How to avoid FW external hard drives that don't boot! and other thoughts

[MMM]

Originally Posted by drbonbi

the desirability of FireWire external hard drives that do boot (Some don't! Worse. Some claim to and don't!)

It's the chip that the enclosure uses that determines if it will boot under Firewire in OS X. All enclosures that use the Oxford 911 or 922 chip will boot. Cheaper enclosures that use the Prolific chip (rev A and B) will not boot all the time. Supposedly Prolific has fixed the problems with their chips in rev. C, but I can't find anyone that can verify it. If the chip says Eon on it, then it's made by Prolific.