Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
just something to add if it's a desktop setup not to move around like my fw-drives, then of course best is just leave everything connected, before shutdown you may eject the drives, after shutdown just disconnect the power board where all drives are connected just ejecting a drive causes the drive to spin down, remount has to be done through diskutiliy, i'm not unmounting/ejecting a drive as long i'm working with a drive on the same chain, an unused drive goes to sleep anyway but has the advantage that you can activate the drive with just selecting/loading a file from it (takes a few seconds to wake up) James SAD Technic U3 6 Chalkley Pl Bayswater WA Australia +618 9370 5307 mob 0414 421132 (international +614 14421132) sad...@iinet.net.au http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~saddas/ Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. On 08/04/2011, at 8:06 PM, Alan Smith wrote: Hi Neil, (and James - please see below) Thanks for your remarks. I too have grown accustomed to the silence of the iMac. My two My Book Studio FW 800 drives have the Kindle-style ink label on the front (and also a USB port). It seems there are at least two major operational differences from your drives. My FW drives are silent when the iMac is sleeping or the drives have been idle for a few minutes. I unmounted one drive and tested the 'power switch' which definitely has no effect - the WD user guide confirms the software must be installed. I had to Mount the drive via Disk Utility to get it working again. I have not used the Mount/Unmount facility for working disks before - another gap in my Mac education. I use 'Eject' to remove a drive and it automatically loads (mounts?) when I plug it in. My Maxtor USB drive for weekly SuperDuper backups hasn't got a power switch either! I do not have full confidence in the reliability of this drive (or the iMac USB ports). I will give it a trial with leaving it powered up but unmounted over the next week. I think I had problems in the past with connecting the USB to the iMac before turning on the Maxtor power. I think I had less problems by first powering up, waiting10 seconds, then plugging it into the USB port. Thanks again for sharing your methods. Hi James I was about to send this email when your response was received. Can you give further clarification? Q2, (re disconnecting a drive) you said just unmount the drive and unplug. Do you mean Disk UtilityUnmount? I normally use FinderEject (the up-triangle symbol) to initiate closure of a drive. Or are they the same thing? Q3, (re daisychains) you said apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains. I read the opposite sense into the Apple statement. Later you said you normally power up the drive before connecting FW to the computer. I'm reading difference senses from Apple re connecting to an (active) chain, and connecting to the computer port; hence the separate Q4. Q5, re USB. Plugging in a 'hot' lead seems intuitively best for the reason you give. I used to get some sparking between the USB plug and the aluminium iMac case (but perhaps not from this Maxtor unit) so I am very careful how I insert plugs. Cheers, Alan On 08/04/2011, at 2:15 PM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will sleep with 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs (though I find this is the case whether daisy-chained or not) - however, you can switch then off even though they do not have specific on/off switches on the housing - the method is basically the same for both my units - even though the specific hardware is different: My old unit is a two-drive MyBook Pro Edition II, which has two concentric blue LED rings, which supposedly perform various functions, when sleeping, the outer ring slowly pulses. To switch it off: Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). Press and hold the central button - the light goes bright and does a few things and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). Next time you want to use the disk, just press the centre button again and it will spin-up and mount. My newer unit is a MyBook Studio Edition (firewire, eSATA usb) with
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
Hi James and Neil Thanks for spelling out your practices. I thought there may be some subtle difference between 'unmounting' and 'ejecting' a device as Disk Utility has both options. My original motive for disconnecting the infrequently used devices was to reduce the number of power packs plugged into extension boards around my desk. I had some horror experiences after connecting all the external drives. The Mac almost locked up, triggered by the powered USB drive (I think).When I got the Mac working again I used a spare 160GB WD Elements portable USB drive and made a complete SuperDuper backup. Had no problems at all. Decided to keep the two FW drives permanently mounted; retire the Maxtor USB drive (eBay?), and use the un-powered WD portable USB drive for backup. After all, reducing the number of hot power packs by two is not significant given the total number of power packs in use. Cheers, Alan On 09/04/2011, at 2:09 PM, James / Hans Kunz wrote: just something to add if it's a desktop setup not to move around like my fw-drives, then of course best is just leave everything connected, before shutdown you may eject the drives, after shutdown just disconnect the power board where all drives are connected just ejecting a drive causes the drive to spin down, remount has to be done through diskutiliy, i'm not unmounting/ejecting a drive as long i'm working with a drive on the same chain, an unused drive goes to sleep anyway but has the advantage that you can activate the drive with just selecting/loading a file from it (takes a few seconds to wake up) James SAD Technic U3 6 Chalkley Pl Bayswater WA Australia +618 9370 5307 mob 0414 421132 (international +614 14421132) sad...@iinet.net.au http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~saddas/ Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. On 08/04/2011, at 8:06 PM, Alan Smith wrote: Hi Neil, (and James - please see below) Thanks for your remarks. I too have grown accustomed to the silence of the iMac. My two My Book Studio FW 800 drives have the Kindle-style ink label on the front (and also a USB port). It seems there are at least two major operational differences from your drives. My FW drives are silent when the iMac is sleeping or the drives have been idle for a few minutes. I unmounted one drive and tested the 'power switch' which definitely has no effect - the WD user guide confirms the software must be installed. I had to Mount the drive via Disk Utility to get it working again. I have not used the Mount/Unmount facility for working disks before - another gap in my Mac education. I use 'Eject' to remove a drive and it automatically loads (mounts?) when I plug it in. My Maxtor USB drive for weekly SuperDuper backups hasn't got a power switch either! I do not have full confidence in the reliability of this drive (or the iMac USB ports). I will give it a trial with leaving it powered up but unmounted over the next week. I think I had problems in the past with connecting the USB to the iMac before turning on the Maxtor power. I think I had less problems by first powering up, waiting10 seconds, then plugging it into the USB port. Thanks again for sharing your methods. Hi James I was about to send this email when your response was received. Can you give further clarification? Q2, (re disconnecting a drive) you said just unmount the drive and unplug. Do you mean Disk UtilityUnmount? I normally use FinderEject (the up-triangle symbol) to initiate closure of a drive. Or are they the same thing? Q3, (re daisychains) you said apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains. I read the opposite sense into the Apple statement. Later you said you normally power up the drive before connecting FW to the computer. I'm reading difference senses from Apple re connecting to an (active) chain, and connecting to the computer port; hence the separate Q4. Q5, re USB. Plugging in a 'hot' lead seems intuitively best for the reason you give. I used to get some sparking between the USB plug and the aluminium iMac case (but perhaps not from this Maxtor unit) so I am very careful how I insert plugs. Cheers, Alan On 08/04/2011, at 2:15 PM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will sleep with 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs (though I find this is the case whether daisy-chained or not) - however, you can switch then off even though they do not have specific on/off switches on the housing - the method is basically the same for both my units - even though the specific hardware is different: My old unit is a two-drive MyBook Pro Edition II, which has two concentric blue LED rings, which supposedly perform various functions, when sleeping, the outer ring slowly pulses. To switch it off: 1. Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). 2. Press and hold the central button - the light goes bright and does a few things and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). 3. Next time you want to use the disk, just press the centre button again and it will spin-up and mount. My newer unit is a MyBook Studio Edition (firewire, eSATA usb) with a longitudinal LED ³stripe² which again slowly pulses when sleeping. To switch it off: 1. Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). 2. Press and hold the power button on the back of the case - the light comes on for a few seconds and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). 3. Next time you want to use the disk, just press the power button again and it will spin-up and mount. One thing to note if the drive is mounted but sleeping, unmounting it will first wake it, then unmount it, then sleep it let this cycle complete before using the button to switch off. I don¹t think this uses any specific WD SmartDrive software I certainly don¹t use any and I can¹t see any in my applications or utilities folders. In the past, I have certainly found firewire to be ³picky² with connection/power-up sequences but have no problems with the method outlined above. USB Again, I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and USB) but find that most USB housings tend to have power switches so I just unmount and then, when the drive spins down, switch-off at the drive case. When I want to use again, switch on and the drive powers up and mounts. Having said that, I find with USB that it seems to work whether I connect and power-up or power-up and connect it just seems ³nicer² to use the switch on the case and leave it connected (or switch it off and then connect/disconnect). HTH Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: n...@possumology.com on 8/4/11 1:01 PM, Alan Smith at sma...@iinet.net.au wrote: What is the best way to power and connect external Firewire drives? There is conflicting and ambiguous advice from Apple support articles, Apple discussion groups, and WAMUG archives. My specific questions follow. I use a 1TB Firewire WD 'My Book Studio for Mac' for Time Machine. Very happy with the trouble-free experience after previous unreliable performance from two USB (WD and Maxtor) drives. So I bought a second Firewire drive and daisy-chained it for storing video files (linked to iTunes for Apple TV2 access). I do not use (did not install) the WD SmartWare facility. Q1:With the iMac in sleep mode, each of the two drives seem to have permanent alternating 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs when daisychained. Is this normal? (With just one drive connected there is no LED activity.) Q2: The second (Video) drive is used infrequently, say once a week for few hours. I would like to completely disconnect it (power and firewire cables) between usages. Given its links to iTunes, assumed low power consumption and zero disc activity, is removal a good, bad, or neutral action? Q3: Apple Firewire FAQs at http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26476 says (q7): Avoid plugging in live power adapters into devices connected to the chain. The topic also says that individual chained devices can be turned on and off as needed. The My Book Studio drives have individual power packs but do not have inbuilt on-off switches. There is a switch function but it apparently only works in conjunction with the SmartDrive software. 'Turning on' a drive thus means plugging in a power pack and starting up the drive from cold. My assumption of required actions is that any new Firewire device should be plugged into the mains
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
see my opinions between the questions James SAD Technic U3 6 Chalkley Pl Bayswater WA Australia +618 9370 5307 mob 0414 421132 (international +614 14421132) sad...@iinet.net.au http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~saddas/ Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. On 08/04/2011, at 1:01 PM, Alan Smith wrote: What is the best way to power and connect external Firewire drives? There is conflicting and ambiguous advice from Apple support articles, Apple discussion groups, and WAMUG archives. My specific questions follow. I use a 1TB Firewire WD 'My Book Studio for Mac' for Time Machine. Very happy with the trouble-free experience after previous unreliable performance from two USB (WD and Maxtor) drives. So I bought a second Firewire drive and daisy-chained it for storing video files (linked to iTunes for Apple TV2 access). I do not use (did not install) the WD SmartWare facility. i'm too did not install the wd smartware Q1:With the iMac in sleep mode, each of the two drives seem to have permanent alternating 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs when daisychained. Is this normal? (With just one drive connected there is no LED activity.) yes Q2: The second (Video) drive is used infrequently, say once a week for few hours. I would like to completely disconnect it (power and firewire cables) between usages. Given its links to iTunes, assumed low power consumption and zero disc activity, is removal a good, bad, or neutral action? just unmount the drive unplug, it must be the last in the chain otherwise you have to unmount all drives unplug the lot Q3: Apple Firewire FAQs at http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26476 says (q7): Avoid plugging in live power adapters into devices connected to the chain. The topic also says that individual chained devices can be turned on and off as needed. The My Book Studio drives have individual power packs but do not have inbuilt on-off switches. There is a switch function but it apparently only works in conjunction with the SmartDrive software. 'Turning on' a drive thus means plugging in a power pack and starting up the drive from cold. apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains mine go to sleep after 5 or 10 min no activity wakes up when data is required but may take a few seonds to wake up My assumption of required actions is that any new Firewire device should be plugged into the mains power supply and activated before connecting its Firewire cable into the (live) chain. Disconnection steps are to eject the drive, unplug the Firewire cable, then unplug the power pack.Are these connect/disconnect steps correct? i normally plug the packs into the drives, connected the firewire cables between the drives, plug the packs into main let it start for approx 20s then plug the fw-cable into the computer Q4 Is it best to connect a 'hot' or 'cold' device to the Firewire port; and are there different recommendations for plugging into the 'port' and 'chain'? Recent WAMUG advice was to use a hot lead. Advice from a few years ago, citing an external reference, was to connect the cable first and THEN activate the device.Advice from the Apple Support FAQ article (q6) becomes ambiguous when read too many times: In practice ... most devices profit from being turned on at the time they are connected. I think Apple assume the devices are powered from the computer port and have local on-off switches. powerup then connect the fw cable to the computer, is what i do Q5:Finally, should a USB hard drive with power pack (for my weekly SuperDuper backup) be powered up first and then plugged 'hot' into a USB port? yes you have more chances that the drive will be recognized With thanks in advance for your careful considerations! Regards, Alan Alan Smith iMac 21.5 Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 4MB OSX 10.6.7 -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
Hi Neil, (and James - please see below) Thanks for your remarks. I too have grown accustomed to the silence of the iMac. My two My Book Studio FW 800 drives have the Kindle-style ink label on the front (and also a USB port). It seems there are at least two major operational differences from your drives. My FW drives are silent when the iMac is sleeping or the drives have been idle for a few minutes. I unmounted one drive and tested the 'power switch' which definitely has no effect - the WD user guide confirms the software must be installed. I had to Mount the drive via Disk Utility to get it working again. I have not used the Mount/Unmount facility for working disks before - another gap in my Mac education. I use 'Eject' to remove a drive and it automatically loads (mounts?) when I plug it in. My Maxtor USB drive for weekly SuperDuper backups hasn't got a power switch either! I do not have full confidence in the reliability of this drive (or the iMac USB ports). I will give it a trial with leaving it powered up but unmounted over the next week. I think I had problems in the past with connecting the USB to the iMac before turning on the Maxtor power. I think I had less problems by first powering up, waiting10 seconds, then plugging it into the USB port. Thanks again for sharing your methods. Hi James I was about to send this email when your response was received. Can you give further clarification? Q2, (re disconnecting a drive) you said just unmount the drive and unplug. Do you mean Disk UtilityUnmount? I normally use FinderEject (the up-triangle symbol) to initiate closure of a drive. Or are they the same thing? Q3, (re daisychains) you said apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains. I read the opposite sense into the Apple statement. Later you said you normally power up the drive before connecting FW to the computer. I'm reading difference senses from Apple re connecting to an (active) chain, and connecting to the computer port; hence the separate Q4. Q5, re USB. Plugging in a 'hot' lead seems intuitively best for the reason you give. I used to get some sparking between the USB plug and the aluminium iMac case (but perhaps not from this Maxtor unit) so I am very careful how I insert plugs. Cheers, Alan On 08/04/2011, at 2:15 PM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will sleep with 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs (though I find this is the case whether daisy-chained or not) - however, you can switch then off even though they do not have specific on/off switches on the housing - the method is basically the same for both my units - even though the specific hardware is different: My old unit is a two-drive MyBook Pro Edition II, which has two concentric blue LED rings, which supposedly perform various functions, when sleeping, the outer ring slowly pulses. To switch it off: Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). Press and hold the central button - the light goes bright and does a few things and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). Next time you want to use the disk, just press the centre button again and it will spin-up and mount. My newer unit is a MyBook Studio Edition (firewire, eSATA usb) with a longitudinal LED “stripe” which again slowly pulses when sleeping. To switch it off: Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). Press and hold the power button on the back of the case - the light comes on for a few seconds and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). Next time you want to use the disk, just press the power button again and it will spin-up and mount. One thing to note – if the drive is mounted but sleeping, unmounting it will first wake it, then unmount it, then sleep it – let this cycle complete before using the button to switch off. I don’t think this uses any specific WD SmartDrive software – I certainly don’t use any and I can’t see any in my applications or utilities folders. In the past, I have certainly found firewire to be “picky” with connection/power-up sequences – but have no problems with the method outlined above. USB Again, I prefer to leave them
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
Hi Alan, OK it seems your drives are newer than both mine. Yes, both my drives are also silent when sleeping it¹s just that if I don¹t actually ³switch off² they keep waking up from time to time and I find it annoying ;o) AFAIK it does not matter how you actually unmount the disk I don¹t tend to use disk utility unless I have some problem mounting or unmounting. I find using the eject symbol in the finder sidebar very convenient, also right-clicking on the icon on the desktop and choosing ³eject² - the advantage with this is that if you ³option² right-click you get to eject ³all volumes² of a drive rather than just the selected volume a little thing but it avoids the dialogue asking if you want to eject just the volume or all volumes (obviously only relevant if you have partitioned your drive into 2 or more partitions. The problem with unmounting the drive but leaving it powered up is that then you will need to use disk utility to re-mount it, whereas if the drive is powered off then switching it on will normally spin it up and automatically mount it well that has been my experience. However, if the enclosure doesn¹t have any sort of power switch, then that is not an option (unless it is plugged into an accessible switched power socket). As you have found, there are many ways to skin the cat but, personally, I try and avoid constant unplugging and re-plugging of firewire or USB ports I figure that it has to increase (probably very slightly) the chances of a port failure. Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: n...@possumology.com on 8/4/11 8:06 PM, Alan Smith at sma...@iinet.net.au wrote: Hi Neil, (and James - please see below) Thanks for your remarks. I too have grown accustomed to the silence of the iMac. My two My Book Studio FW 800 drives have the Kindle-style ink label on the front (and also a USB port). It seems there are at least two major operational differences from your drives. My FW drives are silent when the iMac is sleeping or the drives have been idle for a few minutes. I unmounted one drive and tested the 'power switch' which definitely has no effect - the WD user guide confirms the software must be installed. I had to Mount the drive via Disk Utility to get it working again. I have not used the Mount/Unmount facility for working disks before - another gap in my Mac education. I use 'Eject' to remove a drive and it automatically loads (mounts?) when I plug it in. My Maxtor USB drive for weekly SuperDuper backups hasn't got a power switch either! I do not have full confidence in the reliability of this drive (or the iMac USB ports). I will give it a trial with leaving it powered up but unmounted over the next week. I think I had problems in the past with connecting the USB to the iMac before turning on the Maxtor power. I think I had less problems by first powering up, waiting10 seconds, then plugging it into the USB port. Thanks again for sharing your methods. Hi James I was about to send this email when your response was received. Can you give further clarification? Q2, (re disconnecting a drive) you said just unmount the drive and unplug. Do you mean Disk UtilityUnmount? I normally use FinderEject (the up-triangle symbol) to initiate closure of a drive. Or are they the same thing? Q3, (re daisychains) you said apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains. I read the opposite sense into the Apple statement. Later you said you normally power up the drive before connecting FW to the computer. I'm reading difference senses from Apple re connecting to an (active) chain, and connecting to the computer port; hence the separate Q4. Q5, re USB. Plugging in a 'hot' lead seems intuitively best for the reason you give. I used to get some sparking between the USB plug and the aluminium iMac case (but perhaps not from this Maxtor unit) so I am very careful how I insert plugs. Cheers, Alan On 08/04/2011, at 2:15 PM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will sleep with 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs (though I find this is the case whether daisy-chained or not) - however, you can switch then off even though they do not have specific on/off switches on the housing - the method is basically the same for both my units - even though the specific hardware is
Re: Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
again my answers within the letter below James SAD Technic U3 6 Chalkley Pl Bayswater WA Australia +618 9370 5307 mob 0414 421132 (international +614 14421132) sad...@iinet.net.au http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~saddas/ Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. On 08/04/2011, at 8:06 PM, Alan Smith wrote: Hi Neil, (and James - please see below) Thanks for your remarks. I too have grown accustomed to the silence of the iMac. My two My Book Studio FW 800 drives have the Kindle-style ink label on the front (and also a USB port). It seems there are at least two major operational differences from your drives. My FW drives are silent when the iMac is sleeping or the drives have been idle for a few minutes. I unmounted one drive and tested the 'power switch' which definitely has no effect - the WD user guide confirms the software must be installed. I had to Mount the drive via Disk Utility to get it working again. I have not used the Mount/Unmount facility for working disks before - another gap in my Mac education. I use 'Eject' to remove a drive and it automatically loads (mounts?) when I plug it in. My Maxtor USB drive for weekly SuperDuper backups hasn't got a power switch either! I do not have full confidence in the reliability of this drive (or the iMac USB ports). I will give it a trial with leaving it powered up but unmounted over the next week. I think I had problems in the past with connecting the USB to the iMac before turning on the Maxtor power. I think I had less problems by first powering up, waiting10 seconds, then plugging it into the USB port. Thanks again for sharing your methods. Hi James I was about to send this email when your response was received. Can you give further clarification? Q2, (re disconnecting a drive) you said just unmount the drive and unplug. Do you mean Disk UtilityUnmount? I normally use FinderEject (the up-triangle symbol) to initiate closure of a drive. Or are they the same thing? it's the same, i normally have a folder open on the lefthand side there are the volumes, i click on the triangle to eject the drive, you can as well drag the volume icon on the desktop to the trash, there is no need to use diskutility Q3, (re daisychains) you said apple is correct, its better to connect the low voltage cable into the drive then plug the power pack into the mains. I read the opposite sense into the Apple statement. Later you said you normally power up the drive before connecting FW to the computer. I'm reading difference senses from Apple re connecting to an (active) chain, and connecting to the computer port; hence the separate Q4. ok just to clarify 1) plug the low voltage cable(s) from the powerpack(s) into the drives, 2) plug the fw- cable(s) into the drive(s) but not yet to the computer 3) plug in the powerpack(s) to the mains let the drive spin up 4) plug in the fw-cable to the computer, in a short time all the drive icons should show up on the desktop, the finder pref must be set to show volumes Q5, re USB. Plugging in a 'hot' lead seems intuitively best for the reason you give. I used to get some sparking between the USB plug and the aluminium iMac case (but perhaps not from this Maxtor unit) so I am very careful how I insert plugs. hmmm static discharge? never had that one. Cheers, Alan On 08/04/2011, at 2:15 PM, Neil Houghton wrote: Hi Alan, Just my 2c worth - others may agree/disagree. My iMac is so wonderfully quiet that I find the sound of running external drives (firewire or USB) extremely distracting and prefer to have them powered down when not in use. My prefered method is slightly different for USB and firewire: Firewire: I too have two WD MyBook firewire drives, albeit of different models/vintages. I prefer to leave them plugged in (both power and firewire) and I have them daisy-chained. As you have noted, the drives will sleep with 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs (though I find this is the case whether daisy-chained or not) - however, you can switch then off even though they do not have specific on/off switches on the housing - the method is basically the same for both my units - even though the specific hardware is different: My old unit is a two-drive MyBook Pro Edition II, which has two concentric blue LED rings, which supposedly perform various functions, when sleeping, the outer ring slowly pulses. To switch it off: Make sure the disk is unmounted (all volumes if, like me, you have it formatted with more than one). Press and hold the central button - the light goes bright and does a few things and then goes out - at this point, release the button (if you hold it too long it may start up again). Next time you want to use the disk, just press the centre button again and it will spin-up
Confusion with Firewire External HD Practice
What is the best way to power and connect external Firewire drives? There is conflicting and ambiguous advice from Apple support articles, Apple discussion groups, and WAMUG archives. My specific questions follow. I use a 1TB Firewire WD 'My Book Studio for Mac' for Time Machine. Very happy with the trouble-free experience after previous unreliable performance from two USB (WD and Maxtor) drives. So I bought a second Firewire drive and daisy-chained it for storing video files (linked to iTunes for Apple TV2 access). I do not use (did not install) the WD SmartWare facility. Q1:With the iMac in sleep mode, each of the two drives seem to have permanent alternating 'heartbeats' of slow flashing LEDs when daisychained. Is this normal? (With just one drive connected there is no LED activity.) Q2: The second (Video) drive is used infrequently, say once a week for few hours. I would like to completely disconnect it (power and firewire cables) between usages. Given its links to iTunes, assumed low power consumption and zero disc activity, is removal a good, bad, or neutral action? Q3: Apple Firewire FAQs at http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26476 says (q7): Avoid plugging in live power adapters into devices connected to the chain. The topic also says that individual chained devices can be turned on and off as needed. The My Book Studio drives have individual power packs but do not have inbuilt on-off switches. There is a switch function but it apparently only works in conjunction with the SmartDrive software. 'Turning on' a drive thus means plugging in a power pack and starting up the drive from cold. My assumption of required actions is that any new Firewire device should be plugged into the mains power supply and activated before connecting its Firewire cable into the (live) chain. Disconnection steps are to eject the drive, unplug the Firewire cable, then unplug the power pack.Are these connect/disconnect steps correct? Q4 Is it best to connect a 'hot' or 'cold' device to the Firewire port; and are there different recommendations for plugging into the 'port' and 'chain'? Recent WAMUG advice was to use a hot lead. Advice from a few years ago, citing an external reference, was to connect the cable first and THEN activate the device.Advice from the Apple Support FAQ article (q6) becomes ambiguous when read too many times: In practice ... most devices profit from being turned on at the time they are connected. I think Apple assume the devices are powered from the computer port and have local on-off switches. Q5:Finally, should a USB hard drive with power pack (for my weekly SuperDuper backup) be powered up first and then plugged 'hot' into a USB port? With thanks in advance for your careful considerations! Regards, Alan Alan Smith iMac 21.5 Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 4MB OSX 10.6.7 -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml Guidelines - http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml Unsubscribe - mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au
