My suggestion instead of the d2 would have been to purchase a FireWire 800 enclosure for his hard drive.

Using the included adapter might fix the problem. But it could also be a driver problem with the card.

Thanks Mark and Steven for your ideas.

Mark, I powered the LaCie through built-in connectoers on their PCI card simply to avoid having another power brick under my desk. Thanks to your advice I tried using the external power supply — unfortunately got the same symptoms. But great idea, glad I tried it! Thanks.

Also, I always (“now”) un-mount the LaCie and switch it off its power button when I’m done with it. If the computer does not go to sleep, I can easily re-mount the LaCie and use it. However, when the dual 2.7 G5 tower is in a re-awakened state, the LaCie drive refuses to mount.
And if I happen to look at Disk Utility, the drive is not there, but the system hangs! If I force quit Disk Utility the system returns to normal, just can’t use the LaCie. Activity Monitor doesn’t show any abnormal processes; I just need to reboot if I want to use the external SATA drive.

Steven you’re right about the Firewire enclosure. I’ve got an ADS case that takes IDE drives and runs great on FW400 and FW800.
I could have saved a lot of trouble. But since I would need to buy an new external case with SATA connectors inside, I thought, “Why not try to get the extra speed boost of an eSATA connection.”
(The LaCie eSATA, when it works, is REALLY fast! It is indistinguishable from the computer’s internal, SATA1 drives.)

Thanks again guys!

I listened to this podcast with great interest! I am a brand new Mac user and longtime listener from the days of Victor’s “Typical PC User” podcast. I switched to the Mac a few months ago.

My situation is this. I had problems with my new intel iMac and a USB drive that I was using for my Super Duper clone backups. I bought a firewire drive (Western Digital), and I ran the drive by the folks on the SuperDuper forum to make sure it would be compatible before purchase.

Every once in awhile, my iMac will lose contact with the firewire drive (just as it had done with my USB drive). I wonder if it is related to the “going to sleep” phenonenon Victor described with the G5?

If I reboot after fixing permissions, everything is fine. The reboot is necessary though. What scares me is that this is my bootable backup drive! What if when I need it, my iMac is not in contact with it?

I have Tech Tools Pro 4 (got it cheap in a recent MacUpdate bundle). I will only use it for diagnostics based on the podcast (and some other things I have seen). I will also purchase Disk Warrior eventually.

In the meantime, I am wondering if any of you have other suggestions. I bet mine is way more basic (and fixable) than George’s problem!

I was wondering if I should change my power setting. Right now I do have the hard drives set to power off when the iMac sleeps. Should they never power down?

Thanks in advance for any help with this!