[1394] Re: Firewire Formatting Utilities

[DaleH]

>While we can't recommend any third party driver, we do recommend either
>using the Apple generic driver in 9.1 (if you do not need to partition a
>drive), or Disk Utility in OS X.
>
>FireWire Depot
>http://www.fwdepot.com

Thanks for the response.
I'm sitting in front of an 8600 with OS 9.1 running and Drive Setup 
(2.0.3) open to the drive selection window - but none of my Firewire 
drives are visible.
Now I'm sitting in front of a G4 with OS 9.2.2 running and Drive 
Setup (2.0.7) open - again none of the Firewire devices are shown.
Disk First Aid will allow me to test and erase these drives, but they 
are invisible to Drive Setup.
DaleH


>
>>  Back in the SCSI days before Apple's Drive Setup recognized 3rd party
>>  drives, I used FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit on everything that was
>>  external and SCSI.
>>
>>  Now I have Firewire drives from half a dozen sources asking me to to
>>  format with the distributor's tool of choice - Lacie Silverlining,
>>  Charismac Anubis Utility, APS PowerTools, Intech SpeedTools - each of
>>  which requires installing their own Firewire Support extension to
>>  allow formatting.
>>
>>  I'd like to be able to format all of my Firewire drives with one
>>  utility. Since FWB is slow on answering via email, I'd like some user
>>  feedback on whether other utilities might work on all Firewire/USB
>>  devices.
>>
>  > DaleH
>>


It is best to settle on a single FireWire driver for compatibility.

With OS 9.1 or higher you can use the generic FireWire driver that Apple
includes.  You can't partition a drive with it, only format a drive.

With OS X, Disk Utilities is the way to go.

With OS 9.0 or earlier you have to use a third party driver.

Mixing drivers and formatting drives with different utilities can cause
problems as not all third party drivers are compatible with each other and
you may experience read/write errors.

While we can't recommend any third party driver, we do recommend either
using the Apple generic driver in 9.1 (if you do not need to partition a
drive), or Disk Utility in OS X.

FireWire Depot
http://www.fwdepot.com