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 200GB ATA). I am using the setup MAINLY with a MacBook Pro for dv backup.

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 on the bridge card. So, I pulled a bridge card 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 would not recognize the drive at all! Yet, I can use the USB port just fine. So, I swapped the drive again, and with another drive it now works.

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?

Thanks in advance. Did you gpart it as FAT32?

You partitioned it with Linux and are trying to access the partition created under Linux with Mac. I am pretty sure that FAT32 is the only cross platform partition table structure supported between Linux, Windows, and Mac!No, that's not the problem. I can use the drive with the Mac through the USB port. It's only with the firewire that I have the problem. I have tried it with another drive so I know it is not the Mac or the firewire bridge, but this particular drive that has somehow had some parameters changed.