Firewire Ports not working on Mac OS 10.8.5

[lownotesinc]

Mac Pro 2x2.6 Quad-Core Intel Xeon
20GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5770
Mac OS 10.8.5

Pro Tools HD 10.3.8

All of the sudden all my Firewire ports on my Mac stopped booting drives. (they're powering up) I'm sure the HD is healthy and the cables are good. The HD boots fine on my laptop (Mac OS 10.9)
There are others on the Apple Support Forum that have had this issue but, no solutions! Does anybody know a fix for this?
Thank you,
Mark

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by lownotesinc

Mac Pro 2x2.6 Quad-Core Intel Xeon
20GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5770
Mac OS 10.8.5

Pro Tools HD 10.3.8

All of the sudden all my Firewire ports on my Mac stopped booting drives. (they're powering up) I'm sure the HD is healthy and the cables are good. The HD boots fine on my laptop (Mac OS 10.9)
There are others on the Apple Support Forum that have had this issue but, no solutions! Does anybody know a fix for this?
Thank you,
Mark

I'm a little confused by your wording. Are you saying the computer boots fine but doesn't see the Firewire connected drives? Or are you trying to boot off a FW connected drive?

[lownotesinc]

I apologize for my confusing writing...
I'm not attempting to boot from my FW800 HDs. I'm trying to connect and mount external drives via the computer's FW800 ports only for data transfer.
These external FW800 drives and all my FW cables work on my OS10.9 Mac Laptop but, suddenly not on my Pro Mac OS 10.8.5. The external drives power up, but that don't mount on the desk top or become visible in Disk Utility.
I've read on the Apple support pages that there have been others with this issue but, nobody had a solution. Could I repair the drivers for OS 10.8.5?
Thank you for your help!

[musicman691]

The problem drives - are they standard Mac formatted or something else? Which computer were they formatted on?

[lownotesinc]

Thanks for your reply!
I formatted these on my MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5
as Mac OS Extended -Journaled GUID

Is this an issue? If so, how do I get these drives to be mountable on both of my computers as Mac OS drives?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by lownotesinc

Thanks for your reply!
I formatted these on my MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5
as Mac OS Extended -Journaled GUID

Is this an issue? If so, how do I get these drives to be mountable on both of my computers as Mac OS drives?

It shouldn't be an issue; I only asked because if the drives were formatted exfat that might have been the issue. Something I would try is to take just one of the drives and format it on the OSX 10.8.5 machine and see if that's readable on the OSX 10.9.5 machine. If that works then do the other drive. Not the most convenient thing to be sure.

You're going straight FW connection and not through a Thunderbolt to FW adapter are you? Again that shouldn't matter but you never know.

Hopefully the FW ports in the OSX 10.8.5 machine haven't died.

[lownotesinc]

Thanks for your suggestions. This has our studio's tech stumped also!
There are others on Apple Support and 9-5 Mac that have had similar issues that have showed up randomly in OS 10.8.5. Nobody has posted a solution yet.
If we figure this out, we'll share our path to success.