Finally worked out today what the problem was with my external hard drive. The short version of my tales of woe goes like this: my external hard drive (which contains all my iTunes and my iPhoto library) was screwing up. It would spontaneously dismount during file copies or crawl to a stop. Gradually, it became impossible to use.
I tried changing the cable, changing the port it connected to on my iMac, removing everything else FireWire from the chain and switching off IP over FireWire.
I tried a firmware update. This was easier said than done: I couldn't remember whom I bought the drive from or what the drive model was. When I found out it was Mac and More (shipping what was probably a Macally drive under a different name), I had to face the likely fact that they'd stopped trading, judging by the disappearance of their web site. Eventually, I determined it used the Oxford 911 chipset, like most other FireWire drives. The Oxford Semiconductor web site only has a Windows firmware updater, but eventually I found FireWire depot's firmware updater page, which has an OS X updater utility and the latest version of the firmware (4.0). My drive was on 3.7. Applied the updater as per the instructions and heart-sinking moment after all firmware disappeared off the drive completely. Had to apply it again to get it to install properly, but for a moment, I thought I'd killed my drive.
The firmware fixed the dismounting issue, which was great. Far less great was its marked tendency to corrupt write and read operations: any kind of bulk copy and system.log starts to fill up with disk1 [I/O] read/write errors. Not good.
MacFixIt hints that possibly faulty power supplies may be to blame in these instances. With the dealer out of business, that only left me the last possible solution, short of a diagnosis of knackered hard drive: OS X 10.4.2 has problems with external FireWire hard drives.
So I boot up my PowerBook into 10.3 (I have a separate partition for such emergencies and so I can answer certain questions for iCreate's helpdesk), attach my external hard drive and wadayaknow? No problems whatsoever. In fact, the firmware update seems to have drastically improved the throughput on data copies, judging by the speed at which I was able to copy files about without difficulty or corruption. Yes, 10.4.2 is made of purest, hardware-trashing evil. 10.3 is sugar and spice and all things nice.
With 10.4.3 just around the corner and as many as 1,000 bug fixes promised, I can only that this particular problem will be fixed because it's made it impossible for me to use iTunes, iPhoto and my iPod with any confidence and convenience. Do not foresake me now, Apple.
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Has your drive functioned properly under Mac OS 10.4.3? I had the same problem and went back to Panther prior to the 10.4.3 release.
Afraid not. I've pretty much given it up for dead until 10.4.4 comes out. I'll give it another try then and set what happens, but it's screwed for the moment. Panther was only marginally helpful for me unfortunately, otherwise I might have stayed with it.