Fix firewire HD problem on a powerbook
Sunday, June 4th, 2006After re-organizing some of my daughter’s video and pictures, it is time to backup my whole user directory. Unfortunately, my PB failed to write to two different firewire HDs. The PB mounted the firewire HDs but it hanged when writing some files (I got such log: Jun 4 23:42:26 ECHO kernel[0]: disk1s3: I/O error.). At beginning, I though it was a problem of my firewire enclosure, but it happened on two external HD. I had to conclude the problem was on my PB. So, it was voodoo time. I zapped the PRAM, reseted NVRAM. Reboot, it behaved much better. At least it only hanged after finished copying my /User. This was the message I got in syslog.log
Jun 4 23:57:40 ECHO kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 31 built-in: handleARxReqInt - ARx Request packet error, status = 0xe00002c7
Well, I unpluged the HD and re-pluged it back. It seemed working fine. I tested to write large files to the other HD, it also worked while it failed consistently before I had reseted the PRAM. So, I guess the problem is solved. I still don’t know what NVRAM has any thing to do with firewire.