Multiple Oxford based FW drive enclosure problems...

When I added a second Oxford 911+ based FW (and USB2.0) enclosure (Plumax PM-350C2-PTS) to my OS X PowerMac G4, it found trouble. Problems included only one drive mounting at one time, or none would mount, and even data corruption!

I found reference to changing the "Product ID" within the F/W configuration, but that didn't seem to work.

This site fully explains the correct change as a solution to "improve the chaining capability in the Oxford FireWire External Enclosures." Although, in many cases, a machine with two physical firewire ports has only one physical firewire port - this appears equivalent to "chaining." The issue is definitely present in the 911+ enclosures I have, and could probably also be in the 911 and 922 chips. As far as I can tell, it's only an issue with two or more like devices - such as two hard drives, or possibly two DVD drives. I had used a single 911+ enclosure with a hard drive successfully with a 911 enclosure with a DVD burner, prior to this change; the 911 chip had a completely different ID than the 911+.

The site referenced is presumably translated. The key information is changing the "Chip ID Lo" parameter of each enclosure to be unique. The means changing the "original 454647" to "454648, 454649, 454650 and so on." The site points you to the appropriate Mac and Windows firmware/configuration apps.

The solution worked very well for me.

It's also probably a good idea to upgrade the firmware.

Good luck.

Need to recover lost Mac (OS X) data?

While attempting to add a second 200GB hard drive (in a Oxford 911+ FW/USB2.0 case), in order to back up our existing drive full of iMovie, iDVD files, video, and pictures - all of which took 100's of hours to produce - the first drive was corrupted. Ironic! I needed to recover that first hard drive:

What eventually worked very well was Prosoft Engineering's Data Rescue II. It recovered essentially all the files, and with only a few corrupt files. I very much recommend their product, and it's even under $100!

I had actually purchased SubRosaSoft's FileSalvage, based on the demo, but it only recovered 15GB of the actual 160GB of data, and all the files were numerically named (because it could not recover the disk catalog).

Another product I demo'd was BinaryBiz's VirtualLab Mac, but it wasn't able to actually read the FW drive - their support said the next version will support that configuration better. Although, they charge by the the recovered Gigabyte - 160GB would have cost me dearly.

Even more expensive was some physical drive recovery companies which provided quotes of a few $1,000!