I've Had it W/ TOAST... HELP!

[Jeff0628]

I've been reading about a lot of problems with Toast lately on these boards, but I can't find any specific help about my issue. I'm having roughly a 80% to 90% burn failure with my mac and toast! If I can burn more than a disc or two then I consider my self lucky, which to me is pure pathetic. I'm fairly new to the mac scene so is this normal? Even on my old windows or linux box if I had 1 failed burn out of a 100 that would be odd.

 

My current setup is a mac mini, 1.83GHZ Intel Core Duo, 2GB ram, Leopard 10.5.1, Toast 8.03, external Lacie D2 DL drive and a WD My Book Pro 500GB drive. Currently I have both devices hooked up via firewire through a Belkin mac-mini styled hub. Since the mini only has 1 firewire output, I have that hooked into the hub, then the Lacie D2 hooked into the hub, and then the WD 500GB drive is hooked into the Lacie, hopefully that made sense? Also as a side note my transfer rate to the WD 500GB drive is TERRIBLY slow, but I can transfer from the WD 500GB drive to the mac internal HD at normal firewire speeds???

 

I've verified the drive is fine, by using the Lacie on my linux box, and it burns fine. I'm also using Taiyo Yudon DVD-R 8x media and Verbatim DVD+R DL 6x media. I didnt have many troubles using Tiger.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions, on why I can't get any consistent burns? I'm about ready to sell the mac and go back to my old trusty Linux box.....

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[tsantee]

Probably the best way to troubleshoot this is to find what will allow normal-speed file transfer to the WD 500GB. If that gets resolved then maybe the bottleneck that's ruining your disc burning will be resolved as well.

 

You are using a Firewire hub but are connecting your two Firewire devices in series. Why do you need the hub? Have you tested by connecting the LaCie drive directly to the Mac and the WB drive to the LaCie without the hub? By the way, that's how I have my devices connected on my G5 iMac: Mac to LaCie DVD drive to external hard drive to another external hard drive to a Firewire scanner. I haven't had any of the problems you're having.

 

An outside possibility is a Firewire issue that happened as a result of upgrading to Leopard or during the update to 10.5.1. I suggest downloading and applying the 10.5.1 combined system update for your Mac. It does no harm and in previous OS X versions is known to fix odd Firewire and USB problems.

 

Lastly, check the LaCie site for any firmware update for your DVD drive.

[Jeff0628]

I will try to connect the Lacie directly to the mac and then from the Lacie to the WD 500GB drive, and see if that improves my burn success. I've read about some firewire issues with 10.5.1, so hopefully 10.5.2 will resolve that.

 

Really the only reason I had the belkin hub "in the loop" was it has a spare USB and firewire ports on the front so I can easily hook up additional devices, if needed. I also checked lacies website and there is no updated firmware for it.

 

So are you suggesting that I download the 10.5.1 update and reinstall it? I was also thinking about reverting back to Tiger until a few updates gets released for Leopard. What do you think about that? I hate to do so, since I've spent the money for Leopard and do use its new features, like stacks and spaces.

 

THANKS!!!

[tsantee]

So are you suggesting that I download the 10.5.1 update and reinstall it? I was also thinking about reverting back to Tiger until a few updates gets released for Leopard. What do you think about that? I hate to do so, since I've spent the money for Leopard and do use its new features, like stacks and spaces.

 

THANKS!!!

Doing an incremental system update (such as from 10.5.0 to 10.5.1) is known - at least with Tiger - to sometimes cause odd problems especially with USB and Firewire. The recommended fix is to apply the combined system update on top of your existing OS. So you would be running the 10.5.1 combined updater even though you already are running 10.5.1. It might make a difference.

 

I suggest going to www.xlr8yourmac.com and/or to macfixit.com to find out if there are common issues with any Firewire hubs and Leopard.

[Jeff0628]

Ok, I'll give that a try. Thanks for your help and the info!!