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Troubleshooting FireWire Failure: Causes, Explanations, Solutions
Cable culprits? According to some sources in the FireWire manufacturing industry who wish to remain anonymous, cables actually contribute more to the FireWire failure problem than anything else. There are a wide variety of cables on the market; some better than others. Cable quality can contribute to problems such as shorts, opens, plugging cable in upside down, defective/poor quality connectors on the cable, and defective/poor quality connectors on drives.
Apple's Knowledge Base notes that some external FireWire drives can have problems with cables that are too long or thin, and recommends "You should use the shortest, thickest FireWire cable available."
Look for FireWire cables that are shielded twisted-pair, with grounded internal and external shields.
Bus powering defects In some cases, FireWire failure can be the result of manufactures' inability to use bus power correctly per design specs. Poor bridge design can overload or short the FireWire port, rendering it unusable for data transfer, but still viable for powering devices.
Static electricity On certain iBook models, static electricity may be the culprit behind FireWire failures for ports that disallow data transfer, but can still power devices. Rob Falk notes:
"My firewire port stopped working with my external HD and iPod months ago, although it still provides power to the iPod. My theory is poor design and static electricity. The contact on the iBook FireWire port is virtually flush with the outside of the case. Shouldn't there be a port cover or a more recessed connection at a point on the side of the iBook that is most likely to be handled by someone who is closing and/or moving a sleeping iBook."
Static electricity is the bane of internal computer technicians' work. Without proper grounding and static-immune gloves, entire sections of the motherboard and various other delicate components can be destroyed.
Drive manufacturer feedback Mike Mihalik from FireWire hard drive manufacturer LaCie offered MacFixIt some additional insight on the issue, as well as an explanation of the company's testing process:
"LaCie possibly has the most experience with the issue; simply due to the fact that each and every one of our FireWire drives actually connects to FireWire (and USB) ports on a computer before going out the door. [...] We see rare failures, and they are usually due to manufacturing defects in subassemblies during production.
"LaCie (as does Apple) tests every product before it goes out the door. Our suppliers are selected based on quality performance, and there are penalties when failures exceed a certain level. Our cables are typically uniquely colored or branded, to assure origin, and adherence to our specs."
"You will note that LaCie supplies Apple online store as well as their retail stores. This comes from a stringent review and qualification process conducted by Apple.'
See our previous coverage of FireWire failure issues.
Resources
While fiddling with it, I managed to damage two other computers (another Mac and a PC) in the same way. The scenario was that the drive would destroy the port WHILE BEING DISCONNECTED. I was able to scrounge a new bridge board from another Imation drive, and now all it well.
PS: I was displeased to discover that Imation will not repair this $500 product (at any price) when it is out of warranty. Their recommendation was to throw it out and buy a new one, althought it needed only a relatively inexpensive bridge board. I've heard it's the same case even if the external power brick needs replacing.
connections prior to shipping at face value until demonstrated
otherwise, I am disinclined to believe the comment that Apple tests
all of the hardware (specifically Firewire/USB connections) before
shipping.
As one of many who have suffered through firewire failures it is
entirely implausible that an entire model of product (Blue and
White G3, for example) mysteriously failed after having passed
testing. There are occasional reports of the native (on board)
firewire plugs working, but that is very much the exception rather
than the rule. Apple continues to deny the existence of a problem
as appears to be their corporate policy regarding problems in
general.
Indeed, dealers who are presently suing Apple allege that certain
models which are shipped to them for resale have a larger number
that fail to function on startup than actually work.
It is undoubtedly true that there can be reasons, such as those
stated, which cause or contribute to firewire failure, but they are,
ultimately, the consequence of poor design, lack of testing and
failure to correct the problem when it becomes known, leaving the
consumer with products which are not functional. The companies
which do so are to be condemned.
Brand new (1 month old) G4 MDD and the only device plugged into it was a Canopus AD/DA Converter - we had some power outages - and the next day - the mac couldn't see the firewire device (or any other i could plug in). shutting down with the device plugged in stalled the log out process and unplugging it caused Kernal Panics. AppleCare came out and replaced the logic board and all is well - something must have blown the FW ports...
the machine and all devices were all protected by a heavy-duty spike protector - so the only thing that apple and I could hypothisize was that when the power came back on, timing must have been a split second enough that the Canopus appeared to have been plugged-in hot (which apple says not to plug any fireiwire device when it's on) and it cooked the board.
machine is happy again, but this makes me nervous!
their "high quality" assemblies are probably
manufactured by the very same companies in china
every other HD enclosure manufacturer buys from
I never heard of a failed FireWire cable yet (and we sold
thousands of drives). Bridges fail rarely, ac adapters
somewhat more often (still rarely).
I assume the larger part of the defective ports are due
to Apples "cheap" implementation of the FireWire-
technology. No self healing fuses etc. A shortage
shouldnt destroy the port - I think that is defined in the
FW specs. As well shouldn't using too much current
destroy the port. It's just those 20 cents in extra parts -
Apple made additional profit.
I agree with the "Apple is not testing their machines."
We had several complaints from costumers caused by
non-working ram upgrades. Even several
replacements didn't help there. Turned out to be a non-
working slot - especially iMac TFT seem to suffer from
a non existant QA. They just left the factory untested - I
wonder how many defective RAM slots, PCI slots and
connectors are out there - from the very beginning until
the "happy owner" notices after a couple of years.
I do tech support for an all-mac audio/video technical school. A few years back the school upgraded their computers to include 48 G4-400 AGP machines along with several LaCie external firewire drives and Sony DV cameras and decks. Shortly after the machines were installed, we had a rash of computer, external drive and DV camera firewire failures - the firewire ports on the all the devices mysteriously ceased to function. No amount of software alterations or pram zapping fixed this problem. Testing with a voltmeter confirmed that the ports were no longer functioning.
I finally figured out that the cables were being inserted incorrectly in either and sometimes both firewire ports. how did i discover this?
If you look at a firewire port on many firewire devices (mac or external drive boxes) you can see that the port's housing is constructed of a piece of tin or sheet metal folded into the shape of a house. At the point of the "roof" of this house shape is where the 2 ends of the tin meet.
IMHO, this is the physical weak point of this design. It allows a person - say, a relatively inexperienced student, for example - to insert the a firewire cable wrong way, and with a suprisingly small amount of force. The roof point separates and spreads open to accomodate the square end of the incorrectly inserted cable. Of course, as soon as the exernal device is turned on, the damage occurs.
I've seen the ports on some firewire devices that minimize this design flaw by moving the point where the port housing metal ends meet to a different spot on the housing - like in the middle of either "wall" of the house-shaped housing (hard to descibe this without illustrations!).
The scenario of inserting fireiwre cables incorrectly may suggest brutish stupidity or ignorance to some of you more technically adept power users, but I saw it happen enough to convince me that it's not just that. The experience also has taught me to be extra careful when inserting firewire cables in any device. To be honest, i'm surprised I haven't read anything about this before.
I do tech support for an all-mac audio/video technical school. A few years back the school upgraded their computers to include 48 G4-400 AGP machines along with several LaCie external firewire drives and Sony DV cameras and decks. Shortly after the machines were installed, we had a rash of computer, external drive and DV camera firewire failures - the firewire ports on the all the devices mysteriously ceased to function. No amount of software alterations or pram zapping fixed this problem. Testing with a voltmeter confirmed that the ports were no longer functioning.
I finally figured out that the cables were being inserted incorrectly in either and sometimes both firewire ports. how did i discover this?
If you look at a firewire port on many firewire devices (mac or external drive boxes) you can see that the port's housing is constructed of a piece of tin or sheet metal folded into the shape of a house. At the point of the "roof" of this house shape is where the 2 ends of the tin meet.
IMHO, this is the physical weak point of this design. It allows a person - say, a relatively inexperienced student, for example - to insert the a firewire cable wrong way, and with a suprisingly small amount of force. The roof point separates and spreads open to accomodate the square end of the incorrectly inserted cable. Of course, as soon as the exernal device is turned on, the damage occurs.
I've seen the ports on some firewire devices that minimize this design flaw by moving the point where the port housing metal ends meet to a different spot on the housing - like in the middle of either "wall" of the house-shaped housing (hard to descibe this without illustrations!).
The scenario of inserting fireiwre cables incorrectly may suggest brutish stupidity or ignorance to some of you more technically adept power users, but I saw it happen enough to convince me that it's not just that. The experience also has taught me to be extra careful when inserting firewire cables in any device. To be honest, i'm surprised I haven't read anything about this before.
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read b-dog's message above,
and hadn't tried it myself, but I did--you CAN plug a Firewire cable
in backwards, and surprisingly, it doesn't take much extra force, IF
ANY, if you angle the plug so that its flat end goes into the port
first. I found it very easy to do this, even with a Firewire port
that has its metal shell folded so that its two ends meet along the
side, instead of at the peak. However, I've never read, with all the
reports people have posted about their Firewire failures, that
anybody admitted to having done this. I would have thought that
more people would have admitted it, considering they were posting
a message on the subject, but maybe not--maybe a lot of people
never notice which way they plug in a Firewire cable. A piece of
evidence that this is sometimes the case, is that I've been fixing
Macs since 1985, in which most people bring me their Macs, and a
rather large number of my clients have expressed the concern that
"I'll never figure out how to plug everything back into my Mac once
I get it back." They say this even after I remind them, and show
them, that almost all the cables have plugs that are completely
different from each other, and in most cases there's only one port
on their Mac that matches the plug for each of their cables, and in
cases where there are two identical ports (USB and Firewire in
particular), they can plug into either port (the same wasn't true of
the DIN8 modem and printer serial ports in the older Macs), and so
it's usually impossible to plug almost any of them in wrong (you
can't plug an AC power cord into a serial port or USB socket). The
paradox is that, since 1985, and about 13,000 clients, regardless
of their anxiousness (or perhaps because of my reassurance), I
might have gotten only about five calls (or less) from people who
needed help in plugging things back in once they got their Mac back.
So, they or someone who helps them has been able to figure out
their cables well enough. When I point out to some of my clients
that the shapes, pins, keys, and notches on their cable plugs make
the plugs polarized so they'll go in only one way, many express
surprise and an apparent fear that they'll be able to remember this,
so maybe a lot of people have this conceptual problem. The types
of plugs that we dealt with on Macs, prior to Firewire and USB,
tended to be somewhat more idiot-proof (for lack of a kinder
term), even DIN8 serial ports and ADB ports, since you had to exert
a lot more force to plug these in wrong (and this would usually
break just the
pins in the plug instead of letting you plug it in wrong). I've had to
fix only a few bent or broken DIN8 and ADB cable pins or ports. I
know that, since I've been working with so many people over the
years, that I've been surprised how many people are literally
dyslexic (they get some things backwards due to a neurological
disorder), and have other perceptual difficulties, such as being
afraid to look at something carefully before they do something
with it (that's not a snide comment, it's a literal observation of a
genuine problem). Apparently Firewire ports/plugs (and USB, for
that matter) are too similar on the two ends of each plug to make
it clear to less-observant users that they're polarized, AND you can
more
easily plug them in wrong (unlike the older ports), resulting not
just in a broken plug on a cheap cable, but a broken Firewire or USB
circuit, or just a port if you're lucky (I had to replace the USB port
on a G4 Cube since one of my clients didn't notice the plugs were
polarized, and told me that he figured that since a little force
didn't let it go in, that more force was what was required). Since
Firewire and USB are now "standards", with plugs of a size and
shape that can't be changed now, and manufacturers have also
standardized on being cheap and not caring to install protection
circuitry in these ports, even after several years of reports of
these problems, it doesn't seem the problem will be fixed any time
soon. However, one possible solution would be for Firewire ports
to be manufactured so that their metal shell simply wouldn't bend
and give when you plug a cable into them backwards--a sturdier,
inflexible shell. If you leave this shell the way it is-- flimsy--
then no amount of redesign of the plugs on the cables will help.
while it is very nice of LaCie to get themselves some free press,
what light did they shine on the subject other than using this as an
opportunity to pat themselves on the back.......???
yes, there are some companies that product lousy cables and
lousy bridgeboards. there are more companies out there selling
FireWire than should be allowed. All they are doing in going
overseas, purchasing a product, slapping their label on it, and
calling it their own. they have no clue as to the techology itself or
what makes it tick.
how many times have we seen companies make press releases
because they figured out they could put a 160G or 200G or 250G
drive into an enclosure?
you know why some companies only sell enclosures? because
the hard drive market is so volatile that you can buy an empty
enclosure and a bare hard drive, install it yourself, and save
yourself money - but that is another story......
WOW - what a revelation!!! wish I had thought of doing that.....
the FireWire port issue is related to the following:
1) potential bad cable
2) potential bad bridgeboard
3) the difference in the quality of components used, such as the
power regulator on the bridgeboard
4) connecting or disconnecting a device improperly
5) connecting a cable improperly
6) on some machines, such as the 400 and 500 TiPB, the port was
not set up to handle multiple bus powered devices, and each time
you connect or disconnect a device, it causes the phy to recycle or
reset and potentially blow up
any of these things could cause a port to blow out.
Even the best manufacturers sometimes miss an item on their QA
line - it happens
you want to protect your ports, then be careful - there are a number
of things you can do to protect your ports
1) use a hub/repeater in between your device(s) and your port -
this will help to buffer the port from overloads
2) wait until the machine has completed booting before connecting
or disconnecting a FireWire device - DO NOT connect devices
while the machine is booting up!
3) don't use thin cables longer than 1M
4) power up the device before connecting
5) don't remove devices without unmounting them from the
desktop correctly
6)
devils_advocate says "power up the device before connecting".
However, many people have given exactly the opposite advice, as
one way to prevent blown Firewire ports; I'd say that, on average,
half the advice has been to power off your Firewire device before
plugging it in, and the other half of those advising, say to power up
the Firewire device before you plug it in. It seems the problem is
tougher to resolve than we'd like. SCSI was a lot easier to work
with. I wonder if the speed at which people plug in and unplug
Firewire plugs has anything to do with the problem--do Firewire
ports blow out more often when you plug a cable into them quickly,
giving the Firewire circuitry less time to adjust properly, or do the
ports fry more often when you plug into them slowly, for some
other reason?
Sorry, but I understood Firewire was supposed to be Hot Plugable?
Perhaps we should insist that Apple present us with a set of 'rules' which cover the use of Firewire and that if followed will ensure that we do not 'burn out' any part of the computer and which qualify us for free replacement if this then happens. So far we seem to have many suggestions as to how to avoid problems but no definitive directive from the manufacturer. The thought that inexperienced persons should have to inspect cables for 'internal' screening" etc., horrifies me.
You will have to have five hands.
Simultaneously press the Command, Option, P, and R keys at startup.
(Keep your hands on the keys until the third reboot has started.)
The machine will reboot the first time and chime.
The machine will reboot the second time and chime.
The machine will start to reboot the third time and chime.
Let go of the keys and allow it to finish booting
- by submit010 January 19, 2009 12:22 AM PST
- I don't like scary and violent movies. There's too much blood and gore.MB7-517Leave it up to me.642-642You only live once.HP0-J23So what?You're getting on my nerves! You're really annoying.132-s-900.7I knew it.Go to hell! you're such a bully. Go to hell.642-373Enough! I don't want to hear it.The truth hurts.Beat about the bush.
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