Weird USB/FireWire ports problem after El Capitan 10.11.2 update

[ruarmani]

Hello Everyone,

I hope for your help. I searched everywhere I could, but could not find the answer.

I have installed El Capitan 10.11.2 update (hoping that mail would run better), wanted to copy a file and realized that non of the connected drives/printers get recognized. I have got late 2008 MacBook Pro. Restarted and ports started working. Then later on I realized that they stopped working again. I restarted again, wirefire port would work, USB - not. Then firewire drive would stop working. I connected my iPhone - it gets recognized and I can do anything I need via iTunes.

I went into System Report, all the ports are showing up and showing what's connected, but not showing up in finder and I can see the drivers and printers are not accessible. I don't see anything in Disk Utility either.

I tried to reset PRAM and SMC - no luck. Even after restart, anything I connect, does not work, except iPhone. Really weird.

I still have got hard drive with Snow Leopard on, I put it in and all the ports work just fine. Please let me know what can be done to fix it. Thank you.

 

[Gochugogi]

I haven't suffered this problem in 10.11.1 but it happened randomly under 10.11 and 10.95 from time to time. A restart always fixed it. It could be something has gotten corrupted in your system. Happened to me last year and I had to reformat and install from a backup to fix it.

The one odd thing I've noticed is my Firewire hub doesn't work well under 10.11 whereas it was fine under 10.95. I have to plug devices directly into my Mini for them to appear on the desktop.

 

[ruarmani]

I have 10.11.1 back up, when all worked fine. Do you suggest I get back to 10.11.1 and try to update again?

 

[treekram]

To the OP: it's unclear if you have you're using USB and/or FireWire hubs or not. As Gochugogi said, his FireWire hub doesn't work in El Capitan but did in Mavericks (I'm guessing that's what "10.95" refers to).

I've noticed inconsistent behavior with USB 3 - certain combinations of hubs + computers + docking station + OS level will work, others will not and changing one of the 3 will sometimes make it work.

I upgraded to 10.11.2 yesterday and have no problem with mounting a directly-connected FireWire HDD and a FireWire drive array (I switch the cable between the two). Although I did notice something I've never seen before. I unmounted the Firewire HDD - it disappeared from the Finder dock - turned off the drive - then I get the warning that Terminal is still using the drive and it was unmounted prematurely. I had Terminal open but did not access the drive (or do anything in Terminal for that matter). A second mount and dismount worked fine.

I would suggest trying to connect the FireWire drive directly if it's connected to a hub. If that doesn't work, maybe you can try a fresh install of 10.11.2 to a spare drive (if you have one) and see if it works. If it doesn't, I don't think retrying the update will work and I think it'll be easier than reverting your backup, updating and revering your backup again if it doesn't work.

EDIT: I'm using a 2012 i7 Mac Mini. Maybe the age of the OP computer has something to do with the problems. Not necessarily faltering components but whether Apple will test an El Capitan update on FireWire on a 2008 computer.

 

[ruarmani]

To the OP: it's unclear if you have you're using USB and/or FireWire hubs or not. As Gochugogi said, his FireWire hub doesn't work in El Capitan but did in Mavericks (I'm guessing that's what "10.95" refers to).

I've noticed inconsistent behavior with USB 3 - certain combinations of hubs + computers + docking station + OS level will work, others will not and changing one of the 3 will sometimes make it work.

I upgraded to 10.11.2 yesterday and have no problem with mounting a directly-connected FireWire HDD and a FireWire drive array (I switch the cable between the two). Although I did notice something I've never seen before. I unmounted the Firewire HDD - it disappeared from the Finder dock - turned off the drive - then I get the warning that Terminal is still using the drive and it was unmounted prematurely. I had Terminal open but did not access the drive (or do anything in Terminal for that matter). A second mount and dismount worked fine.

I would suggest trying to connect the FireWire drive directly if it's connected to a hub. If that doesn't work, maybe you can try a fresh install of 10.11.2 to a spare drive (if you have one) and see if it works. If it doesn't, I don't think retrying the update will work and I think it'll be easier than reverting your backup, updating and revering your backup again if it doesn't work.

EDIT: I'm using a 2012 i7 Mac Mini. Maybe the age of the OP computer has something to do with the problems. Not necessarily faltering components but whether Apple will test an El Capitan update on FireWire on a 2008 computer.

All the drives were connected directly. I have reinstalled 10.11.1 from boot up drive and everything works just fine, firewire, usb. I yet to try to update to 10.11.2 again and see how it goes. I will report back once I do this. I am questioning myself if I even need El Capitan wth all these issues, ports, Apple Mail is sluggish, I had to fix issues with Canon printer, etc. I was happy with Snow Leopard, the only reason I upgraded to El Capitan was that I needed to use latest versions of Logic and Final Cut Pro.

 

[treekram]

This problem is a head-scratcher because I don't think there's been anything new in the FireWire 400/800 standard since your 2008 MBP was introduced. If you still have a problem with 10.11.2, stay with 10.11.1 unless there's something in 10.11.2 that you need. Are you running FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 disks? I'm running 800 - I wonder if there's a problem with the 400's?

If I haven't used my 2009 Mac Mini (Snow Leopard) in awhile, I'm always surprised at how responsive the old machine (with a HDD) is when I start it up and use it. But as you say, you need El Capitan to run some software you run so I don't think that you can revert back.

 

[ruarmani]

I went back to 10.11.1, then installed 10.11.2 again and so far it works.

 

[ruarmani]

Interesting that I was looking for an answer for USB/Firewire issue and found my own post. Two years have passed and the problem came back. Now I have got El Capitan 10.11.6 on my late 2008 macbook pro. Ports work after restart, I connect the drive/flash, it gets recognized, works, disconnect, connect it again - gone. I can see the drives under USB in system report, can not see them in disc utility or finder. iPhone works just fine, syncs, etc. It has been going on for at least a month. The only thing that has changed since two years ago, I switched to SSD about a year ago and it worked great and now it came to this problem again. Very annoying.

It gets more interesting. I bought 27" iMac in May with Sierra on it and recently it started having the same problem. Now I am really puzzled if there is an app that causes it. So far no luck figuring out what could it be. I will try to call applecare, but I don't thinks they will know what to do.

Please, if anybody experienced similar issues, let me know. Any ideas are very welcome.