tool)
Having read much of the press coverage, the discussions in the forums and the statements from both Apple and the Oxford people, I feel it may be appropriate to note that it appears that Oxford is the one at fault here, not Apple. Oxford's press release complains that Apple changed something about the way the OS interacts with the drives, but there's no mention anywhere of Apple actually breaking out of the FW800 standard. This, paired with the fact that Apple released no bug fixes and it was Oxford that issued fixes, seems to point a pretty big finger at Oxford for relying on Apple's code's behavior and not the FW800 spec itself. Tsk tsk. Open standards are open for a reason, guys.
This page states:
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.
In the interim, Apple recommends that you do not use these drives. To stop using the drive, you should unmount or eject the disk drive before doing anything else. Please check this web page for further updates.
Update 11/4/2003:
Apple and Oxford Semiconductor have confirmed that firmware version 1.05 resolves the data loss issue experienced by some FW800 users. FireWire disk drive manufacturers have begun posting firmware updates:
Lacie
Macpower
Century Global
Other World Computing
Firewire Direct
Firewire Depot
Wiebetech
Ezquest
Glyph
Only use the updater provided by the maker of your drive and follow the installation instructions carefully. If your drive manufacturer is not listed, contact them for more information.
This message, third party links and related information are provided by Apple for information purposes only, without representation and warranty of any kind. Apple expressly disclaims any liability relating to the use of this message, third party links and related information. Any questions regarding third party support should be directed to the appropriate third party.