Don’t Hot swap firewire drives
Always shut down the computer before unplugging or plugging in a firewire drive. This goes for all firewire drive types both buss powered or those that have their own power supply.
Although firewire drives are promoted as being how swappable (can be plugged and unplugged whilst computer is running) in reality there are a number of known problems which can result in the drive or worst of all the firewire port on the computer being damaged even permanently.
Another suggestion if the drive is not to power up the drive until both ends of the firewire cable are connected. This comes from Wiebetech….
WiebeTech recommends the use of power switches in bus powered FireWire devices. This prevents the PHY within the FireWire device from transmitting voltage transients through the FireWire cable to the PHY on the motherboard of the host computer. Simply put, the FireWire device is not powered up until all connections have been made and voltages have had a chance to stabilize.
For more information on this and other issues around firewire port failures read Wiebetech‘s white paper on the subject.
Be careful how you insert the firewire cable.
People have managed to insert the firewire cable the wrong way round even though the connector is ‘keyed’ to prevent this. Take extra care to line up the slanted corners correctly. Again from Wiebetech‘s white paper…
In this scenario, the user inserts the cable with the connector twisted 180 degrees. An examination of the FireWire six pin ports suggests that this is not possible, but it has actually been done many times. It is more likely to happen when the port is worn, or when the port easily “spreads” when reverse inserted. Some FireWire ports are built with the metal seam at the narrow end of the port, making it much easier to reverse insert the cable. The resulting (errant) electrical connections cause Power lines to be directly connected to Data lines. This invariably fries the PHY attached to that port.
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Mike is Pro Tools genius and an award winning ‘audiomeister’, defined as ‘a person of great skill and authority in sound’. His vast array of credits include music (from classical to rock), drama and documentaries across all the BBC Radio networks, as well as audio post production for video and TV, ‘new media’, live sound, commercial CDs, DVDs and podcasts, helping clients tell their stories with sound. He has been described as "an oasis of calm in a stormy creative world"; "quick, creative & easy to work with"; "always going the extra mile"; and "invests himself in the success of your project"’.
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February 4, 2009 at 10:56 am
i once managed to plug a 400 cable the wrong way around into a PCI firewire card on my mac and blew not only the card, but also the canopus box and the motherboards firewire bus. had to get another PCI card which worked, but damn.. what a stupid mistakejohann
February 4, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Hi Johann,I have had to pick up the pieces from a client’s reverse insertion of a firewire cable. As you found out it is possible to insert a firewire cable in the wrong way round and you experienced the hard way the problems it can cause. Wiebetech’s white paper covers this area too.Thanks,Mike.