Drive Station Combo 4 1 tb - MAC freeze

mpwillis · January 23, 2009, 07:22:29 AM

Hi - am using DS Combo 4 1 tb with Imac 24. Tried searching forum but didn't see similar prob. With either Fat32 orig format or Mac OS extended (journaled) format, drive on and mounted... if machine sleeps will not wake up with drive on. I then power drive off (mac is on entire time), machine will wakeup and alert that improperly unmounted drive (normal alert). Then power drive back on, it mounts and reads/writes just fine. No problem with read/write or transfer before or after lockup, just locks up machine on sleep. Any suggestions? tia mpw

mpwillis · January 23, 2009, 07:35:44 AM

To amplify. Should have mentioned, have this formatted (mac os extended (journaled)) as one, almost 1 tb, partition, and am running Leopard with all the latest updates. Mac seems to read, and verify entire disk so no indications that partition size is a problem, thus didnt think that an issue with my freeze-up. mpw

insanelysick · January 23, 2009, 01:39:08 PM

Are you using firewire 800 by any chance? I'm having a problem with mine with firewire800 hanging my iMac untill i turn the drive off, it seems ok with firewire400 however

mpwillis · January 23, 2009, 11:07:29 PM

Thanks. Yes it is fw800. I havent tried fw400 but will check it out. Even with 800 the transfer r/w is great - am using for video storage - just seems to hang up sleep and reboot. Anyone else having a similar problem? This is a bummer because fw800 is one of the reasons why I went with this particular drive.

insanelysick · January 24, 2009, 12:27:42 AM

Thats the reason I bought it as well. I ran an integrity test via fw800, fw400 and usb and the fw800 failed but the fw400 and usb had no errors. Are you using the cable that came boxed with the hdd?

mpwillis · January 26, 2009, 07:57:41 PM

Yes am using the bundled fw800 cable that came with the combo 4 drive. I am trying to find the fw400 cable (just moved my office), will see if similar to your experience. Have you tried another cable? Can you describe the integrity test that you did? Will try myself when I find my cable. thanks.

mpwillis · January 28, 2009, 08:54:11 PM

Used Drivw Genius 2 and got good integrity test with both FW800 & 400 cables, although constancy of integrity was better with FW400. Still having the freeze up problem with either cable. Now trying usb. Am going to purchase another FW (either) to try and trouble shoot. Again, drive and MAC combo will not survive a sleep. Locks up Mac with blue screen. Must power MAC off with on/off, turn off drive, repower MAC repower drive, works just fine. Any other thoughts out there?

mpwillis · January 31, 2009, 01:24:34 AM

FYI - resized partition yielding 2 ~ 500 G drives. Now with any of the three cables, mac/drive combo will survive sleep and restart. Any thoughts or similar experiences? Not a solved problem but a workaround.

AngryBob · February 15, 2009, 08:07:51 PM

I am also having the same problem. I do have more than one FW800 device and the other hard drive doesn't have any issues (and it is a 1.5TB OEM). Some minimal testing seems to show that using the FW800 -> FW400 cable doesn't cause the DriveStation to lock up the Mac. So I currently have it as Mac -> FW800 -> Other Drive -> FW800 cable FW400 -> DriveStation. I was hoping it was just a sleep issue, but it seems to be something more complicated.

Kinda sucks. I liked the speed bump of FW800.

Mordae · June 07, 2009, 06:21:13 AM

I also have this same problem and even the partition doesn't help.

Switching from FW800 to FW400 Helped a bit, but occasionally my Finder still freezes and there is no other fix than disconnecting the FireWire cable from my iMac.

If there is no fix to this, I will personally never buy another Buffalo product myself.

And even if a fix appears, I probably wont buy from Buffalo, because of all the hassle and data loss I've gotten from using this drive.

Kameran · September 21, 2009, 12:14:47 PM

I am currently testing this issue at the moment. Hopefully I will be able to find the main source of the lockup and talk to our developers and see what kind of solution we can release. Hopefully this can be taken care soon. If you have any specific information regarding this issue please email it to info@buffalotech.com and in the subject line put DS COMBO 4 Mac Lockup.

Thanks,

Kameran

Memoryman · September 21, 2009, 01:02:06 PM

What revision of firmware is on the DS Combo4?

Did the issue start with OS10.6, or was it happening with 10.5.8 and 10.5.7?

Message Edited by Memoryman on 09-21-2009 01:03 PM

fullerphoto · September 25, 2009, 03:27:34 PM

Sorry Buffalo.. Just purchased this drive for my Macbook pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and the same issue for me also.

Is there a fix in the pipeline?? because i feel i just wasted a good deal of money and I bought the drive in Thailand and it's really hard to get your money back so i'm kinda stuck with it.

How do i check the revision?

Message Edited by fullerphoto on 09-25-2009 03:29 PM

Memoryman · September 25, 2009, 03:50:23 PM

to find LinkStation FW revision, start up Nasnavi or Linknavi, select your LS and the FW revision will be identified in the bottom half of screen.

fullerphoto · September 25, 2009, 04:08:25 PM

I can't locate any of those pieces of software for 'DRIVE'station combo 4, nothing in the downloads section....

Next?

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Drive Station Combo 4 1 tb - MAC freeze