Apple Recommends Against Using FireWire 800 Drives with Panther

until they figure out a fix. From Apple:

"Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Apple is working with Oxford Semiconductor and affected drive manufacturers to resolve this issue which resides in the Oxford 922 chip-set.

In the interim, Apple recommends that you do not use these drives. To stop using the drive, you should unmount or eject the disk drive before doing anything else. Please check this web page for further updates."

After installing Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), rebooting with a FireWire 800 drive with the Oxford 922 chip attached to the computer can render it useless and the data on it unaccessible. [Dana Baggett]