This drive has been recently purchased and infrequently used mainly with the Firewire 800 interface. Has worked well until it started to not respond. I have it setup as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with 4 partitions one is for Time Machine backups.
I am on a MacBook Pro 2.26 GHz Core 2 duo running the latest Mac system software that is up to date.
Problem: It would hang my computer and using Force Quit I would get a message saying "Finder not responding". I would then force quit the Finder and can only get it back by manually turning off the DriveStation which of course sets off a warning saying the drive was unmounted improperly. At times the drive/partitions would not mount and I would turn off everything and it then may mount after that. Sometimes it would hang when copying from one drive to this drive. So after being quit frustrated, I tried to erase the volume and initialize again and repartition...and I would not be able to unmount the disk so I could not proceed. Eventually after turning off DriveStation or rebooting my computer I would be able to unmount and I then be able initialize and partition the DriveStation again.
What I've done: 1. Tried Diskwarrior/tech tools- hangs the system and will not proceed-I would have to Force Quit
2. Hooked up to a G4 using Tiger-as above
3. Used a Firewire 400 to 800 cable- as above
4. Used a USB cable-as above
.....and if I spend enough time I would get lucky and be able to use Disk utility etc and I would be able to use it for a short period of time before the pattern would repeat itself.
Obviously I cannot run a computer like this with the potential of not being able to access my data (which I haven't been able to do for 2 weeks now). So I've exhausted the tools I have at my disposal. Oh and yes I can feel and hear the drive turning inside the DriveStation.
I would appreciate any help in solving this. Is it a hardware problem? Is it an Apple problem such as the system not having the correct driver or is it a Buffalo Tech problem and the drive does not work with this version Apple Software. I am quite frustrated at this point.
I have had the same exact problem using the Drivestation with my imac. The drive would hang my system and would hang while using diskwarrior, Apple **bleep** Utility and everything else I tried. Did you ever get an answer? It has to be a hardware issue as I have tried the drive on three different Macs with the same result
"It has worked well until it started not to respond" that sounds like hardware starting to fail, or software becoming corrupted. Please contact the Buffalotech support in your area for a resolution or replacement.