Firewire problems

[Francois Barbary]

Im pretty sure that the disk usually dismount properly every time 
before this problem first started, because usually i leave the power on 
to the drive on all the time, when my cube goes to sleep the drive 
spins down, also when it's unmounted it spins down. so it used to be on 
always. also the drive is powered. (has plug for power and for 
fw)...fsck isn't the problem, i did check that, but forgot to 
mention... im thinking it's the drive itself...
what is an RMA?
im not sure if i have a warranty, (no idea where the receipt is but ill 
look.)
i will try my drive on another computer to see how she works. if it's 
all good im going to back it up then take it to a shop. along with my 
cube, and take my monitor to get fixed aswell (monitor bezel button 
randomly goes off)

shit.... if only i didn't have to pay tuition this month too...
Francois
ps thanks for the replies Erik, and Riba and to everyone else,
as always your help is much appreciated.

> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 07:48:25 +0100
> Subject: Re: [CUBE] Firewire problems
> From: Erik Ableson <eableson at mac.com>
> Message-Id: <2C7167F9-2C43-11D7-A266-003065C1AA78 at mac.com>
>
> On thing to check for is whether it was dismounted properly.  If it
> wasn't then you will be waiting on the system to do it's file system
> check 'fsck' to verify that the drive is in good shape.  Once you've
> turned the drive on, check try typing top -u in the terminal and see if
> there's a process called fsck running. If there is, then let it run
> it's course and see what happens.
>
> Failing that, it may be time to get an RMA.  I had an external Maxtor
> 40 that had similar problems where it would work some of the time and
> not others with no rhyme nor reason to the pattern.  Finally gave up
> and had them replace it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Erik
>
> On Monday, January 20, 2003, at 07:30 AM, Francois Barbary wrote:
>
>> i have a fw hd it's a 60 gb maxtor 5600 rpm (ithink) it a very quite
>> model. just 1 year old.
>> but the problem isn't really the drive... when i flick my switch to
>> turn the drive on it doesn't ... at least not right away like it used
>> to (even a 5 second wait is normal) but now itls minutes. sometimes up
>> to 10!  once it spins up and tries to mount (i hear r/w noise) it
>> momentarily spins down then back up! and then tries again (same
>> pattern of r/w noise) sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. when it
>> does mount it's only usable for about 10 mins. then it spontaneously
>> spins down and back up again but this time it's unmountable. it won't
>> even recognize that its on (lookin in terminal)
>
>
>
> Message-Id: <200301201215.h0KCF7607944 at ls401.hinet.hr>
> From: Riba <riba at hi.hinet.hr>
> Subject: Re: [CUBE] Firewire problems
> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 13:15:08 MEST
>
> Does it have it's own power supply, or is it bus powered? It sounds 
> like a
> power supply problem. Also, it can be thta the motor that spins the 
> platters in
> the HD itself is starting to give up. And now that someone mentioned 
> it, I
> think I have read somewhere about the problems with the external 
> maxtor drives,
> try to search around, there might be some kind of fix or update 
> available.
>
> BTW reading about a lot of FW/USB problems various people have 
> reported, I feel
> compelled to say that my Cube is running perfectly! :) Just to drop in 
> some
> good
> news.