Nanc thanks for ur replay, i'll check for the firewire drives firmware update, but could it be that both the two drives need a firmware update? Ted thanks for ur replay, i hope both the firewire LaCie Porsche 250 and the SQP 160 have the Oxford chip set, btw your hypothesis that the two drives could send and demand data too fast for the card to handle seems to be a good one for me, but what can be done as a workaround for this issue? is there any software around that can slower the firewire drives data transfer? Chris thanks for ur replay, 4 of the internal hds are connected to an Adaptec 3940UW and i thought it could be something wrong with it, but the fact that the transfer fails also with the 5th drive connected to the mac internal scsi chain makes me think different about it. i have a G4 connected to the 9600 through ethernet and i also tried this operation from here with the result that both mac freezes. btw i can freely pass files to and from all of the 9600 drives to the G4 hds. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1125 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/pipermail/x4u/attachments/20041214/7b34908e/attachment.bin