I picked up 2 200gb drives and have put them in external FW enclosures because the ATA-4 bus in my PowerMac¹ won’t support drives larger than 128gb. I can successfully connect either drive to either FireWire port and they mount up perfectly. I can then read and write to them without any problem.

However, when I connect them both², neither one is recognized. If I boot with both drives connected³ the PowerMac will stall during the boot process at ‘Waiting for local disks’. I’ve already fsck -y’d and run Disk Utility on both disks to repair any problems.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: I can connect one of the 200gb FW drives and my iPod to the PowerMac with them both connected to different FW ports but I can’t connect the iPod when it is chained to one of the 200gb drives. I can connect the FW drive and iPod in a chained configuration to my PowerBook, but I can’t connect both FW drives in a chained configuration. Perhaps I’ve got a problem with my drive enclosures.

UPDATE #2: Since I can’t chain the FW HDs on my PowerBook either, I’m thinking the culprit is probably the FW enclosures. I’m going to order some new FireWire enclosures and try again when they show up. Please continue posting potential solutions if you have any ideas.

UPDATE #3: If I connect one drive via USB and one drive via FireWire, they both mount as expected. Unfortunately this doesn’t help much since my PowerMac doesn’t have a USB 2 port.

1. It’s an old dual 500hmz G4, I think it is the gigabit ethernet model. [up]
2. Either individually to each FireWire port on the PowerMac or chained together connected to one port. [up]
3. Again, chained or individually connected. [up]