LaCie Firewire 800 ext hard drive not working

[mdm1195]

A gently used LaCie Firewire 800 external hard drive shows up in the apple system profiler but does not show up as a device I can
use in the Finder menu. I purchased a new firewire cable but that didn't help. The unused usb port has collapsed into the unit, so I can't access the data using usb.

The blue light goes on, so it has power to it. The Disk Utility will not run on it.

LaCie has declined to help. I would appreciate any suggestions for solutions.

[unclemac]

Hi,

Do you have important data on the drive you need to try to recover, or are you just concerned about getting it up and running again?

[mdm1195]

I have lost confidence in LaCie. So, I would like to get the data off of the hard drive on to a brand of external hard drive that is more reliable. I definitely won't choose LaCie again. Any suggestions for how to access the data?

Thank you for your help.

[TZ]

Someone else had an issue with LaCie. I see where their AC adapter or power supply is an issue with the D2. I don't think there really is such a thing as reliable FW anymore. I'd try to transition to SATA. There are FW/USB/SATA cases now in the Store, as well as SATA controllers and native SATA drives.

I'll look some more but take a look at this thread and also this one for now. (I need to update the FireWire Troubleshooting page in the Troubleshooting Guide it looks like, too.)

[mdm1195]

Looks like I have some learning to do. Thank you for the information and the links. I am using a 17 inch powerbook only. How would I hook up SATA to the powerbook?

[rguising]

no Mac sata PCMCIA cards (yet)