Detect / warn about firewire bus problems?

[xochi]

I just had a problem with what looked like hardware problems on my backup drive, which were solved by simplifying the firewire chain. Instead of mac -> 20" monitor w/FW hub connected to an isight and my backup drive, i just plugged the drive directly into the mac. Problem solved.

I'm sure I'm not alone here in seeing these issues. Would it be possible for superduper to either (A) detect potentially problematic FW bus configurations and warn us ("Hey joe, i see you have an isight plugged into the firewire bus, are you aware this can cause problems"?) or (B) do a better job catching serious errors that may be hardware related and suggest possible reasons ("Hey joe, i'm getting lstat(0) errors on your backup drive. Either your drive is failing or you are having firewire bus issues. Perhaps you should do X, Y, or Z")?

[dnanian]

The thing is, it's nearly impossible for us to know when these situations will cause problems, and when they won't (for example, I'm able to use an iSight on the same bus without trouble, as can many... except when they can't). It's kind of more of an Operating System problem than anything else.

I do go through the various errors and potential problems in the Troubleshooting section so that you can step through them an determine what's wrong...