Ext HD fw400 not working with 09 Mini & fw400->800 cable

[Audios]

Hello all,
I just purchased a Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme 500gb External hard drive to use with my mid 09 mini as a media drive for FCE. I have a firewire 400 to 800 cable I bought off amazon, which has been working fine with my Lacie external for several months. However, when I use the same cable with the Seagate, it emits a very high pitch squeal noise, and will not boot. I have checked Disk Utility to see if it is recognized there: nope. It will boot using USB, but obviously I didn't buy this model to be stuck with USB only.

Any ideas about why it may not be working? I unfortunately do not have another mac or pc with firewire to test it on. I am going to try to find one, but until then I thought perhaps there may be something I am unaware of.

Thanks

 

[old-wiz]

I would check the manual to see if there's a switch you need to throw to have the FW work.

 

[Audios]

thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately there's no switch. And I tried plugging into both fw400 ports in case one was defective. I wonder if the whole fw controller is bad (or would that mean that USB shouldn't work either since its all on same circuit board?).