Comments on: Prolific PL3507 Firewire Device

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:35:01 +0000

Looks like the cause was bad sectors on the Seagate drive, either naturally occurring or caused by the external case. After repair with SeaTools, I reformatted it anyway.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:57:41 +0000

I’ve had a history of pain with two enclosures with the Prolific PL-3507 chipset:

Two years ago, it was delayed write errors using Firewire. They would corrupt my drive and I always had to use partition recovery software to restore it. Luckily, you usually only need to restore the partition data to get everything back. I always flashed with all the latest firmware and while the most recent one (2006-04) makes the drive a lot more stable, I’d still get a delayed write error once in a while, without the corruption. Since those days, I’ve switched to USB2 and just settled with it. Not to mention, I never bought an external case with a Prolific chipset again.

Two months ago, I put in a Seagate 230GB drive in the Prolific enclosure and have been having problems copying large files from it over the LAN. It fills the System event log with “error during page operation” and “system failed to flush data.” It reminds me of the good ‘ole days.

Since I don’t feel like buying yet another enclosure, I will backup my data and partition the drive into 30+100+100 instead of the current 20+200. I’m following Monster’s suggestion above. Will report back soon.

By: Shippley

Shippley — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:56:17 +0000

Problem with [url=http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/Products.asp?ID=9]Prolific PL3507 Combo Device[/url]

Running Mac OS X 10.4.9
Probably no one cares.. but the Chipset issue with this drive has caused me many hours of pain and heart ache.
The drive works fine in every thing except the one thing I bought it for.. to record audio..

Just the fact they they aren’t using the Oxford 911 standard is reason enough for no one to buy this product.. ever..

I wish I would have known before I spent the money..

Anyone wanna buy a somewhat used, but still in great condition Prolific PL3507 Combo Device?!?!?

By: Monster

Monster — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:46:01 +0000

Running Mac OSX 10.3.9
Maxtor 300G (279G in reality)
Had it partitioned to 190G and 80G (or something like that)
I had my harddrive stall on transfers @ 107MB mark.
Repartioned the drive into 3 smaller drives and presto! the problem stopped.

Used VolumeWorks to do the job without having to lose any of the data. Worked great.
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=200&products_id=6

I’m guessing the problem had something to do with the mac “big drive” issues.

hope this helps.

By: podo

podo — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:18:17 +0000

NICE!!! A++++

By: donate car

donate car — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:37:04 +0000

does 1394 stand for Firewire ?

By: peter

peter — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:13:28 +0000

I left out the web address of the above comment: http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=44

By: peter

peter — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:11:05 +0000

i have a PL3507 USB/FIREWIRE 230GB drive. i had problems, also, when copying large files to this drive. The access light on the drive would stay on and the OS wouldn’t be able to access the drive. What was worse: The drive wouldn’t work at all after that, without a “write zeroes format” (2-hour chore). I had it on the Firewire interface. I researched some, found this address and updated the firmware (the instruccions said you had to use the USB port). And…
now it works just fine. Was it the update? or the change to USB? Don’t know, but it works pretty ok now!

By: ankh

ankh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 01:06:13 +0000

No you cannot update the firmware over FIREWIRE even on a PC.
You cannot even think about doing it on a MACINTOSH since there is no Firmware updater program for the MACINTOSH.

By: osg

osg — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:09:56 +0000

Hi,
The external box cause several problems.
First the 137Go limit on windows versions before xp SP1.
Second the prolific 3507 chipset with firewire connection.
In most of case, change the controller card, is the easier and best way to fix the problem.
How to test if your configuration could be affected: http://www.bustrace.com/downloads/free_utilities.htm (1394 Delayed Write Stress Tester).
A soft way to deal with: http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/Max128k.htm.
A good link in french: http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Hardware/HDD/firmware-icy-box-sujet_662233_1.htm.

Anyway be careful if you are using your external case, with another computer, you may lost all your data !!!
All the details on https://www.osgpcq.net/osg/Documentations/A_disquedurexterne.html (In french sorry).
Best regards.