Comments on: Panther bites Firewire

Panther bites Firewire

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 07:41:19 -0800

Panther Bites Firewire - users get burned. Reports continue to pour in about catastrophic data loss on external firewire drives among users of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther). Apple continues to insist that only FW 800 drives are affected, but numerous users of FW 400 drives report similar problems. (more inside)

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 07:44:39 -0800

Panther also apparently refuses to recognize external drives larger than 128GB, and some users report catastrophic results while using FileVault - a new on-the-fly file encryption bug... oops... feature.

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 07:47:33 -0800

Also: Gene Steinberg reports on data recovery options available to affected users.

By: jsonic

jsonic — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 07:59:30 -0800

I second the FileVault problems. I had data loss and app stability issues after turning it on. A complete format and reinstall without turning on FileVault seems to have resolved this specific problem.

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:26:26 -0800

I haven't had any problems with my 160GB FW400 drive, but I've been very careful not to leave it connected during boots, shutdowns, or sleeps.

By: hackly_fracture

hackly_fracture — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:32:17 -0800

hyperizer's method is safe, I guess, but as a lazy user let me add that it's sort of a pain in the ass.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:36:37 -0800

Once you get the firmware update, you should be fine. [It would have been nice to know that ahead of time, though.]

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:41:34 -0800

Unfortunately, nobody is issuing any firmware updates (yet) for FW 400 drives, because Apple is downplaying the problem.

By: jaded

jaded — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:46:35 -0800

You know - it's funny: one of the things the Mac crowd always touts as a big plus for their side is "one hardware platform". Since Apple builds the hardware, the assumption has always been that you can trust Apple with your hardware and software. It would appear that such reasoning was flawed. What I think is really funny (funny odd and funny haha) is that as a wintel user, I've never had the catastrophic windows driver failure of the sort described here. Sounds like someone needs to inform Apple that their QA is broken.

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:51:28 -0800

It took you an hour and five minutes to get here? You're late, Mr. Schadenfreude. We'll have to dock your pay.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:52:15 -0800

Surely folks didn't update their OS without having a backup???? I cannot believe this has happened. jaded: I have. The whole disk was fucked.

By: soulhuntre

soulhuntre — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:55:25 -0800

One can only imagine the screaming outrage if this had been Microsoft (or for those from that other site, M$).

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 09:14:23 -0800

As a longtime Apple fan, I've certainly been disappointed with Panther. My problem has been with Font Book, which is not a very good font management system (even for me, not a huge power user) and caused massive problems on other Apple apps. I think I'll be able to fix it once I have time to go back and do a clean install, but still, why did Apple go ahead and release this when it is clearly not ready for prime time?

By: JollyWanker

JollyWanker — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 09:38:32 -0800

jaded: Since Apple builds the hardware, the assumption has always been that you can trust Apple with your hardware and software. It would appear that such reasoning was flawed. Um... no, the drives in question weren't built by Apple, they're built by 3rd party vendors, using the same kind of wild-ass variety of internals that are so common on the Wintel side.

By: n9

n9 — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:32:34 -0800

BTW, the vendor (who certainly had access to Panther well before it shipped -- I've had it since the WWDC) should have fixed this issue long ago. I would come down harder on Apple if the exact same vendor didn't botch things up just as badly when 10.2 came out. They denied that the problem was theirs and then made like they were going to charge for the upgrade and THEN they fixed it after people went apeshit on various mac bbses. As for the 400 problem, from what I've heard the 800 chipset is present in some models of external HD that have 400 jacks. I wonder what the issues are with File Guard also -- I've been using it with no problems whatsoever and I usually manage make things that break do so.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:37:21 -0800

EarlyadopterFilter - We Still haven't Learnt Our Lesson.

By: j.edwards

j.edwards — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:51:53 -0800

As for the 400 problem, from what I've heard the 800 chipset is present in some models of external HD that have 400 jacks. This is correct, the Oxford 922 chipset is almost cheaper than 911 and since they probably only want to buy one for their drives, they're getting the 922. Unfortunately, the 1.05 firmware isn't yet available for FW400 drives, so people are kind of out of luck. I don't have a 922-based FW400 drive, so I can't try to uploadf the 1.05 firmware, but hopefully a solution gets posted soon.

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 11:18:25 -0800

j.edwards: I've posted this to a couple of Mac help forums - I'm not sure if it's relevant to you Yesterday, I bought a Bytecc ME-350F firewire 400 HDD enclosure [Oxford 911 based], and a Western Digital 200GB drive to put in it. Panther refused to recognize the drive in any context other than Disk Utility, which refused to properly format it. The drive worked fine in OS 9.2.2. Today, I decided to compare the config_911.txt file included with the uploader_v1_40 file that's floating around, against the config values reported by the uploadergui application. I ran the application, clicked "modify configuration information", and then clicked "advanced". I noticed that in the config_911txt file, MasterUDMA was set to 4. The uploadergui app indicated that on the enclosure, MasterUDMA was set to OFF. So I set it to 4, clicked "upload information", and presto: my drive was instantly recognized on the desktop - both partitions I'd set under Disk Utility were there. I tested reading, writing, reformatting and partitioning, and everything seems fine now.

By: ook

ook — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 11:54:07 -0800

My problem has been with Font Book, which is not a very good font management system /me takes the faintest opportunity to vent some font-book-related annoyance: Font Book was the reason I upgraded, and I'm extremely disappointed with it. It has, hands down, the worst UI I've ever seen in an Apple application. No context menu support; no way to see which fonts aren't in a collection; no way to resolve more than one duplicate at a time; inconsistent behavior ("remove font" sometimes means remove it from a collection, other times means put it in the trash); stupid confirmation popups on every action, as a band-aid to mask the inconsistent behavior; no undo; no apparent way to tell from the filesystem whether a font is enabled or not; meaningless preferences settings (why would you want to "disable a collection, but not the fonts within it"?) and if you have more than 500 or so fonts, even if they're all disabled, your system bogs down completely -- which makes it useless as a way to browse through a large collection of fonts. Which is what I needed it for in the first place. It's worse than Suitcase. And that's saying a lot. Here's hoping version 2 is a little less brain-dead.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 12:51:16 -0800

It amazes me that Mac, having long been a supporter and enforcer of clean, easy-to-use, standardized interfaces, has over the past few years been abandoning this (quite popular) practice for "innovation's" sake. It's like they're trying to make their apps look like the cases the computers come in. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

By: damclean2

damclean2 — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 12:58:33 -0800

I'm a fan of Font Reserve... but it too has its limits. Good luck.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:42:35 -0800

Panther also apparently refuses to recognize external drives larger than 128GB Only under certain conditions, which appear to be Firewire PCI cards or USB-to-Firewire converters. My two Firewire drives are fine, and I reboot and shutdown the computer without shutting them off or replugging them.

By: terrymiles

terrymiles — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:52:27 -0800

I still havn't forgiven them for selling me a Newton

By: n9

n9 — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:57:14 -0800

yeah. i used to sell computers for a living. i won the Newton sales contest by selling 90-some original (read: useless) Newtons in two months. By my estimate I sold one to every third person that looked at them. I think that I'll be 80 years old before I live down all that bad karma. the just reward was that all I won for pushing all those units was a Newton. :)

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:03:32 -0800

I should add: so far all the installations I've done of Panther, for my self and others, have gone fine. I should also add: crybabies should stay away from the cutting edge.

By: zeoslap

zeoslap — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 15:42:45 -0800

Nothing quite so sad/funny as a bunch of Mac apologists. This is a huge deal and Apple's attitude towards it has been nothing short of atrocious and yet you people try and sweep it under the rug as though it's just one of those things. Had this been Microsoft people would have been screaming bloody murder and getting a class action lawsuit together.

By: ook

ook — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 16:18:55 -0800

I second the FileVault problems. I had data loss and app stability issues after turning it on.... hyperizer's method is safe, I guess, but as a lazy user let me add that it's sort of a pain in the ass... Apple is downplaying the problem... As a longtime Apple fan, I've certainly been disappointed with Panther.... why did Apple go ahead and release this when it is clearly not ready for prime time?... hands down, the worst UI I've ever seen in an Apple application... Dumb, dumb, dumb.... Yeah, there sure are an awful lot of apologists in this thread, zeoslap. Did you compose your comment before reading the thread, or what?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 16:53:34 -0800

Well, you can't really blame the drive maker. Sure, their firmware shouldn't have fucked up, but if the drives were at all common, apple should have put in code to detect them and turn off whatever feature was causing the problem. Is it a hack? Yeah, kinda. But that's how you make OSs in the real world...

By: gen

gen — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:51:19 -0800

Longtime Win user just switched to a Powerbook. I waited until the aluminum chassis and Panther to upgrade. No problems to report. Loving my Mac very much.

By: zeoslap

zeoslap — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 19:43:31 -0800

mr ook, monju_bosatsu, i_cola and JollyWanker all seem to think this is no big deal, not apples fault etc etc so yes i read the thread

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 20:50:36 -0800

Wait, Font Book sucks? Oh, great. I was glad I decided to wait to upgrade - I have most of my data on one of those Firewire drives what get zapped - but now I may wait a really long time after all. Oh well.

By: Dick Paris

Dick Paris — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 21:57:19 -0800

Had this been Microsoft people would have been screaming bloody murder and getting a class action lawsuit together. Really? Neat.

By: derbs

derbs — Thu, 06 Nov 2003 04:02:13 -0800

Had this been Microsoft people would have been screaming bloody murder and getting a class action lawsuit together. I think Mac users are more forgiving to their computer company when things go wrong. You see, we don't have to put up with the same frustrations that Windows users go through every day. It makes us calmer people and more thankful for what Apple has spared us from.