December 24, 2005

Curious George: Firewire problem. What's the deal with a Firewire hard drive that disconnects every few hours? I have to unplug and plug it back in to get it to work again.

* The Dell laptop has a 4-pin port, the Lacie 250 GB drive a 6-pin port * Changing the cable doesn't make a difference * It's a direct connection; I'm not using a hub Is this a Firewire power issue? Or might I have a bad drive or controller card? I don't have any other Firewire devices so I'm not sure how to even begin figuring out where the problem is. I suppose what I'm looking for are where problems USUALLY are in Firewire setups.

posted by rolypolyman 18 years ago
  • I had the same sort of problem, but I knew it wasn't a drive/enclosure issue because it only happened on one machine and worked fine on others. Uplugging and plugging in the Firewire card fixed it, FWIW.
  • Smo may be onto something. There was one computer where I used to work that had a problem with an external scanner and it was fixed by taking out the firewire card itself and reinstalling it.
  • I just realized you have a laptop... Don't know if you have a separate card inside for the firewire connection...
  • hmm, actually, no. Maybe I'll have to get a firewire card.
  • Get a Mac! joking
  • My guess would be that it is a power issue. I don't think that 4pin firewire connections have power on them, so the harddrive might not be getting the power it needs. I seem to remember that when firewire was the standard for ipods they would say in the instructions that most laptop firewire plugs wouldn't charge it. My suggestion would be to first try it on another computer and see if it works then see if you can borrow someone else's firewire device and see if it works. Then I would suggest buying a powered firewire hub from someplace with a good return policy and see if that fixes it.
  • LaCie hard Drives suck. I have had no less than three die on me.
  • wait... a power issue? But the hard drive is powered and it sports a 6-pin Firewire jack. The laptop has a 4-pin jack but it's also powered. How can it be a power issue?
  • I don't know much about firewire but I know that Windows XP has a feature where it can put a usb port on powersave. Maybe it does the same with firewire? (to look at the usb example, go to my computer -> properties -> hardware -> device manager -> usb controllers -> usb root hub -> doubleclick or properties -> power management)
  • The Dell firewire system is flimsy at best. My dell laptop did the same thing until I bought a PCMCIA firewire/USB2 card. I've never used the onboard firewire since. Most of the people I know with a Dell 4 pin firewire have had this problem. A few have even lost data because it disconnected during a transfer. I'm using and Adaptec AUA-1411 PCMCIA card which has performed perfectly so far. As an added bonus, it added USB2 to my USB1 lappy. My current external is a "SOHO Tank" firewire800 drive. It was pricey, but it uses SATA hard disks, so it's noticeably faster than my older drives. AFAIK 4-pin firewire is not powered, but windows can still send a power down/save signal to it. As Mr Chip says, check your windows power settings. Also, I have found Lacie drives to be fairly unreliable. Or, no more reliable than cheaper external HDD systems.
  • I used to have a Dell 8100 laptop with firewire. I loved firewire in that thing and bought all sorts of external firewire to IDE storage cases into which I'd had put large HDDs, CDRW burners and later a DVD+/-RW burner. Totally great and I was loving it... until it happened. The connector Dell used on my laptop didn't have any strain relief and over time the solder joints became bad from flexing the connector when ever I would plug or unplug anything and later move anything including the laptop when firewire was attached. I solved the problem by opening up the laptop, removing the jigsaw puzzle of parts to get to the motherboard and reflowing the solder on the firewire connector. Pain in the ass, but it worked. Maybe you have the same problem. Try jiggling the connector to see if that makes the device disappear or reappear. I use external USB 2.0 cases for my storage devices now.