External FireWire Drive Mysteriously Dismounting Itself
I've had odd luck with the SimpleTech proDrive 1TB external drive on my new Unibody MacBook Pro 17" since I got it. I needed to get more space, and I made the mistake of not going with Western Digital MyBook because the drive in the SimpleTech was a WD 1TB drive. I thought they'd be the same.
Wrong. The I/O board is completely different. I'm sorry I got it.
But that's not the problem. The problem has been that when the MacBook Pro tries to tell the drive to go to sleep, it doesn't understand the message, times out, and then the Mac thinks the drive has dismounted itself on it's own. There's nothing I can do by unplug it and plug it back in to get it going. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's a pain in the neck, and I wish I had a WD MyBook in it's place.
Well, today I noticed it doing this and when I plugged it back in is would not mount! OK, this is new and it's not fun. So I broke out a USB cable and hooked that up. Bingo! Worked fine. Try the FireWire cable - no good. Repeat two more to see that the USB was working and the FireWire wasn't.
No messages in the Console or logs. Nothing.
Then I thought Hey, let's put it to sleep and wake it up and see what happens. Good idea. After it went to sleep successfully, when I opened the case and it woke up, I was able to connect and mount the drive.
Whew!
I'm still not happy with the drive, and now I'm more motivated than ever to get a MyBook. They just don't have any problems. I've had at least four of them at home and they all run like a champ. So maybe that's a task for this weekend - get a >1TB MyBook drive. Anyway, if this happens again, that's the first thing to try.