iTunes freezes when connecting iPhone

[geordisjd]

iTunes and a few other apps won't force quit anymore (10.5.4). For iTunes, it's often when I connect my iPhone, and for others, it's been apparently random.
Eventually, I have to restart my MacPro. This has been going on for weeks, 2 or 3 times a day, even after repairing permissions and running First Aid on all my drives.
I figured out it's related to TimeMachine backing up on a firewire drive. Turning off TimeMachine isn't enough. The backup drive has to be unmounted from the Finder to avoid having to restart the computer. The guilty apps will then force quit and can be directly relaunched.

The backup drive can be remounted with the Disk Utility.

I have to get a life.

[acosmichippo]

I have had SO many problems related to Time Machine and my time capsule it's ridiculous... but luckily nothing that would cause freezing 3 times a day.

anyone else mention it on the Apple discussion boards?

Oh, what kind of drives are they? I've heard of a lot of problems with updates and LaCies.

[geordisjd]

Originally Posted by acosmichippo

I have had SO many problems related to Time Machine and my time capsule it's ridiculous... but luckily nothing that would cause freezing 3 times a day.

anyone else mention it on the Apple discussion boards?

Oh, what kind of drives are they? I've heard of a lot of problems with updates and LaCies.

I didn't check the Apple boards. I found some info on MacOsX.com. Ididn't relate my problems to the TimeMachine until then. I had turned it off because of annoying messages like "can't backup right now, I'm kind of tired, error -4537". But that wasn't enough. I couldn't easily unplug that HD either, as it is caught in a web of external drives that are connected either serially or in parallel, which means that when I disconnect one, all the others freak out with error/horror messages like "you've disconnected me and I might die".
I had not found the unmounting trick mentioned anywhere, but it works.
All my external drives are FireWire, except one. The backup drive is a 1 TB LaCie one.