On Jan 27, 2010, at 4:44 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
On Jan 27, 2010, at 3:06 PM, John Callahan wrote:
Would like to know if its necessary to unplug cable from port on
both computers when not in Target mode. Instructions say to drag
icon to trash, restart target computer and unplug cable. I have
been leaving firewire cable plugged in on both computers with
seemingly no ill effects.
No it's not necessary, and if you're not using your firewire port,
you can go ahead and leave it plugged in.
I don't know if this is correct? My understanding is that Target Disk
Mode makes the Mac behave exactly like any external FW HD. I once
booted a laptop into Target Disk Mode and then repaired the HD using a
Desktop which didn't have an open Firewire port because an external FW
HD was already using the port. I simply daisy chained the laptop onto
the open FW port of the external HD. After the repair, I rebooted the
laptop and inadvertently forgot to unplug the FW cable. Now I had two
Macs both booted, and BOTH had the external HD mounted simultaneously.
This appeared to cause problems for the external FW HD that was shared
between the two Macs as it needed repair after this inadvertent
mistake. Even worse, both Macs had all three HDs mounted, so I felt I
was just lucky that the whole thing didn't go bad.
As far as I know, the only way to connect two booted Macs with a
Firewire cable is if you've setup Firewire as a network port and then
enable sharing between the two Macs. If you haven't setup this network
connection over Firewire, my previous experience seems to indicate
that you could be in real trouble if both Systems try to access or
specifically write to the same HD simultaneously. I felt I was just
lucky I didn't do any more file system damage than I did, and I don't
believe it's ever correct to have two booted Macs connected by FW that
aren't setup as "Firewire networking" previously?
--
You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for
those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs.
The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette
guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
