"...About the Firewire mounting issues. I have two WD MyBook drives, both using FW 400, one 500GB and one 1TB Raid 1, using the WD Drive Manager software on a iMac G5 with 10.5.6. We use the Raid 1 (mirror) drive for 'Media' and stream movies to ATV, stream music, keep the iPhoto Library on there, etc.
For about a week the WD manager was always popping up with a message that the drive could not be put to sleep as it was in use. It was odd and annoying, but nothing seemed broken, until a couple days after xmas and my wife asked where all our photos went, all she could see were the ones from Xmas this year.

Sure enough, iPhoto only had the most recent 3 imports. I restarted iPhoto with the OPTION-key pressed down and pointed it to the iPhoto Library on Media and all the old photos were there but not the most recent three imports. Knowing there had to be another iPhoto Library somewhere I looked around via the command line. Here is what I found:

/Volumes/Media -> local directory - ?!
/Volumes/Media 1 -> Raid 1 ext drive
/Volumes/iMac Backup -> 500 GB ext drive

At some point after 10.5.6 - the system created a real directory in /Volumes called Media - and iPhoto created a new Library and iPhoto worked out of there. iTunes however continued to look at the real Media drive (the Raid 1). The WD Drive Manager was very confused and tried to constantly unmount /Volumes/Media.

Even though the Raid drive was listed in /Volumes as 'Media 1' it would still display on the desktop as 'Media'. So, after shutting everything down, I renamed /Volumes/Media to /Volumes/Media_WTF - got the photos out, remounted everything properly, made sure iPhoto and iTunes were pointing to the right place and then got all the photos back together. And the /Volumes folder is now as it should be and the WD Drive Manager has been quiet.
I've been using or managing macs for 15 years now and this was a first for me. But if any readers are seeing weird FW issues, have them check the /Volumes directory for any 'double entries'
Happy New Year, Garth"

"Around a month ago my late 2004 dual PowerMac G5 2.5Ghz was starting to make some weird noises. At first I was under the impression that the internal hard drive was going south but after closer inspection I discovered the noise was coming from around the logic board area. After restarting a few times it just died and there was no way to get the system up. I knew about the G5 coolant problems, so I decided to open the CPU cover and yes, my Mac was experiencing coolant leak around the CPU area. (AppleCare had expired already).
I decided to call Apple, after spending some time with Apple representative and explaining about the leak they asked me about the model number and serial. After a few minutes on hold I was told that the computer will be repaired free of charge. I was given appointment to the local Apple store in Palisades NY; machine was promised to be fixed in one week. Around day six a representative from the local Apple store called me with news they are unable to repair the machine and instead they will give me a new Mac Pro free of charge. It's a dual quad Xeon 2.8Ghz. I have to say I'm very happy with Apple's response and the way this case was resolved.
-CL"

As mentioned earlier on the Coolant Leaks/Repairs page, I think the reason that many have had out-of-warranty repairs covered (and in some cases new machines) is due to the fact leaks are a potential safety hazard (and potential liability in this age of lawsuits). Anyone with an LCS system that's a few years old now should check frequently for leaks. (Often they're not noticed until major damage has occurred.)

"I just replaced the stock cooler of my ATI Radeon X1900XT with the Arctic Cooling Accelero X2, after reading the reviews that many users posted. Last summer I experienced many of the issues described in other posts (artifacts, horizontal lines on both Apple Studio Displays...) and even worse - my Mac Pro was randomly crashing when I performed simple graphics-related operations. I mean VERY simple: opening a new blank page on TextEdit, pulling down a menu, stuff like that.

After a good cleaning session, and a visit to an Apple Lab for a general check-up, the Mac Pro got back to its standard behaviour... until yesterday. I was writing down some orchestral sequences on Digital Performer 6, running two instances of MOTU MachFive2 sampler (a very heavy load on RAM and CPU, actually) and the machine started to crash. This time I noticed that the ATI fan was becoming very noisy.
I took out the video board and checked it up completely, disassembled the cooler and cleaned everything, expecially the fan; applied a new layer of thermal paste and some grease on the fan bearings. I put the board back in place, turned on the Mac and noticed that the fan wasn't working. I took off the board again and tried to apply a small voltage to the fan plug (about 3-4 volts). Nothing happened. After some other testing, I found the small SMD chip on the fan top was burned (you can't see it until you remove the round ATI sticker). I don't know if I blew it or it was the defective fan's fault, but who cares... I was forced to buy the Accelero X2, and luckily enough I found it in a nearby store.

I'm very happy with the results: the Mac Pro works like a charm, and it's much quieter than ever. I definitely recommend it to any X1900 user; it's another level of performance, really...
-Antonello A. (Italy)"

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