[Leica] Computer help!!!

[Jim at hemenway.com (Jim Hemenway)]

Tina:

I use an external 250 GB firewire drive from Iomega to backup my files,
especially my photos, every week or so.

I only connect it to the computer when I do backups.  Otherwise it is
left with the firewire cable connected to the computer but not to the
drive which is not plugged into an AC outlet either.

The following may sound crazy!

When I want to use it, I boot the computer first and wait til it's
running properly.  Then I connect the firewire plug into the drive and
only then do I plug the drive into the power outlet.  After several
seconds it mounts on the computer.

This is the sequence that I've found works.  Otherwise, I don't always
get the external drive to mount, and even if it does mount, it doesn't
always show that it contains any files and sometimes a dialogue box pops
up asking me if I want to reformat it!

The following is from my son, Matt:

-------------------------

There's a known problem with bus-powered drive enclosures ("bus-powered"
meaning that it gets its power from the computer and doesn't have its
own power plug) in that they can sometimes short out part of the
firewire circuitry on either the computer or the drive end. This can
happen easily if you're rooting around under your desk and don't plug in
the cable firmly and/or straight- when the computer attempts to dump
power into the cable, the electricity can spark across the gap and end
up feeding into the data lines... the chips on the receiving end of
those lines can't handle the load and fry.

The *proper* solution to this is to get a drive enclosure that has an
on/off switch, and make sure the cable is firmly seated on both ends
before turning it on... failing that, try to plug the cable in without
jiggling and try to remember to always plug in the computer end first,
so that if there's a spark it'll fry the drive enclosure and not your
computer.

If you have a self-powered (AC) drive enclosure, there's less to worry
about. It's still a good idea to plug in the firewire cable on both ends
before turning on the drive though, as some computers may not be all
that smart and could attempt to power the drive anyway.


And on a related note, always try and remember to unmount and unplug a
firewire drive before you shutdown or restart. Some machines (PCs with a
crappy BIOS and certain Macs running select versions of OSX) can do
funky stuff during the boot sequence that can permanently @#$% over the
firmware on the drive enclosure, which can at worst case corrupt the
directory structure on the drive to an unrecoverable level.

-------------

I don't know if this will help you at all, you might want to ask the
Geek Squad about it.

Jim





Tina Manley wrote:

> At 10:44 AM 7/23/2005, you wrote:
> 
>> Outboard disks, such as those Tina describes, do not involve the IDE 
>> controller chip on the motherboard. They are linked with USB2 or 
>> FireWire, and, in general, have an IDE chip inside the external disk 
>> housing.
> 
> 
> All of the drives that have totally failed, meaning they don't spin and 
> on the disk diagnositic test they come up with "Fail", have been 
> internal, Maxtor drives.  There are 6 of them, all 250GB, all Serial 
> ATA's.  I also have 2 interior Maxtor 250GB, IDE drives from the last 
> computer that Dell had to replace.  Dell wanted me to send all of them 
> back in when they replaced them each time, but I insisted on keeping 
> them to possibly recover information (which I have not been able to do). 
> The drives that are still working, that I can write to and that pass the 
> diagnostic test, but have suddenly had all previously saved information 
> disappear, are external LaCie's - 400GB and 120GB - and an external 
> Western Digital 300GB drive.  One of the LaCie's is Firewire only, one 
> is USB only and the Western Digital is both USB  and Firewire.  Right 
> now I've hooked up my last internal C drive to my laptop using an 
> external housing and am trying to copy some of the important files onto 
> CDs before it all disappears into the ether.  It's a big problem because 
> parts of the programs are scattered all over the file system so you 
> can't ever copy everything that you need for a program like ProShow 
> Gold.  That's the one that I had done so much work on and would love to 
> be able to recover!
> 
> I've been in Charleston all week-end babysitting my grandchildren (and 
> photographing them with the Leica R 80/1.5 and 100/2.8 lenses).  It was 
> too hot to even walk around in Charleston.  Don't ever plan to go there 
> in July or August!!  I hoped being away from the computer would help put 
> things in perspective, but it only resulted in some sleepless nights as 
> I tried to figure out what could be wrong.
> 
> Thanks to everybody for all of your suggestions and help.  I'm counting 
> tremendously on the Geek Squad which will show up tomorrow at 3:30.   
> I've printed out all of the suggestions and ideas about what might be 
> wrong (THANKS!)  Keep your fingers crossed for me and my computer.  I 
> just want to be able to access all of my work!!
> 
> Leically,
> 
> Tina
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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