Even if Firewire ports allow devices to be hot swapped, you could damage them without being aware of that. There are several reason causing Firewire ports failures, such as electrostatic discharge, faulty cables or bad inserted cables. Apple says that 'The FireWire bus has three self-resetting fuses. If your device unexpectedly shuts down, it may be due to an overloaded fuse. If this occurs, disconnect the device immediately.'. Anyway old computers could not have this kind of protection! You should use high quality Firewire cables (you couldn't believe that, but cases of bad cables with erroneous pin connections have been reported here and there). If your external drive can't mount, don't test the cable with another computer. Never plug a FireWire cable in backwards (although it seems impossible). As said before, Firewire devices are "hot-pluggable", meaning that you don't need to shut down your computer to unplug them and EJECTING (i.e. unmounting, deactivating) the connected device will suffice. All hardware manufacturers state that ejecting USB/Firewire devices before unplugging them will suffice (unplugging USB/Firewire devices without ejecting them is a really dangerous practice!). But...several Firewire ports failures have been reported on the Internet...so, if you are a bit suspicious like me, the following procedure will assure long life to your Firewire ports:

1) turn off the computer
2) connect the device (make sure that you plug it properly)
3) turn it on
4) turn on the computer

Likely, to unplug a Firewire device you should:

1) turn off the computer
2) turn the device off
3) unplug the connected device

Annoying procedure of course, but safe Firewire ports too!


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