After sporadic reports of data loss and corruption with FireWire 800 devices operating with the new Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" operating system, Apple Computer made an official press release to indicate this problem has been traced to Oxford Semiconductor's 922 Firmware used by nearly all FireWire 800 devices, including the OWC Mercury Elite 800 series.
While Oxford Semiconductor and Apple Computer disagree over what has led to this issue (there is absolutely no issue under any circumstance with OS 10.2.8 and earlier), Apple has confirmed that the issue is limited to FireWire 800 devices using Oxford 922 firmware v1.02 and prior when running Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther".
No OWC Mercury Elite FireWire 800 product has a firmware version lower than v1.02, but it is our recommendation that you upgrade your firmware to version v1.05 immediately to be prepared for the time that you do upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther". If you have already upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther", it is of the utmost importance that you upgrade your firmware NOW.
Please make note that this problem has only affected a small number of customers, but we take this issue very seriously and highly recommend that all customers either update their drive's firmware revision.
Update your OWC Mercury Elite FireWire 800 drive today to avoid any problems with Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther". The safety of your data is of the utmost concern to us here at Other World Computing.
