USB and FireWire

So I have this external USB/FW drive that I use for TimeMachine on my mac. I have (unfortunately) some other data on that as well. Day before yesterday it just stopped working, making the Finder unresponsible. I had to leave my hotel room in Hyderabad, so I yanked the cable.

Bad thing, but what should I have done? I think the damage was done already.

End result is that the drive is not visible. I see with USB Probe (part of Developer package) something on the USB bus that is suspended. Also, the drive does not turn off and stop spinning when the computer is turned to sleep. Indication that it might hopefully be a state problem in some machinery somewhere.

Anyway, I then thought I could try FireWire access instead, if it is the USB driver on the disk that is confused. So I borrowed a FireWire cable of my friend Kurtis. Cool, if it was the case I had something to connect the cable to in the other end.

Lesson learned: If you want to connect something via a cool interface, ensure you have not only the cable, but also something to connect the cable to in the other end.