MOTUnation.com

Since updating to ML a few weeks ago, I haven't run my external drives much except to make sure they were being recognized. Then yesterday I decided to get serious and start reconfiguring the 8+TB of internal and external drives.

Carbon Copy Cloner, Apple's Disk Utility (Restore) and simple dragging in the Finder was failing repeatedly in moving any substantial amount of data to the external (CalDigit enclosed) drives. So I sprung for the $40 update and CCC thinking that would fix it but still didn't work. But if I put the same drives in the Mac Pros' internal bay, all was well. So it's the enclosure, right? Well, maybe partially... I did a little reading (actually, a lot of reading) and it seems that under ML, some FW devices are unable to complete data transfers.

There doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern from user to user, but in my system, the self-powered CalDigit enclosures are just not going to work via the FW ports for any important stuff. Fortunately, they also have USB 3.0 ports. Unfortunately, I don't yet have a 3.0 card so I've spent the last 8 hours transferring about 500 GB over USB 2.0. Ugh! Card to be ordered today (any suggestions appreciated).

Another thing that was happening intermittently is that my MOTU Track 16 was loosing connectivity and FW buss power. Once I used the provided external power supply, I haven't had a problem with it, but it also seems that the T16 FW connection was not playing well with OS X 10.8.2 and it doesn't seem like Apple is going to do much about that.

There have been a couple of threads where people with MOTU FW audio interfaces have complained that they are incompatible with ML and they are sure it is NOT the FW port as it works with other devices. That may well be the case - sometimes - but clearly, based on what I've read at the Apple Discussions site and other reliable sources on the www, there is a problem with FW and ML. Apple has been moving away from FW on some machines in favor of ThunderBolt so don't expect any big push for Apple to fix this. in the mean time, if you don't have a TB Mac, start looking at USB 3.0 if your devices can handle it.

Just sayin'

Is USB3 faster or slower than eSATA 3G?

More academic in my case as I have an iMac with the eSATA port from OWC and can't upgrade my usb but this might be of interest to others.

I have been noticing FW problems since OS 10.5.8 and don't trust bus power at all. I'm going to throw a drive in my three unused FW enclosures to see if any work for Time Machine.

You may recall an old thread where I recommended usb over FW for external CD/DVD for Intel Macs. This is because you can't always emergency boot a Mac from a FW drive anymore but can from a usb burner (unlike a PPC - these require FW).

I was using the FW drives for TM and it was working fine under SL. My TM drives will be internal now with two 2TB drives running as TM (alternate) backups.

One of my enclosures, an overpriced NewerTech, flaked out on me, then the drive went south so I don't know which is the culprit. I will try that with a fresh drive first. As it also functions as a FW800/400 hub, it would be great if it did the job again. However, when it went down on me, the reports on the internet were that I wasn't alone.

I just acquired two other enclosures with DVD burners that I don't need- one FW800-400/eSATA/usb and an old FW400/usb.

I'd like to keep the eSATA for my VIs and have both my TM backups on Firewire drives that wake up when TM does. That's the goal.