Hello all,

Problem: itunes doesn't recognize an iPod daisychained to an external
firewire drive.

I've got a biggish music collection housed on an external firewire drive
(Lacie 200gb). My powerbook sees it no problem.
I also have a 20gb iPod.
My powerbook sees that no problem, IF it is plugged directly into the
Mac's firewire port.

The problem of course is I need to access both at the same time.
Theoretically I should be able to plug the drive into the Mac and the iPod
into the drive - daisychaining. The trouble is that although both get
mounted on the desktop,and botha re accessible to the finder, iTunes
doesn't recognize that an iPod is attached, so it remains inaccessible.

It's not a power problem because a) the Lacie drive is powered and b) both
drives ARE readable and writeable via finder.

So it must be a bug in iTUnes.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix it?

I've tried reinstalilng iPod software ... no joy.

I suppose I could try Audion, but I'd rather stick with iTunes if poss.

regards

m

In article <pan.2003.10.10.07.36.27.810139[at]hotmail.com>, moll <max[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Problem: itunes doesn't recognize an iPod daisychained to an external
> firewire drive.
>
> I've got a biggish music collection housed on an external firewire drive
> (Lacie 200gb). My powerbook sees it no problem.
> I also have a 20gb iPod.
> My powerbook sees that no problem, IF it is plugged directly into the
> Mac's firewire port.
>
> The problem of course is I need to access both at the same time.
> Theoretically I should be able to plug the drive into the Mac and the iPod
> into the drive - daisychaining. The trouble is that although both get
> mounted on the desktop,and botha re accessible to the finder, iTunes
> doesn't recognize that an iPod is attached, so it remains inaccessible.
>
> It's not a power problem because a) the Lacie drive is powered and b) both
> drives ARE readable and writeable via finder.
>
> So it must be a bug in iTUnes.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix it?

Sounds like a reasonable deduction, given you can mount the iPod when it's
daisy-chained...

> I've tried reinstalilng iPod software ... no joy.

You don't mention what version of MacOS you're using?

"moll" <max[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.10.10.07.36.27.810139[at]hotmail.com...

> I've tried reinstalilng iPod software ... no joy.
>
> I suppose I could try Audion, but I'd rather stick with iTunes if poss.

Have you tried deleting the preference file? Maybe something as drastic and
deleting the iTunesMusic Library file and then re-importing all your files?

--Greg

moll wrote in message ...
>Hello all,
>
>Problem: itunes doesn't recognize an iPod daisychained to an external
>firewire drive.
>

You might try an external firewire hub. There are some things that don't
work well daisy chained that might work with a hub.

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 09:08:17 -0500, Greg Skluzacek wrote:

snip
>
> Have you tried deleting the preference file? Maybe something as drastic and
> deleting the iTunesMusic Library file and then re-importing all your files?
>
> --Greg


thanks for the thought, but yes I've tried that.
I also created a new blank user and tried her iTunes... no joy

hmm...
m

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:51:06 -0600, Jeff Price wrote:

snip
>
> You might try an external firewire hub. There are some things that don't
> work well daisy chained that might work with a hub.

I think that may be my only recourse. I'm actually trying to get hold of
an 800=>400 firewire cable so I can use the 800 port (it being a lovely
NEW powerbook and all!!)

here's hoping


m

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:47:57 +1000, Jason wrote:

snip
..
>
> You don't mention what version of MacOS you're using?

10.2.8

I've reported it a a bug to Mac.

I'm amazed that it's not known about as a common problem. After all quite
a few people must keep biggish music collections on external firewire
drives.

m

In article <pan.2003.10.11.00.24.17.932211[at]hotmail.com>, moll <max[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:47:57 +1000, Jason wrote:
>
> snip
> .
> >
> > You don't mention what version of MacOS you're using?
>
> 10.2.8
>
> I've reported it a a bug to Mac.
>
> I'm amazed that it's not known about as a common problem. After all quite
> a few people must keep biggish music collections on external firewire
> drives.

Is that the updated 10.2.8? :)

It might be a problem with the powerbook..

Try getting a hub...

On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 11:31:03 +1000, Jason wrote:

snip
> Is that the updated 10.2.8? :)
>
yes it is

> It might be a problem with the powerbook..

off to get 800=>400 cable so I can use the second powerbook firewire port.
That SHOULD be even more likely to work than a hub.


I'll keep you posted.

m

On 11/10/03 1:24, in article pan.2003.10.11.00.24.17.932211[at]hotmail.com,
"moll" <max[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

> 10.2.8
>
> I've reported it a a bug to Mac.
>
> I'm amazed that it's not known about as a common problem. After all quite
> a few people must keep biggish music collections on external firewire
> drives.

I would wonder if its a bug in the firewire bridge board used in the
Firewire drive, not the OS.

I've seen some very weird things with older external FW drives.

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:36:27 +0800, moll wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Problem: itunes doesn't recognize an iPod daisychained to an external
> firewire drive.
>
> I've got a biggish music collection housed on an external firewire drive
> (Lacie 200gb). My powerbook sees it no problem.
> I also have a 20gb iPod.
> My powerbook sees that no problem, IF it is plugged directly into the
> Mac's firewire port.
>
> The problem of course is I need to access both at the same time.
> Theoretically I should be able to plug the drive into the Mac and the iPod
> into the drive - daisychaining. The trouble is that although both get
> mounted on the desktop,and botha re accessible to the finder, iTunes
> doesn't recognize that an iPod is attached, so it remains inaccessible.
>
> It's not a power problem because a) the Lacie drive is powered and b) both
> drives ARE readable and writeable via finder.
>
> So it must be a bug in iTUnes.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix it?
>
> I've tried reinstalilng iPod software ... no joy.
>
> I suppose I could try Audion, but I'd rather stick with iTunes if poss.
>
> regards
>
> m


.... and for some totally unfathomable reason it's suddenly started
working. I haven't changed anything. And it certainly wasn't working
before. The ONLY thing I've done is open Apple System Profiler and looked
at the info on the devices etc. Following a reboot suddenly my iPod sprang
to life.

Very strange.

but hey :)

m

Jason <matreya_nospam[at]currawong.net> wrote:
> > The problem of course is I need to access both at the same time.
> > Theoretically I should be able to plug the drive into the Mac and the iPod
> > into the drive - daisychaining. The trouble is that although both get
> > mounted on the desktop,and botha re accessible to the finder, iTunes
> > doesn't recognize that an iPod is attached, so it remains inaccessible.
> >
> > It's not a power problem because a) the Lacie drive is powered and b) both
> > drives ARE readable and writeable via finder.
> >
> > So it must be a bug in iTUnes.

Can't suggest much but just to say, it's not an iTunes bug because I
have EXACTLY that setup here and it's working just fine.

In fact, the ipod has been chained through the external drive from day
one, it's never been connected directly.

Keith

>
>
> ... and for some totally unfathomable reason it's suddenly started
> working. I haven't changed anything. And it certainly wasn't working
> before. The ONLY thing I've done is open Apple System Profiler and looked
> at the info on the devices etc. Following a reboot suddenly my iPod sprang
> to life.
>
> Very strange.
>
> but hey :)
>
> m


... and now it has stopped working again. Bugger. I'm pretty sure its the
pass-through on the Lacie drive. Still looking for an 800=>400 cable...

m

"moll" <max[at]hotmail.com> writes:
>
> .. and now it has stopped working again. Bugger. I'm pretty sure
> its the pass-through on the Lacie drive. Still looking for an
> 800=>400 cable...

Hmmm...

By any chance, does the iPod go unavailable when the LaCie drive goes
into a power-saving mode (after a period of idle time)?

I seem to remember reading that some drives have this problem - where
the pass-through port becomes inactive whenever the drive is asleep.

See if the iPod works when hooked directly up to the Mac. If it has
no problems in that situation, you might want to consider a FireWire
hub instead of the external drive's pass-through port.

-- David

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 01:59:34 +0000, David C. wrote:

> "moll" <max[at]hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> .. and now it has stopped working again. Bugger. I'm pretty sure
>> its the pass-through on the Lacie drive. Still looking for an
>> 800=>400 cable...
>
> Hmmm...
>
> By any chance, does the iPod go unavailable when the LaCie drive goes
> into a power-saving mode (after a period of idle time)?
>
> I seem to remember reading that some drives have this problem - where
> the pass-through port becomes inactive whenever the drive is asleep.
>
> See if the iPod works when hooked directly up to the Mac. If it has
> no problems in that situation, you might want to consider a FireWire
> hub instead of the external drive's pass-through port.
>
> -- David


thanks for the suggestion... I'm sure it IS sth like that. I'll keep you
posted. But it is also quite complicated because I can't discern an
obvious pattern. I'm putting off the expense of a hub for the time being.


(it's working again btw!!)

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 19:47:35 +0800, moll wrote:
okay so I gave up trying to find an 800-400 firewire cable and bought a
hub on impulse....

it took a fair bit of unplugging replugging and rebooting to get
everything recognized, but at teh moment it IS working.

Basically I had to reboot without anything, then plug in the iPod... which
was recognized. Then I plugged in the firewire drive, but that seemed to
get stuck... or maybe I was impatient. So I rebooted and plugged in the
firewire drive after logon and everything is now available to me.

$140 Australian , but the hub was probably worth it.... before that I got
intermittent access to the iPod but with absolutely NO discernible reasons
for the Ipod becoming available or unavailable.

m

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 21:26:41 +0800, moll wrote: the problem (for anyone
still interested) seems to be iTunes...

thhis is what I reported to Apple:


"I reported earlier problems getting iTunes to recognize an iPod as a valid
source when it was daisychained through an external firewire hard-drive.

I now have a firewire hub and have narrowed down the range of the problem.

The iPod is always mounted in finder, and iPod software update 1.3 finds
it without fail. iTunes only finds it intermittently however, even when
plugged in to the hub. In order to get it recognized reliably I have to
eject the firewire drive, unplug it and reboot with only the iPod
connected. Once iTunes has found it I can then plug in the firewire drive
and it gets mounted in the usual way.

Then everything works fine UNTIL the hard-disks are put to sleep by Energy
Saver... the the iPod is lost again.

I am guessing that iTunes only has a limited time in which to recognize
the iPod as an iPod when it is plugged in. If the system is busy mounting
the external firewire drive because it and the iPod are plugged in
together then that window of opportunity is lost. Pure speculation of
course. What is certain is that it is an itunes bug, given that iPod
Software updater can always find the iPod, even when iTunes can't.

regards

moll"

In article <pan.2003.10.13.00.37.45.826135[at]hotmail.com>, moll wrote:
>> ... and for some totally unfathomable reason it's suddenly started
>> working. I haven't changed anything. And it certainly wasn't working

What OS version/iPod firmware version/iTunes version are you running?
I've got a 40Gb iPod running firmware 4.1 on a 10.2.8 iBook 700 running
iTunes 4.1 (ie, the latest of everything :-), and I'm having all sorts
of problems with my iPod all of a sudden.

Last night, even though the iPod was connected and iTunes could see the
it, I couldn't select and drag new songs onto the iPod. I rebooted and
it was all fine. But this morning when I went to play some music, the
iPod claimed it had no songs on it! I plugged the bugger in to the iBook
when I got home, and of course all the data was there. But now when I
plug it in again, it won't even mount on the Finder!

If anyone suggests "back up the songs on your iPod and restore it with
the firmware updater" I'll slap them, as I have a 40Gb iPod and a half-full
20Gb drive on my iBook :-).

After having to delete-and-restore to get 10.2.8 running, I must say I'm
not terribly impressed with Apple's latest crop of updates...

Cheers, Robert.

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:16:23 +1000, Robert Atkins wrote:

> In article <pan.2003.10.13.00.37.45.826135[at]hotmail.com>, moll wrote:
>>> ... and for some totally unfathomable reason it's suddenly started
>>> working. I haven't changed anything. And it certainly wasn't working
>
> What OS version/iPod firmware version/iTunes version are you running?
> I've got a 40Gb iPod running firmware 4.1 on a 10.2.8 iBook 700 running
> iTunes 4.1 (ie, the latest of everything :-), and I'm having all sorts
> of problems with my iPod all of a sudden.
>

2nd generation ipod... so 1.3
10.2.8 on a g4 powerbook (but symptoms identical on 800 ibook)
itunes 4.1

still having intermittent problems despite firewire hub.

Drive is a Lacie 200gb d2... unfortunately formatted as 3 FAT32
partitions, and I haven't got room to change it to HFS+ for similar
reasons to you....


m

In article <3f93b5f7$1_1[at]news.iprimus.com.au>,
Robert Atkins <ratkins_usenet[at]yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Last night, even though the iPod was connected and iTunes could see the
> it, I couldn't select and drag new songs onto the iPod. I rebooted and
> it was all fine. But this morning when I went to play some music, the
> iPod claimed it had no songs on it! I plugged the bugger in to the iBook
> when I got home, and of course all the data was there. But now when I
> plug it in again, it won't even mount on the Finder!
>
> If anyone suggests "back up the songs on your iPod and restore it with
> the firmware updater" I'll slap them, as I have a 40Gb iPod and a half-full
> 20Gb drive on my iBook :-).

Reset the iPod - switch the Hold switch on then off, then hold down the
Menu and Play buttons for as long as it takes for the screen to blank
then show the Apple logo (about 5-10 seconds). Your music is stored on
the hard disk, so blitzing the player's operating memory won't erase it.

Matthew.

In article <pan.2003.10.20.17.03.40.477070[at]hotmail.com>, moll wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:16:23 +1000, Robert Atkins wrote:
>
>> What OS version/iPod firmware version/iTunes version are you running?
>> I've got a 40Gb iPod running firmware 4.1 on a 10.2.8 iBook 700 running

Of course I mean iPod firmware 2.1 here :-).

>> iTunes 4.1 (ie, the latest of everything :-), and I'm having all sorts
>> of problems with my iPod all of a sudden.
>
> 2nd generation ipod... so 1.3
> 10.2.8 on a g4 powerbook (but symptoms identical on 800 ibook)
> itunes 4.1
>
> still having intermittent problems despite firewire hub.

I'm going to blame the 10.2.8/iTunes 4.1 combination until I think of
something better. 10.2.8 has been a pretty shitty update for me so far.

Further symptoms: I've got a USB/Firewire to Dock Connector cable, so I
plugged the iPod in via USB, and it mounted. I ran "repair disk" over
it, and that *did* find a few problems. Still can't see songs though, so
I tried to "upgrade" the firmware with the 2.1 firmware updater. It said
that I didn't have a valid firmware on the iPod, and only gave the
option of restoring from scratch (and hence deleting my music).

I'm borrowing a 40Gb external USB drive tomorrow so I'll be able to back
it up and restore from scratch. Right royal pain in the arse though.

Cheers, Robert.

In article <Matthew.Kirkcaldie-B93AB7.11025121102003[at]seagoon.newcastle.edu.au>,
Matthew Kirkcaldie wrote:
> In article <3f93b5f7$1_1[at]news.iprimus.com.au>,
>
> Reset the iPod - switch the Hold switch on then off, then hold down the

That was, of course, the first thing I tried. Actually, it seems that
whenever I plug the bloody thing in it resets itself.

Cheers, Robert.

In article <1g2o23v.ly9x1x149vx42N%KeithNOSPAM[at]nowhere.spam>, Keith
Pritchard <KeithNOSPAM[at]nowhere.spam> wrote:

> Jason <matreya_nospam[at]currawong.net> wrote:
> > > The problem of course is I need to access both at the same time.
> > > Theoretically I should be able to plug the drive into the Mac and the iPod
> > > into the drive - daisychaining. The trouble is that although both get
> > > mounted on the desktop,and botha re accessible to the finder, iTunes
> > > doesn't recognize that an iPod is attached, so it remains inaccessible.
> > >
> > > It's not a power problem because a) the Lacie drive is powered and b) both
> > > drives ARE readable and writeable via finder.
> > >
> > > So it must be a bug in iTUnes.
>
> Can't suggest much but just to say, it's not an iTunes bug because I
> have EXACTLY that setup here and it's working just fine.
>
> In fact, the ipod has been chained through the external drive from day
> one, it's never been connected directly.

Sorry for joining late to this conversation.

I have almost the exact same setup. I'm running 10.2.6 on a TiBook (1
FW port), and my 30gb iPod dock connector is connected to my external
FW CD burner (powered). I haven't been problem-free, but it works just
about all the time. Where it runs into confusion:

* When I dock the iPod and iTunes is already open. Let the iPod
connection automatically open iTunes. That solved just about all my
connection problems.

* Always disconnect the iPod IN iTunes. DO NOT QUIT ITUNES WITH YOUR
IPOD STILL CONNECTED. This seems to bother iTunes quite a bit the next
time you try and connect.

With these little rules, I haven't had any problems.
Oh, and I get decreased performance times when I'm burning a CD (duh).

Rach

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:23:12 +0800, Irises wrote
(in message <301020032123113248%no[at]spam.com>):

> In article <1g2o23v.ly9x1x149vx42N%KeithNOSPAM[at]nowhere.spam>, Keith
> Pritchard <KeithNOSPAM[at]nowhere.spam> wrote:
>
> Sorry for joining late to this conversation.
>
> I have almost the exact same setup. I'm running 10.2.6 on a TiBook (1
> FW port), and my 30gb iPod dock connector is connected to my external
> FW CD burner (powered). I haven't been problem-free, but it works just
> about all the time. Where it runs into confusion:
>
> * When I dock the iPod and iTunes is already open. Let the iPod
> connection automatically open iTunes. That solved just about all my
> connection problems.
>
> * Always disconnect the iPod IN iTunes. DO NOT QUIT ITUNES WITH YOUR
> IPOD STILL CONNECTED. This seems to bother iTunes quite a bit the next
> time you try and connect.
>
> With these little rules, I haven't had any problems.
> Oh, and I get decreased performance times when I'm burning a CD (duh).
>
> Rach

I think I tried most of what you suggest, but still had very patchy
performance.

But just to keep you posted... all now works beautifully in panther....
(although thank god I only have fw 400!!)

m


m