New Lacie hard drive not recognized - OSX

January 30, 2006 7:55 AM

Lacie hard drive problem - Mac OS Panther. For the past couple days, I was ripping CDs as MP3s via iTunes and writing them to my Lacie 160 Gig Firewire hard drive (the Porsche one). This morning, the drive "is unreadable by Mac OSX..." What gives?

I've searched for this here and on Lacie's website, but have not seen this exact issue as specifically related to Mac OSX.

Here's the full story. Mac Titanium Powerbook, 1Ghz 1 Gig RAM. Lacie Firewire 160 Gig hard drive (Porsche design). Last night after ripping about 20 CDs to MP3 and writing them (successfully) to the external hard drive, I set one last one to rip and went to bed, forgetting to power down before going to sleep.

This morning, everything looked fine. I ejected the CD from last night and inserted a new one. I got an error message I've never seen before. Something like "Mac OSX cannot read or write to the CD you inserted". I ejected it. Then I ejected the hard drive icon on the desktop, unplugged the firewire, and restarted the computer.

Now my machine is recognizing, ripping and playing CDs just fine. But when I plug in the restarted hard drive I get a message like "Mac OSX cannot read the device you inserted, what do you want to do? To continue press ignore. " (or maybe it said it was unreadable) There is also an option to eject, and an option to initialize. I've tried ignore, and nothing happens. I've tried restarting the Powerbook and the drive a few times and am getting the same message.

Any idea what I should do? Do I have to initialize the drive, and erase all the stuff I've put on it? Is there any workaround? If I do need to initialize it, is this the best/only way to do it? Is this a chronic problem with Lacie drives? I've read a few complaints about them here and there online, but this is only like the fourth day I've played around with it.

Any help, advice or advice about external hard drives in general is appreciated.

posted by jeff-o-matic to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Since you're using Panther, I suppose it's possible you've been bitten by the Panther Firewire bug.
posted by philulrich at 8:13 AM on January 30, 2006

Again, I'm a little fuzzy on this. Thanks for the lead, but the article implies the drive "is not recognized" and what to do in that case. This makes me think that nothing at all would happen when the device is attached. I'm getting an error message that the device is unreadable. Is that the same thing?
posted by jeff-o-matic at 8:25 AM on January 30, 2006

Did you try Disk Utility? Look for the firewire drive in the left column, and try "repair disk". This can work even if the drive does not mount (i.e., appear on your desktop).
posted by istewart at 8:42 AM on January 30, 2006

Macintouch has been discussing problems with Lacie drives for a while now. Good luck!
posted by kimota at 8:45 AM on January 30, 2006

I've had some issues with my Lacie drives as well. Try downloading the lastest firmware from the Lacie site (they have a little Mac app that will scan your drives). This solved the problem for me.
posted by aladfar at 9:14 AM on January 30, 2006

I had a similar crisis last night, but with a different brand harddrive, and on a pc, not a mac. And with 2 huge projects I had been working on for about a week. Eek. I ended up using a program called "Easy Data Recovery Professional." I'm not sure if they have a version for mac, but it would be worth searching download.com or your favorite torrent sites for something similar. I managed to save *some* files, although not all.
posted by ruby.aftermath at 9:39 AM on January 30, 2006

I've seen this with a Lacie Porsche drive as well. Lacie's have, uh, lets just say a dubious reputation among the photographers I know for backing up data. This is totally anecdotal but they seem to fail at a ridiculously high rate.

I would try plugging it in on a few other machines to see if it mounts. If it does, and I know this goes without saying, but immediately copy everything off. If this doesn't work there's always the freezer trick (scroll down to Deep C: recovery.
posted by photoslob at 9:51 AM on January 30, 2006

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to try the 'disconnect, power down, remove battery and wait 15 minutes' trick tonight. After I repair disk permissons.

Again a lot of this stuff is written in a fuzzy kind of way. I read a lot of 'disk won't mount' problems. Is this the same as getting an error message saying the drive is unreadable? This is why I asked the question here, as I can't find anything that addresses that exact wording. Drive won't mount to me seems to be 'nothing happens when connected.'

Keeping my fingers crossed today, and I'll get back on it tonight.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 10:09 AM on January 30, 2006

Followup:

Success!

Following advice from here and other bits from around the net, I shut down and disconnected everything - even power cables, firewire cable and the laptop battery. I let it sit for 10 minutes, then powered up the devices separately, and connected them. Now it works.

Thanks all.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 5:29 PM on January 30, 2006

Followup to follow up:

Having same problem again, the next morning. Called tech support. Guy claimed he's never heard of this before. Hadn't heard of the 'power-down' trick either. I got it mounted while on the phone, and he had me reformat it in Mac OS extended. Worked for a couple hours. Now, same problem again.

New tech guy this morning says this is an internal software issue, and could be caused by incomplete/corrupt data on the external drive. I'm about to pull my hair out. I'm going to send it back to them tomorrow for a 'fix.'

Guess I'm going to rip CDs onto my laptops drive and transfer them over a Gig or so at a time. This really sucks. First time I've ever had any trouble with this computer, in 2+ years.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 8:08 AM on February 1, 2006

Tried it out on my G5 at work. It worked for a while, then wouldn't be recognized on either machine. Sending back to Lacie for a new drive. Tis last tech support guy said it sounded like a faulty drive. What an insight!
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:39 PM on February 10, 2006

Another followup, in case anyone's reading. I got a replacement drive from Lacie a week faster than they originally promised (?) and it's working fine.

One more thing. I spoke with an aquaintance who's an IT person. She said she's had the best luck with drives made by Iomega.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 7:34 PM on February 15, 2006