External drives will not mount if wi-fi is on

I was really unsure where to post this. If you think it should be in a different thread then let me know.
My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is a wi-fi connection that my Macbook automatically connects to. Recently, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount until I switch the wi-fi off. Additionally, almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or more at a time.
I have searched the net and cannot seem to find any reference to this problem anywhere else. Any ideas at all why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

Similar Messages

  • External drives will not mount if the wi-fi is on!

    I have had no replies where I had previously posted so I thought I would try here as I think that it is mainly an Airport problem.
    My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is are two wi-fi connections that my Macbook automatically connects to depending on where I am in the department. Recently almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or much more at a time. Additionally, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount on my laptop, unless I switch the wi-fi off! No-one else is having any problems at all.
    One of the wi-fi connections is an Airport Extreme. Each morning my laptop gets the message that there is a problem and I need to update the firmware to 7.5.2. (I originally set the Airport up through my laptop) I am very wary of doing this as everything is working fine for the other 20+ laptops in the department and I have read lots of reports of problems with this update.
    I suppose my questions are these - 1 Does anyone have any idea what is going on with my laptop? 2 What should I try doing to solve this issue?
    I have searched the net and cannot seem to find any reference to this problem anywhere else. Any ideas at all why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

    It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
    Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
    10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
    There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

  • External Drives will not mount

    Hi guys ... this is my first post in these forums, so sorry if it is in the wrong category.
    I have a Mac Pro, purchased in Feb this year. I have an iOmega Ultramax firewire drive, that is partitioned into four disks.
    I have had time machine running well, and it backs everything up onto a second iOmega drive I have.
    Yesterday, before I left for work, I saw TM was sbusy backing up. The finder was not responding but I just left it, as didnt have time to loko into it before leaving.
    When I cam home last night, I saw it was still not responding, and TM was still trying to backup. All other apps were functioning fine.
    I tried to force quit Finder and TM, but it did not work. I then shut down the Mac manually, and rebooted.
    The problem has now arisen, where the partitioned drives will not mount at all. The TM backup drive is fine, and I can browse TM fine with it - so good to know all my data is backed up.
    I looked at the logs in console, and see the messages saying that the drive cannot mount as it is dirty?
    What I have tried as troubleshooting steps:
    •Disk Utility to try and mount the drives, but they are not showing up
    •Connecting the drive to my Mac Mini - still nothing.
    •DiskWarrior - nothing. Only my TM backup drive and Mac HD show up.
    •Running FSCK from Terminal. I can see the drives in /dev, but keep getting "Bad Super block" errors. When I try looking for another Super Block, it says nothing found, and would I like to run it manually? The same happens when run in single user mode.
    •Unplugging the Mac and the drives from the Mac, waiting 5 mins, resetting the NVRAM and PRAM (booting up holding CMDPR and waiting for the second chime, shutting down, plugging in and turing n drives, rebooting ... nothing!
    It seems as though I have exhausted all possible options.
    I now accept that the drive is unrecoverable, and am relieved that the TM backups are OK. I am thus happy to format the drive and repartition it, then restore everything from TM. Will be a fairly big job, but at least the data is backed up.
    The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
    Is there any safe way of doing this over the command line. Or even better, has anybody gt any other advice as to options I can try?
    I hope I have been thorough enough in my explanation here.
    Thanks in advance,
    Dave

    The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
    I have a feeling that the partition map is bad. Does the drive itself report to DU? If the drive does show up, you can select that, and click the Repair Disk button under the First Aid tab. If that doesn't fix it, with the drive selected, click the partition tab and re-partition the drive. After that, I would erase the newly created volumes with 1-pass/zero out option selected and restore the data that was on the external from TM.
    If none of this works or if the drive itself (not the volumes) doesn't show up in DU, you either have a bad drive or bad controller in the external case. How old is the Ultramax? Just wondering if it might still be under manufacturer's warranty. I would check to see if you are still eligible from the manufacturer's warranty and get the whole external unit replaced. If you are out of warranty, I think it likely that you need to replace that external with a new one. I've had a drive go bad in an external case (this one I could still mount but the heads would 'freeze') and the controller on another external go bad (this one, the drive would not report to DU so I took the drive out of the enclosure, stuck the drive in another case and there was no problem with the drive.)

  • External drives will not mount on 10.2.3

    whatever working drive i use (and i've tested a few), my old iMac (OS 10.2.3) will not mount anything external.
    the drives work as evidence by the fact that they mount on my other Macs.
    and the USB ports work (confirmed by testing the keyboard in each one).
    yes, the Finder view preferences are set to show external drives.
    to complicate matters, Disk Utility shows only the hardrive.
    the issue is with 10.2.3 and i have no idea what's up.

    It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
    Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
    10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
    There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

  • External drive will not mount to desktop

    Ok so i just bought a new hard drive and hooked everything up to my imac. However, it will not mount to my desktop.
    1. I opened disc utility and i can see that my newly purchased hard drive is listed on the LHS with 931 GB available.
    2. I click on the mount button on the top and i get this message- "The disk “disk1s1” could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."
    3. So now i click on First Aid and attempt to repair disc, however I get this message-"Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
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    Thanks in advance.

    how did that solve the issue? my 350gb seagate drive just started behaving the same way as your initial post -- it shows in Disk Utility but will not mount -- even after running disk repair/verify. This just started happening two days ago...

  • Partition of external drive will not mount

    I have an external, 3rd party, 1TB HD connected to a MBPro via USB.
    I partitioned this drive into 2 parts, one of which I have been using for TM backups. It worked for a month and then the mount of the TM partition started to fail. The partition I use for user space still mounts OK.
    My last TM backup was 3 days ago. The TM partition started to fail to mount then. Disk Utility is unable to mount this partition.
    Suggestions that do not require reformatting?
    TM worked fine in this partictioned HD across USB for quite a while ... finished a backup and then went bad.
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    Great idea, Twittly.
    I hooked the drive in question up to a 2nd mac and spent about an hour there w/Disk Utility running on the drive and/or the individual partitions.
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  • External drive will not mount

    I have a 500Gb external USB / firewire HD, and it has stopped mounting.
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    Tony:
    Tech Tool Pro will run a hardware check on the drive. However, it must see the drive and be able to mount it.
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    Please do post back with update, and/or further questions or comments.
    Cheers.
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