Time Machine via FW800 glitches out trackpad on 2012 non retina MPB

[Rico Muerte]

Got a 2012 non retina MBP:

Noticed a weird thing yesterday - when I went to do a 1st time machine backup via FW800, the trackpad/cursor glitched out & became almost completely unusable.
It was tremendously laggy & mostly unresponsive while the FW800 drive was plugged in.
Plugging in a logitec gaming USB mouse resolved the issue (using the mouse obviously).

Anyone experienced or heard of something similar?

 

[Rico Muerte]

Following up - did a TM backup again with the same configuration as above & the same issue occurred during the backup process - I had to plug in a USB mouse in order to be able to use the mouse cursor.

Once the backup was completed & I unplugged FW800 drive, trackpad operation returned to normal.

 

[Fishrrman]

Electromagnetic interference from the firewire cable/connection...?

Or... something about the backup was hogging the MBP's CPU, or otherwise slowing down the OS?

In any case, you have "found the workaround" -- use the Logitech mouse when you have the FW drive connected.

Just wondering... does the MBP still have the factory-installed, platter-based hard drive?

 

[Rico Muerte]

Electromagnetic interference from the firewire cable/connection...?

Or... something about the backup was hogging the MBP's CPU, or otherwise slowing down the OS?

In any case, you have "found the workaround" -- use the Logitech mouse when you have the FW drive connected.

Just wondering... does the MBP still have the factory-installed, platter-based hard drive?

Would be very strange if the FW connection was producing some sort of interference with the trackpad...surely I wouldnt be the 1st to experience it or complain? And yes I know FW is old & outdated technology...

Rest of the MBPs function is as normal & nothing it showing as CPU intensive in iStat.

The original 5400rpm drive is out - a 500Gb SSD has replaced it, & a 1TB SSD has replaced the optical drive...could that have something to do with it...? 🤔