Bad drive or bad enclosure?

[StoryDonut]

I've bought a new 400 GB Hitachi hard drive and an Ultra firewire enclosure for it. In just over a week, while performing normal operations, it's locked up four times. The record light stays on and the software can't find the drive any more. The only recovery is to restart and disconnect/reconnect the drive. Is this behavior of a bad drive, or is the firewire enclosure a likely suspect?

[budz]

Test the Hitachi drive by downloading their DRIVE FITNESS TEST. If it passes the test then it's probably the enclosure. What is the name of your external enclosure? Oxford chipsets work better with internal hard drives. It could be the external enclosure can not support a drive that big.

Here's the download for the DRIVE FITNESS TEST:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#Drive%20fitness

[redwudz]

StoryDonut, are you getting a 'delayed write failed' error?

That's the usual one. Just means the write got interrupted by something. Much the same as unplugging the power when writing. Even more common with USB drives. The bad news, if it does that several times in a row it can corrupt the drive and you will start losing files.

But if not, you should be getting some sort of error code out of the OS when that happens. Delayed write can be caused by lots of things, but like budz said, I would first suspect the controller in the external drive box.

I've gotten away from external boxes using Firewire or USB and went to boxes with SATA drives in them. Several advantages, full transfer speed, low power usage, no interface problems, no controller in the external box.

If your MB has a SATA controller, you just need a cable. If not, the SATA PCI cards are fairly inexpensive.

BTW, OSX 3.9? I assume a Mac, but I guess I haven't seen that OS version number.

[ROF]

I had a similiar problem with a USB enclosure. It turned out to be the USB connector wasn't working right. Fortunately I found out early enough and returned it. The case was an Ultra ULT31309. I got a UTL31310 and everything has been fine since. The 310 is both firewire and USB.

[offline]

moving you to the MAC forum

[terryj]

One thing to look at is like everyone has said here before,
which is to check and see if the enclosure supports
drives of that size. A lot of the ($25-$40) cheap enclosures
are only ATA 66, and thus cannot support 400GB Drives,
which need an ATA Bus of -133
( you can get away with -100, but -133 gives much better throughput).

When you open the case, what color is the ribbon cable
to attach the drive with?
Yellow is at least ATA 133, Blue is ATA 66, and Grey is ATA 33.

If you have the proper cable inside the case,
the next would be to try to flash the Firewire firmware.
I CAN'T TELL FROM
YOUR PROFILE WHAT TYPE OF MAC YOU HAVE, but
let's say for argument it is a Mac Mini.
Mac Mini's FW ports are set for Intio Chipset, and most
manufacturers are running Oxford 9.22. The drive
could just need a FW flash for its chipset to be
100% compliant.
Frequent drops and/or stops in copying could also be attributed to this.
What type of drive enclosure is it?

[StoryDonut]

Ok, update: I had the drive replaced into the same enclosure, and within half an hour, it's locked up again during a 20 GB copy.

The enclosure is an Ultra (that's the brand name) ATA133 3.5" Firewire/USB enclosure. It was sold with the drive, so it seems sensible that the drive should fit.

I sent the drive back to the seller (on eBay), who promptly sent me a replacement. The thing is connected to a Mac Mini via a Belkin Mac Mini-specific hub. Also connected to the hub is a second firewire drive (Western Digital 120 GB). I tried to copy a 20 GB folder from the WD to the Hitachi, and toward the end it seized up like before.

So I'm left with several possible conclusions:

* Hitachi drives are crap
* The enclosure is crap
* The hub is crap

I don't know what you mean by "flash the firmware". Could you elaborate? Thanks.

[terryj]

Test the drives connected via FW to the Macmini directly, no hub.
what happens then? Do files copy fine ?
if so, it is the hub that is the problem.
Can you daisy chain the FW drives together, or do they
only have ONE FW port per drive?

As for "flashing the Firmware" this is flashing the
firmware on the FW drive itself, to update the FW
chipset to be able to "talk" to the Mac Mini correctly,
and function as it should.
see here.

[StoryDonut]

Well, I guess it's a bit late to avoid sounding dense, but exactly *how* do I flash the firewire firmware?