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Apple Acknowledges FireWire 800 Hard Drive Problems

by , 8:00 AM EST, October 31st, 2003

Apple has officially acknowledged a problem with FireWire 800 hard drives that was first reported by MacFixit shortly after the release of Panther. The problem can cause a FireWire 800 drive to lose all of the data on the drive. Though MacFixit reports have tied the problem directly to Panther, Apple's published note on the problem makes no mention of the new OS. The company is saying that the problem is tied to the Oxford 922 FireWire 800 bridge. From Apple:

A special message for FireWire 800 disk drive users

Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Apple is working with Oxford Semiconductor and affected drive manufacturers to resolve this issue which resides in the Oxford 922 chip-set.

In the interim, Apple recommends that you do not use these drives. To stop using the drive, you should unmount or eject the disk drive before doing anything else. Please check this web page for further updates.

You can find the note on Apple's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

As Apple works on getting its customer base to switch to Panther, it clearly doesn't want to portray the image of problems with the new OS. Lost data on drives is among the worst problems, too. Perhaps that is why there is no mention of Panther in the note, though it is possible the problem is not Panther-specific. Between that and potential ill-will relating to needed security patches for Jaguar, Apple has a tricky path to walk. Hopefully, both issues will be resolved sooner, rather than later.

Apple's FireWire 800 Note

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