Firewire external hard drive problem

Closed
alanmadden - Feb 1, 2009 at 11:55 AM
BennoTron Posts 7 Registration date Saturday January 31, 2009 Status Member Last seen February 2, 2009 - Feb 2, 2009 at 09:38 AM
Hello,

I have an external hard drive that wont respond to my firewire ports. its windows xp sp3

i also have a video camera that will work with the firewire port.

everything looks ok in device manager

strange thing is that the drive has a usb option and windows will recognise it there,its just under firewire


have already tried:
1. changing firewire cables.
2 tweakui -what do i do with it?
3.reinstalling the firewire hub card.


this all used to work fine now the drive wont appear in windows explorer.

is there a way of resetting the firewire ports?
Related:

2 responses

BennoTron Posts 7 Registration date Saturday January 31, 2009 Status Member Last seen February 2, 2009 1
Feb 1, 2009 at 12:34 PM
Can you get this drive to work on any other computers with the firewire port? I had a disk that was dual-mode (firewire and USB2) and eventually the firewire port went bad and I had to use it over USB. The soldering of the firewire can easily snap or crack if the unit is dropped or even if the cable takes too much movement or stress while plugged into the unit. If you can get the drive to work over firewire anywhere else, then go deeper into the issue on your PC, but first make sure that the port isn't bad.

TweakUI is, from my understanding, used to make adjustments to the user interface (UI) in windows to make everyday use as quick as possible; I don't see how it would be helpful with this issue.

Hope this helps,

Benno
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hi thanks for the reply


Not tried using the harddrive by firewire on other pcs , thats my next try, if it works by firewire then it must be the pc /windows thats the issue.


there are 2 firewire ports on the back and one usb. neither of the firewires work i think one is for daisychaining.


have treid different cables and on different firewire ports also, no differnece ,have 2 different pci adaptors with firewire on them, both seem to show up in fine in device manager.

tweakui, did some searching, some people think using the drives scection maky work.

have also used seagate tools on the drive, appears ok

unsure if its a windows thing or its the drive thats a issue.

only have a video camera that is firewire and it works fine.

am convinced its something to do with a port conflict in windows, a reinstall is my last option.

is there a way of restting ,the firewire ports,bus etc?

i forgot to mention everything was working fine until i disconnected everything from my pc,-connected another pc to my monitor keyboard etc to do work on that pc. when connecting back up this happened,

thanks in adance
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BennoTron Posts 7 Registration date Saturday January 31, 2009 Status Member Last seen February 2, 2009 1
Feb 2, 2009 at 09:38 AM
You've gotten other devices to work on your PC's firewire ports, so the FW card itself or the isn't the issue.

You've gotten this drive to work on the USB port, so the drive being a brick isn't the issue.

You've tried multiple ports with multiple cables, so it isn't a port on your PCI FW card or the cable.

Yes, usually the dual-firewire ports on such a device are for daisy-chaining, but either would normally work to plug into...looks like you have indeed tried both ports on the HD., but the logistics of the drive come into play here, because many times the ports will be attached to the board (on the HD) in one location so that when one goes bad, the other usually comes with it.

The plug-and-play ease of firewire would not lend any believability to the theory that some "port conflict" or something of the sort exists in this situation...I still feel strongly that if you try this HD out on another box, you'll find that it still doesn't work. If it does, I stand corrected, but firewire is a very simple connection protocol, and with all of the steps you've taken (uninstalling and re-installing the PCI cards, rebooting, trying different cables on 2 different PCI cards and on different ports) I have to believe this is something physical on the drive.

Let me know what happens :)

Benno
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