Hello, I am hoping someone here may have had a similar experience or knows what to do:

I have an old (2000? ADS Tech. Oxford911 chipset) external firewire/1394 enclosure, my problems began this morning when I went to install a larger, newer hard drive (Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, Model ST3200822A 200GB Ultra ATA, P/N 9W2844-301, Firmware 3.01). I am using the setup mainly with a MacBook Pro for dv backup. I have used the drive before both internally and externally without problems.


Right off, the drive was recognized as 128GB. Foolishly, I tried to reformat. The drive would then not mount at all. After reading online I discovered that it is most likely a limitation of the firmware or controller on the bridge card. So, I pulled a combo bridge card (one with firewire and USB) out of a newer external case (one that I had stopped using because of problems with the power supply) and plugged it in through USB to my Linux desktop, since I don't have any firewire port.

I reformated the drive in gparted (it claimed it was 186GB) and then plugged it back in to the Mac's firewire port. It will not recognize the drive at all! Yet, I can use the drive over the USB port just fine. So, I swapped the drive again, to confirm that the problem was the drive and not the bridge, and indeed it seems that by connecting this 200GB drive to the old bridge, something changed that will not allow it to work on the 1394 side.

What I want to know is how to "rescue" the 200GB drive so that I can use it through firewire. I read online about HPA (host protected area) and don't know if possibly that is the problem?