Did I kill it? (hard drive)

[landlox]

Hi -
I got a 200gb IDE hard drive last 'Black Friday' from Staples for $20. I stuck it in a FW enclosure and its been fine. I decided to travel with it for the first time. Didn't seem like a big deal, or am I wrong? Laptops travel.

I swadled it in my clothes inside my day pack & didn't suffer any jolts. Just a lazy subway trip (I got a seat) and a 100 mile Trailways ride with the pack under my seat. I got to my friend's house and plugged it into his Intel iMac. It doesn't mount. Disk Utility doesn't 'see' it. System profile only sees 'unknown FW device'.

We had it daisy chained through his external FW drive, then tried it direct into the Mac. Then I tried it on his wife's G4 'architects lamp' iMac. No luck.

The enclosre light goes on and I hear it spinning, but it doesn't mount.
Was it that easy to kill? Is there any reason it might not be seen by these machines except that it broke? Can it be fixed?

Well. Lucky it really only contained copies of files from my 2 internal drives, and was only $20. Still, this stinks. Unless I'm missing something.

Thanks
'lox

[JoeH]

Doesn't sound like anything you did would have killed the drive. Possibilities I can think of that you did not mention trying would be using a different FW cable, checking that no jumper came off, or if the ribbon cable needs reseating in the case. Drive power supply could have gone bad as well, but I have not seen that very often. And sometimes you get a drive that fails early through the luck of the draw.

[testcase]

Are you trying to switch between PowerPC and Intel units?

[landlox]

Hi -
Thanks for your responses.

To answer them:

* Mainly the last question. YES. At home I have a PowerPC. My friend's Mac is an Intel iMac. That is what I plugged it into. Could you please thell me why that would matter?

This might be a big clue since I DID do that!!!!

After that didn't work we plugged it into his wife's PowerPC iMac with no luck.

==============================================
as to the other suggestions:
==============================================

* We did try diffrent FW cables. The one I brought we first plugged into my friend's external drive ('daisy chain' style). When that didn't work we plugged it directly into his iMac - using his drive's FW cable (since it was easier to unplug the end of his cable that went from that drive directly into the Mac). His drive is working so that cable is good.

* Power supply: My drive does turn on. I can hear it whirring. Also the LED light comes on. (It's a Mad Dog brand enclosure. It has a bright blue light that comes on and when read/writing it blinks red.)

* Ribbon seating: I did open up the case just to (in desperation) check the connections and gently jiggle the connections and wires. The ribbon and power cords were plugged in solidly, it seemed to me. Afterward I closed it up, no change.

* Jumper switch. I was trying to remember if external drives needed jumpers.. I didn't think to look at the jumper switch. I'll look again, thanks - but since I don't recall perhaps someone can tell me 1) should there be a jumper in an external drive? 2) If it came off -- should it be in the 'master' position??

When I turn it on I hear one click. It seems to me that normally you'd hear a number of clicks (I guess it looks for the 'boot block'' or whatever techie thing it does to start up). This makes me think the worst - that the read/write head is damaged, maybe?

Thanks
'lox

[landlox]

Hi it's me --

PS - I checked. There is a jumper cable on the drive - it didn't come off. It's in the 'cable select' position which is where is was when the drive was working at home.

'lox

[JoeH]

I have heard of some enclosures being finicky about the jumper position, working better with the jumper set in the Master position. But usually that is consistent, not sometimes works and other times not. If the drive itself has not failed, check by hooking up directly to an IDE bus, or in another FW case, could be the power supply on your external case is gone bad. Symptoms of it starting to spin up, but never mounting sound like what happens when a drive does not get enough voltage on the 12 V side to spin up to full speed.

[OWC Larry]

We recommend drives be set for Master in single bay FW enclosures we offer.

Powered down, those drives can take a lot without any damage - the car trip with the drive inside the enclosure shouldn't have hurt anything. I've dropped drives with the blood rushing out of face feeling that followed - and never lost data from such event. Scariest recent event was a the heavy, crystal 'Bizratre Circle of Gold' award falling off my desk about 3 feet to flat onto my RUNNING boot FireWire external drive.... The drive spun down from the impact, spun back up, I copied all data to another drive cause I was worried - did full tests on the drive - no problem. Don't test it - but, today's drives are built to take a lot.... and powered down, when they are shipped via UPS they go through more shocks and jolts that your car trip would have exposed to.

PowerPC vs. Intel Mac formatted on doesn't affect it being recognized, affects only bootability. Short of some hacky tricks - you either format for PPC Bootability or Intel Mac Bootability - regardless of which scheme you used, DATA is accessible from ANY Mac... again, this only affects whether you can have a bootable OS on the drive for PPC or Intel.

So - I'd say - either flaked out FireWire enclosure, bad cable, or fluke drive failure.

I am assuming that not even Apple Disk Utility is seeing it at all.

And since it is spinning up - either the drive controller board would be toast then or the firewire bridge.

From the info I gleamed, that's about what can offer. I'd still try the master setting on the HD in case the cable select mode is just flakey with the firewire bridge.

[OWC Larry]

And this be good advice - connect it up internally. If it works - FW Case is bad. If not work, no show in Disk Utility- drive is bad.

something else you can do... with the FireWire drive attached - does Apple System Profiler see it as connected to the FireWire bus? Even without a working drive, our FireWire enclosures still report there and I'd expect this one would too.. if it's not reporting, can almost bet that the drive will work connected to an internal IDE/ATA since would suggest case is bad.

Power supply probably not the issue if the drive is spinning up normal.

[quote JoeH]I have heard of some enclosures being finicky about the jumper position, working better with the jumper set in the Master position. But usually that is consistent, not sometimes works and other times not. If the drive itself has not failed, check by hooking up directly to an IDE bus, or in another FW case, could be the power supply on your external case is gone bad. Symptoms of it starting to spin up, but never mounting sound like what happens when a drive does not get enough voltage on the 12 V side to spin up to full speed.

[landlox]

Larry -
Thanks. Yeah it was my impression it should be read by any Mac.

Anyway - I did look at both Disk Utility and System Profiler last night. Oh yes - I see I wrote this in my original post above:

"Disk Utility doesn't 'see' it. System profile only sees 'unknown FW device'. "

So it knows its Firewire but not that its a drive. So when you say in your last post:
"Even without a working drive, our FireWire enclosures still report there.. "

Do you mean it reports a hard drive, or it reports an 'unknown FW device' as I got?

(Profiler reported 'unknown FW device' whether the drive was turned off or turned on. When I unplugged the FW cable and refreshed the screen the 'unkown FW device', perhaps obviously, dissapeared.)

The joke on me would be that if its 'only' the enclosure - the enclosure was $50 and this drive was $20, new (in a Staples 'Black Friday' sale).

Any reccomended FW enclosure brands?

I'll see if my pal here has tweasers around to try and change the jumper. Again, it was working at home as is.... But it sounds like you are the voice of experience so its worth a shot.

Thanks
'lox

[PS - This is another topic, but since you mention it, I'd made a mild effort at trying to look around the web as to why my FW drive was not bootable and thought I understood someone saying that booting from FW was not possible....... (mine being a PPC).]

[OWC Larry]

Our FireWire drives still report what they are - OWC Oxford 9xx, etc... But that isn't necessarily the case with every enclosure.

Any recommended FireWire brands? That's pretty easy - duh - OWC's.

Each and every one of our FireWire enclosures has been bootable since day one so long as connected to a Mac that supports FireWire booting. Only the early FireWire equipped Macs don't support FW Boot... B&W G3, G4 PCI, and some of the first FW equipped laptops like Pismo and I believe early iMac G3 FireWire models. Anyway - EVERY Mac made for the last 6 years+ has FireWire and can boot from it.

There is the new formatting scheme difference between Intel and PPC Macs - and which you use affects which you can boot from - so that's the only twist and that's a recent one.

A lot of good comments in this thread - and if the jumper change to master doesn't do it - I'd solve the puzzle by putting the drive straight up on an IDE/ATA internal bus.... works = FW Enclosure is toast, doesn't work = drive is likely toast.