I have a G2 Mini 2.5" case with a 60GB drive in it that I am using for a time machine drive. It is running off firewire 400 which I have connect to my Cinema Display. I have noticed that my hourly time machine backup as been "hanging'. When I check console I find the following error.

Jun 30 16:18:59 cl-13d-207-l1 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1954]: Starting standard backup
Jun 30 16:19:06 cl-13d-207-l1 kernel[0]: IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0x4ba9 f00, 3 -> 2) timed out after 100125 ms
Jun 30 16:20:46 cl-13d-207-l1 kernel[0]: IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0x4ba9 f00, 2 -> 4) timed out after 100125 ms

I am assuming that my drive has gone to sleep and that Time Machine is crapping its dacks? I can't select for the backup to stop. If I open the Time Machine preferences then System Preferences crashes. Soon after Finder follows and I have to hard reboot my system (which then takes 10 minutes to reboot as the fsck thingy runs and checks my file system).
This is starting to really piss me off. I currently have sleep disks checked in Energy Saver as I want my laptop drive to sleep when it is not is use. Is there anything that I can do to rectify this situation? Am I even barking up the right tree with my Time Machine drive going to sleep?

Is there a firmware update available for the G2 mini that will make it TIme Machine compatible? I can't even find anything on the net for who even makes the G2 Mini.

Have you tried plugging the drive directly into the machine to see if the same issue happens. Ie. rule out the monitor's firewire ports/hub as being the issue.

Not yet but it was going to be the next thing I try. It will be frustrating if I can't use the Cinema Display ports though. Grrrr

Seems to be working today when plugged directly into my Macbook. Annoying as I would like to use the hub that is in my Cinema Display. Not sure if this is what fixed it, or whether 10.5.4 had anything to do with it.

Anyway, guess its not the end of the world.

Hrmmm. Well after sucessfully making about 3 backups today, my latest hourly has failed with the same errors as above. Looks like there is a power management issue with the G2 Mini not waking up for the backup.

Does this happen to anyone else? My wife just bought a LaCie Quadra 1TB as her Time Machine, and I'll be pissed off if it keeps failing like mine does.

Does anyone know if the firmware in G2 Mini case can be upgraded? Time Machine is bloody useless if it keeps crashing my entire system when it can't find the bloody drive. The only way I can regain control of the Leopard is to turn the backup drive off - this then brings up a "Did not put drive away error", but it does let me gain control over finder again.

This is from System Profiler about my G2. Can anyone tell me if I am running current firmware, or anything about the case. It seems like a pretty vague description to me.

FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
S1:
Manufacturer: .
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0x30E002E08C5060
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
S1 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x110
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
S1 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 55.89 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Leon Time Machine:
Capacity: 55.57 GB
Available: 23.95 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/Leon Time Machine

leon: I have struggled with this issue for about a day and think I have it figured out because my computer has been running Time Machine without a hitch for about 22 hrs with my new firewire enclosure, which it hasn't been able to do yet. The fix requires either some prior familiarity with the internals of computers and with unix, or, lacking that, a little bravery. As far as I know, this is the only fix anyone has posted on the net to this problem. I've done a LOT of googling and have turned up nothing. I finally realized the problem after remembering that hard drives have their own power management settings independent from the operating system.

The problem has to do with the actual hard drive's going to sleep. By hard drive, I don't mean the enclosure, I mean the black heavy drive inside. The hard drive has its own power management settings that unfortunately can be pre-set by the manufacturer. You need to disable that setting. Here is how I did it:

1. Eject you firewire drive from OS X and turn it off. Open the hard drive case and pull out the drive. Write down the drive's serial number and model number for future reference. You will need them.
2. Find a computer that supports the drive internally. For a 2.5" drive, this is probably going to mean a laptop. For an IDE drive, you will need an IDE capable computer and for a SATA drive, you will need a SATA capable computer. Alternatively, I think that if your computer has an eSATA connector, you can get an eSATA enclosure and connect through that, although I have not tested this possibility. You may also be able to do this with your mac depending on the type of mac you have, the type of drive you have, and whether you want to mess around with the guts of your mac.
   The bottom line is that you need to be able to communicate directly with the hard drive. A firewire or USB enclosure won't allow you to do that.
3. Once you get that hard drive into the other computer or connected through eSATA and are able to communicate with the drive directly, you will need to boot said computer into Knoppix (version 5.1 is fine) or PartedMagic (latest version).
4. Then you need to figure out which drive is the one in question. To do this, use a terminal (an icon to double-click for a terminal application should be on the desktop of Knoppix or PartedMagic) and begin issuing this command:
   Code:

   sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

   where the "sda" part can also be "sdb" or "sdc", etc., up to the number of internal drives on the computer you are using. Note that that is a capital I and that hdparm has only one "a".
   
   Each time you issue the command, compare whether the serial number and model numbers are equivalent to the one you noted in the first step. You can stop when you spot your drive. If you never find it, then something is horribly wrong, like the drive wasn't hooked up correctly, or, in the case of IDE drives, the master/slave pins weren't set appropriately. This latter problem requires examining the drive itself, and setting the pins to "cable select", which is a catchall setting.
5. Now, you can do the real work of fixing the problem, which is turning off the confounded sleep setting that's been causing your troubles. Fortunately, this is the easiest step. In the terminal, type
   Code:

   sudo hdparm -S 0 /dev/sda

   where "/dev/sda" is whatever you found your drive to be at in Step 4. Note that that is a capital S and the number zero. Quintuple check your typing here. You should get some feedback from the terminal that says that the spindown setting has been set to zero. And that's it
6. Now you can shutdown the computer, remove the drive, adjust the master/slave pins if necessary (if its an IDE drive), stick the drive back in the firewire enclosure, connect the enclosure to your mac, turn it on, and let it mount in OS X.

I know that's pretty complicated, but the problem is insidious and such problems take surgery. Of course, since I took all the trouble to type this up, I expect someone to come along and correct me and say that configuring the INTERNAL hard drive sleep setting is simple in OS X (i.e. that they know of some other way besides Energy Saver in System Preferences or pmset, which won't do it). I would totally welcome that information, though, because the above process is a hassle that takes at least 20 minutes. The alternative, of course, is to buy other drives and try your luck with them. Maybe someone knows which manufacturers or distributors ship drives with that setting turned off.

Also, the good news is that Apple's own energy preferences will work fine (and even better) with that setting off, so you can configure the spindown settings from OS X any way you like.

Let me know if anything is unclear in my explanation, and I'll post corrections and amendments here.

xld00d: I award you the "Best first post ever" award for that, despite the scariness for most people of attempting your suggestion. Thanks very much for posting that here.

Currawong: Thank you for your vote, but in the last couple of hours my drive locked up again with Time Machine. So I don't know if my suggestion will help. It went for a record 24 hours and then locked up. Very confusing. I'm beginning to think that it's my choice of enclosures. I have a 750 GB Seagate Free Agent Pro that works fine but my 750 Western Digital in a Macally PHR-S100SUA enclosure doesn't.

I should mention that if you turn off the spindown hard-drives option in the OS X System Preferences, the method I describe above should work. I want my hard drives to spin down, so this solution is not good for me.

I really thought I had this solved. Please reconsider my suggestion if you don't have the time and you need your hard drives to spin down.

My firewire drives never seem to go to sleep. but with the same enclosure under usb they do. Funny how things work out.

I have experimented with three enclosures and two hard drives and can say with fair certainty that it is the fault of the hard drive, not the enclosure. I tested configurations for at least 1 week and not 1 day as before. One day is not long enough to test because the sleep problem occurs about once per day on average when you have it.

The first combination that worked was a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 with a Seagate Barracuda 3750640AS (firmware: 3.AFK) 750 GB SATA drive inside. This configuration had no problems. I used it for about 2 months until the person I was borrowing it from at work said he needed it back.

I then bought a Macallay PHR-S100SUA eSata/FireWire/USB2.0 enclosure and a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA for it. This configuration had serious sleep issues, even after attempting to turn off auto-sleep on the drive itself as I described far above. Thinking that the lack of a Oxford chipset in the Macally PHR-S100SUA caused the problem, I bought a Firewire 400 Neptune enclosure from OWC (Macsales.com). This has a premier Firewire 400 chipset in it, the Oxford 911+. Unfortunately, I had the same problems with the Neptune enclosure containing the Western Digital drive--but this wasn't the fault of the Neptune enclosure.

Since I was still in "testing" mode, I had been able to successfully have an excuse to avoid giving the Seagate enclosure back to my coworker, so I took the Seagate drive (the Seagate 3750640AS) out of its FreeAgent Pro enclosure and stuck it in my OWC Neptune FireWire 400 enclosure. This has been rock-solid for one week, running Time Machine the whole time without so much as a hiccup. My co-worker is now getting a WD drive inside his Seagate Controller. He won't be using it for the same purposes, so he'll never know the difference.

So, to make a long story short, if you have a sata enclosure that is hanging about once a day when running time machine, I think you can keep that enclosure and swap out the sata drive inside. I know for sure that the Seagate 3750640AS works, but I don't know about other drives. It could have something to do with the chipset on the drive itself. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB is listed on newegg.com for $109.00 right now. Don't sue me if it doesn't work (this is free advice without any warranty of any kind, not even fitness for a particular purpose), but it might be a good bet. I can't say what might be a viable solution for different drive sizes (e.g. 160 GB 2.5" drive, etc., etc.).

Hopefully, this is a behavior that can be predicted from the make of the drive or its controller chips. At this point I don't know what to look for because I don't have unlimited resources to test every drive/enclosure combo. I'm already out over $100 buying different enclosures plus countless hours debugging this annoying issue.

I have yet to test my Macally PHR-S100SUA with my Seagate 3750640AS, but I hope it works, because the Macally enclosure has the super sweet triple interface that includes eSATA. I'll post those results here if I do that test.