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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple Hardware

Panther Eats FireWire 800 Drives 60

Posted by pudge from the oooo-scary-data-loss dept.
the_webmaestro writes: "Apple has announced that Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) may cause corruption with external FireWire 800 drives (anything with an Oxford 922 chip). Fortunately for me (unlike the poor souls who've already had problems), I guess I'm glad I ordered a lowly a 250GB Firewire 400/USB2.0 Combo Drive..." maccw reports that Firewire 400 customers are also reporting problems, as detailed from this Wired story.
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Panther Eats FireWire 800 Drives More

Panther Eats FireWire 800 Drives

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  • 2 for 2 (Score:2, Funny)

    by broken.data ( 603253 )
    Geez, did the guys from LG get a new job already?

    • Re:2 for 2 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just FYI -- the Panther issue just ruins data, not the hardware. It's not clear where the problem is but it seems to affect a lot more chipsets than Apple is acknowledging right now.
  • That's why I always make sure all my data is available in punch-card format before upgrading.
    • Punched cards delimit your data into 80 char chunks. You want to use paper tape.

      I saw a high speed paper tape punch at auction a few months ago. I probably should have bought it.
  • Didn't someone mention something like this in that Ars Technica forums' discussion about the "automatic defragmentation" in Panther a few days back?

    Ah yeah, it's in there! Go to the discussion [infopop.net] and search for Firewire. In short, the poster sees the automatic defragmentation very possibly being the root of the problem.

  • Updates (Score:5, Informative)

    by dynayellow ( 106690 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @12:36PM (#7359955)
    According to this Apple page [apple.com] the problem is with the chipset.

    OWC has posted a firmware update [macsales.com] for their drives, as has Wiebetech. [wiebetech.com] It looks like the Wiebetech requires you to update the firmware in Jaguar, and then they don't recommend using it IN Jaguar afterwards... Sheesh.

    • Re:Updates (Score:3, Informative)

      by pjcreath ( 513472 )

      Note that while OWC's firmware update [macsales.com] has only been tested with their drives, other people in the forums have successfully used it to update other vendors' drives using the Oxford chipset.

      Their updater will also tell you which chipset (911 or 922) your drive has and which firmware it's running. Note that some FW400 drives use the affected Oxford 922 chipset rather than the 911.

      As of this writing, nobody's quite sure yet whether Oxford 911 (FW400) chipsets are also affected. Some evidence [apple.com] indicates tha

    • Re:Updates (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gunnk ( 463227 ) <{ude.cnu.gpf.liam} {ta} {knnug}> on Friday October 31, 2003 @01:25PM (#7360595) Homepage
      THANK YOU!

      The parent post is much more informative that the story itself, which links to the Apple Special Message page while appearing to have no knowledge of the content on that page (i.e.: problem is a chipset bug, not a Panther bug).

      After the previous story in which Apple was said to be refusing to release security patches for Jaguar anymore (with no links to any actual Apple statement), it looks like any story that seems to paint Apple in a bad light gets no review at all. Come on -- we should be able to expect a LITTLE better editorial review of story postings than this!

      In this case the title of the story is misleading and sensational, while the content puts the blame on the wrong party. Apple is doing a good job of getting the word out to people that may have the faulty chipset so that they don't get burned by the problem. Making this sound like a failure by Apple is just plain wrong.
    • We use tons of firewires in our office - and I have been seeing a lot of failures on BIG (>200 gig) LaCie drives (mostly) - and these are running on Windows2000, and XP machines. Lost data, mount failures, eratic behaviour. I took one of these drives and hooked it to my PowerBook G4 and had a kernel panic... this is fully repeatable.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Hey Pudge, that WD enclosure (linked in article) looks pretty sweet. Is the bridge chip Oxford 911? What kind of lights are those inside the case? (LED? Neon?) Can you turn them off if you want?
    • Sorry to reply to an offtopic post, but.. I have the same drive (it was the cheapest 250GB option when I bought it, I didn't buy it for the lights) :)

      The lights are neon, there's a red one and a blue one. No, you can't turn them off. The bridge chip seems to be a custom jobby as it gets reported as a WDC Firewire400/USB2.0 in system_profiler. It might be an Oxford but WDC has custom written the ROM to hide that fact, if so.

    • Seems my memory was a little faulty. It has two red neon tubes (one on either side) and then two blue led's (one on either side.)

      Everything else was right though. :)

  • Sounds like a Godzilla-style movie.
  • I have three different models of Pyro Firewire enclosures (3-port transparent, 2-port transparent, and an opaque model). None of them support large (>137 GB, >128 GiB) drives.

    I haven't purchased Panther yet (or is it pronounced "Pan-there"?) but this does recall a problem I had running Final Cut Pro under Mac OS X 10.1.x. It had the nasty habit of destroying the partition tables of random Firewire drives on launch, presumably in its attempts to find and communicate with Firewire video devices. Upg
  • WTF, man?!?!

  • Jeez (Score:2)

    by uradu ( 10768 )
    If the guy bought it from the WD store for $429.99, that only confirms that Macophiles LOVE getting the retail shaft. This is a $230 drive plus $50 for a dual enclosure.
  • this is a funny story. I have a new asus motherboard with firewire built in. I was running windows (just to test the hardware, mind you..) and then finally got around to trying to install linux on a separate hard disk.

    linux (redhat 6.x and latest gentoo) and even freebsd refused to install! huh? never saw THAT happen before.

    well, turns out that I had my firewire camera (not a real camera but a canopus firwire media bridge that looks like a FW camera) connected and all I can think of is that the funny

    • the very thought of linux or bsd trying to install itself on a VIDEO CAMERA just makes me laugh. imagine the design issues of that - when the system boots up, does it display titles on the video camera eyepiece? if it fscks, does it have to rewind the tape often? does it have the 1024 cylinder limit if you boot from mini-DV? ;)

      What's funny is I'm sure someone has tried to get Linux running on a camera. I mean there is some joker trying to get Linux running on an iPod. We have it for most game console

  • What is up with software destroying drives? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mhesseltine ( 541806 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @01:38PM (#7360756) Homepage Journal

    First Mandrake 9.2 and LG CD-ROMS, now this. Is this something the hardware manufacturers are doing that violates the common standards (IDE, ATAPI, IEEE1394)? Or, is this software companies trying to squeeze out a little more performance by not adhering to a standard?

  • Apple motherboards kill firewire bridges (Score:4, Interesting)

    by littlerubberfeet ( 453565 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @03:36PM (#7362103)
    I work at a small sound studio. We use macs for their stability and simplicity. I had been trying to figure out what to do with the 4 dead WD Caviar 30gig drives, 5 dead Maxtor 80 and 160 gig drives, and 4 dead Que! CD-RWs. They are all external firewire devices. After getting no where with Maxtor or Apple, and not being able to pinpoint the failure to a single G4 or circumstance, I took apart the damn things.

    ALL the drives were still perfectly good. The firewire bridges were bad. ALL the drives were advertised as hot-swappable. Almost all of the brideges died during, or after a hot-swap procedure. Indigita, a bridge company, has been gracious enough to test some stuff for us.

    I suspect that the problem isn't just with panther or bridge firmware. I think there is a problem with the mac firewire interface generally, expecially when hot swapping.
    • The usual thing that kills BOTH Apple motherboards and peripherals is CRAPPY worn out firewire CABLES.

      The problem comes when the strain releif doesn't releive the strain (beware of twisting the cables especially on cheap firewire cables) and the power lines in the cable nail the PHY on the Firewire/IDE bridge board or the PHY on the motherboard.

      Whenever you have a firewire problem that you think has killed either a drive or a motherboard SWAP OUT THE CABLE FIRST.

      A sacrificial firewire hub or at the very

  • Never Never buy anything the first day.. Never (Score:4, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @06:46PM (#7363868)
    This just goes to show the hideous complexity of all the myriad permutations of software, platforms, and peripherals that defines modern computing environments. All software for a mainstream platform is beta when it is first released because it is impossible for the maker to test every possible combination (or even most of the common ones). Even with lead user groups and the developer community testing the so-called "betas", there are always missed combinations of equipment. Only when millions of people try something do you see the real problems appear.

    So don't buy new software the day it appears. Wait and see what problems it causes and then buy the x.x.1 update after a suitable wait to see if that's safe.

    BTW, this rule applies to new pharmaceuticals. I'd recommend waiting at least 10 to 100 million doses and 5-20 years before taking any "new" medication unless it is a total blockbusting lifesaver.

  • "Panther has managed not only to lose my iTunes Library and my iPhoto Library, but also their backups kept on -- you guessed it -- my external FireWire hard disk,"

    I once reinstalled a Compaq server. I copied all data to the externally connected SCSI raid and I only wanted to reinstall WinNT on the 2 internal disks. I felt safe. How wrong I was...

    Because the Compaq 'System erase' tool erases not only things like the date/time, internal disk, BIOS settings etc., but also partitions/disks on all connected

  • I have an external FW800 drive case [1394store.com][..:.. example...], with a 120gb Seagate. Connected to a 1.25GHz G4.

    For the record, I've had no issues with Panther and this external drive. I checked the firmware, and it was the suspect 1.02.

    Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded and applied the firmware update from WeibeTECH [wiebetech.com], again, with no issues.
  • This will erase more than data - good will and credibility have vanished with this blunder, too.

    At an Apple store on release day, I nearly went against my better judgment and snapped up the not-ready-for-primetime Panther. I was backed up, after all, to my firewire drive... Then I thought, "Wtf, Zhe, you horn dog, do you want to pay to find bugs for Apple?"

    Whew. Saved by a momentary flash of discipline. ;-)

  • The drive the author of the post cites IS one of the effected drives.

    I did a lot of research the other night because I have panther and a western digital firewire 400 80gb. Turns out if your firewire drive is from western digital AND it's a combo USB/Firewire then you're using oxford 922. The drives that are just firewire 400 and no USB are oxford 911.

    So don't plug that drive of yours into your mac until we see the WD patch.

    Over at macfixit.com there are reports that it's not just the firewire 800 peop
  • I have a first generation Quicksilver 867mhz and I am noticing massive IDE (Not Firewire connected) hard disk corruption problems with 10.3.

    I first noticed it when Safari would lose all its preference settings and the Itunes Music Library file would corrupt itself.

    I aso noticed that when downloading some apps like Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger they'd be corrupt the first time I downloaded them, and then I'd redownload them and they'd work the next time.

    Today I did a large amount of ftping, and I was
  • While not totally related to Firewire 800 not working. This is my Panther horror story.

    Over the summer, I got a dev seed of Panther while it was still in beta. I decided rather than wiping out my existing partition on my Powerbook's hard drive. I would instead install it to my iPod. I installed it, ran great. Until that is, I went to listen to my music. All there according to iTunes but not according to my now dead iPod. It appears Panther overwrote the software on my iPod and the "secret" music partition.
  • Having read much of the press coverage, the discussions in the forums and the statements from both Apple and the Oxford people, I feel it may be appropriate to note that it appears that Oxford is the one at fault here, not Apple. Oxford's press release complains that Apple changed something about the way the OS interacts with the drives, but there's no mention anywhere of Apple actually breaking out of the FW800 standard. This, paired with the fact that Apple released no bug fixes and it was Oxford that i
  • This page [apple.com] states:

    Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Apple is working with Oxford Semiconductor and affected drive manufacturers to resolve this issue which resides in the Oxford 922 chip-set.

    In the interim, Apple recommends that you do not use these drives. To stop using the drive, you should unmount or eject the disk drive before doing anything else.

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