computer can't find firewire

[Brian Mastalski]

I have a western digital 80meg/8meg buss drive in an ADS pyro firewire box that seems to have all the right specs. I installed the drive to initialize and partition with drive settup as instructed. I was led to believe the best way to comfigure the system was to have everything on the external drive so off i went and everything seemed to be fine--I was recording up to 8 tracks and playing back 24 just fine, but every few days I'd push it too far and crash, usually no big deal but then the computer can't find the firewire drive. At first I would just fiddle with the cable and restart 5 or 6 times, sometimes getting that clicking-wirring sound of the drive trying to find the computer(?) and eventually it does find it and everything is fine for another week or so, but it seems to be getting worse, and now this last time its been days of restarts and it still hasn't found the drive!! I use a G4/400 and have upgraded to PT32 and I can't tell if it got worse with the upgrade, but I can't figure out why something doesn't show up even if it won't mount. I'm pretty much stumped and would appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[Loftman]

ADS pyro firewire

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I had this drive and had to throw it in the
trash. I had the same problems you are describing. Sorry for the bad news, but this drive is *****. Try to get your money back now! No, I'm not kidding... Sorry!

[Brian Mastalski]

MyGodMan that's horrible news--but are you talking about the drive or the box?

[Loftman]

Both.... Actually I'm not sure which was causing the problem, but I just decided to end the misery and buy a new drive. It did work a couple times though. I really dont know what to tell you from a technical point of view. I'm just sharing my experience..

[Brian Mastalski]

Loftman, thanks tremendously for the speedy reply, as usual it makes me want to ask ten more questions, if you will indulge me for a moment.

I've seen the drive itself get rave reviews elswhere in this group, in fact someone actually recommended that drive over a scuzzy....

May I ask what drive settup you ended up with? Also the one thing I haven't tried yet is removing the drive from the box and installing it in the mac--any thoughts?

I guess whats tripping me up about this is that it worked relatively fine for months, now nothing!! I mean, I can understand if the protools won't work but for the drive to not show up?!! This settup was designed to work with a mac and meets all the spec requirements to run protools--where did we go wrong?!!

Sorry to vent...I'm sure you remember the feeling!

[Reemabeets]

heres is one fix that works for me i connected my QPS CDRW F-W drive first to my mac F-W port than from the QPS CDRW drive to the ADS pyro box. i have a WD HD in my pyro box
it work good as long as the QPS drive is first in the chain

[Brian Mastalski]

Thanks fer the tip....I'll try anything at this point!! Should try it tonight and I'll let you know how it goes...

[steins]

I've trashed my Pyro kits - I found them to be very unrealible. I was always wondering if the drives would mount or not, or how many reboots/poweroff's/cable-pull-inserts I had to do to get the thing working. Never found a solution. The IDE drives worked fine when they decided to mount.

Been using Icecubes since then - much better.

Stein Tore

[Brian Mastalski]

Holy Crap!!!! it worked!! I plugged the firewire drive into the CD burner and lo and behold the computer found the drive for the first time in a week. Preliminary testing looks good, plays back 27 tracks just fine. let me do some more testing and I'll be back in a couple of hours....

[Brian Mastalski]

sorry for the delay------Well, it only worked that one time and it was back to the same old problem. Thanks to all who offered advice.

Just once I would like to take a piece of non-working crap like this, set it in the middle of the stee, and just drive my car over it!!!