Mac OS X 10.4.4 (#11): Acard-connected drives unmountable, other issues; Fujitsu MO drives -- attaching to a hub; more

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 9:04 a.m. PT

3 min read

Acard-connected drives unmountable, other issues A number of users have reported issues with drives connected to Acard IDE PCI cards after updating to Mac OS X 10.4.4, including an inability to boot from volumes connected to the card.

Your best bet, if you absolutely need access to Acard-connected drives, is to revert to an earlier version of Mac OS X per this tutorial. Most readers have indicated that Mac OS X 10.4.2 provides the best compatibility with the Acard interfaces.

More on Fujitsu MO drives -- attaching to a hub We continue to report on an issue where users are unable to mount magneto-optical media from some drives after the update to Mac OS X 10.4.4.

In some cases, users have been able to work around this issue by daisy-chaining a problem dive off one that does work and is already mounted where it will not do so alone.

We've now received word that attaching the drives to an externally powered FireWire hub can also resolve access issues.

MacFixit reader Paul Schmega writes:

"I had encountered the same problem with my Dyna MO 1300 FE Drive from Fujitsu under OSX 10.4.4 on an 20 inch 2.1GHz iMacG5.

I" have definitely solved that by attaching an active 'LMP FireWire 6-Port Repeater/ Hub' from LMP to one firewire output port. That Hub comes with an external Power-Supply and has also overvoltage protection."

More issues with RSS feeds in Safari We previously reported on an issue where RSS feeds no longer automatically update in Safari after installing Mac OS X 10.4.4, and subsequently noted that disabling .Mac bookmark synchronization resolves this issue in most cases.

We've now received reports from readers who are still having issues with RSS after disabling .Mac bookmark synchronization.

One reader writes:

"I, too, have experienced the sudden cessation of RSS news feed updates in Safari since updating to 10.4.4. I've tried every "Fix" out there including the latest: Turning off Bookmark Sync to .Mac. Curiously, I've also noticed that the RSS Visualizer Screen saver no longer presents the 'Press the [number] key for more information' option. Even more curious, if I log into the other user account on my Powerbook, everything comes back to life: RSS news feeds, RSS visualizer and more 'normal' Safari performance."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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