External hard drive crash MBP

Lately my MBP have been acting wierd whenever an external hard drive is connected to it with USB. Everything can work fine a few days and then randomly the computer will hang and beep repeatedly. This problem have occured with 2 different external hard drives and never when no hard drive was connected.

You might want to look at some of the hard drive troubleshooting documents at the following site:
http://scsc-online.com
Based on what you've written it would seem to me that you're either experiencing problems related to intermittent interconnections in the hard drive OR your beginning to have system problems and the correlation with them to the hard drive is coincidental. Intermittent connection problems are most often with faulty cables.
If the computer is beeping on startup, it usually implies a RAM problem, FWIW.

Similar Messages

External Hard Drive crashed with all songs on it. HELP!!!

Hello. My kids have used my work PC as their itunes playground for over the past year. I added a Lacie external hard drive to help them save thier music and had itunes on it, as well as my pc. The external hard drive crashed and won't communicate with the pc at all so when we bring up itunes on the pc it shows exclamation marks next to almost all of the songs and won't play them. I still have almost all of our music on my ipod, except about 170 songs that they purchased since I last plugged in my ipod, they have their own mini's. I want to know how to get the songs back to my computer. I am afraid if I connect the 60GB ipod to the pc all of our songs will be wiped out since my ipod is on autosync. Can anyone give me a reliable way to get everything back to normal? PLEASE!!!!

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using a lot of the utilities your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTMS purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers has been introduced with iTunes 7. A paragraph on it has been added to this article:: Transfer iTunes Store purchases using iPod
The transfer of non iTMS content such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there's a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to your Mac. The procedure is a bit involved but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
If you prefer something more automated there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. You can also read reviews of some of them here: Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Senuti Mac Only
iPodRip Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
PodView Mac Only
iPodAccess Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
PodUtil Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac & Windows
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.

I have imported and processed photo's in Lightroom 2 and kept stored files on external hard drive. External hard drive crashed....how do I export photo's from Lightroom when it says 'file not found'?

Folders with photo files are lost due to external hard drive crashing. Processed photo's are still in LR. How can I export from LR to a file (any file) that no longer exists? Help!!!

Well, no backups, the technical term for that is "a problem". I think from this point forward, you need to commit yourself to making regular automated backups of all of your photos and catalog file to different physical disks, no excuses.
Your photos are not stored in Lightroom. However, Lightroom does create "previews", this is what you are seeing, but these are usually smaller and low-quality compared to the originals. There are plug-ins that can extract the previews from Lightroom. One such plug-in is here robcole.com - PreviewExporter

All of my imovie events are stored on an external hard drive. How do I backup this external hard drive? If the external hard drive crashes, how do retrieve the imovie events?

I have all of my imovie events stored on an external hard drive in order to save space on my MacBook Pro's internal drive. I currently back up both my MacBook Pro and the external hard drive using a second external hard drive via Time Machine. I have a few questions:
1. How can I be sure that the external drive is actually being backed up.
2. How do I retrieve the imovie events if the 1st external hard drive crashes?
Thank for your help!

Let me give you some thoughts. I can tell you my plan, but ultimately you will need your own plan that makes sense for you.
I do not think that your idea of having two separate Time Machine destinations will work. You can have two external drives as Time Machine volumes, but they will both back up the same data set. You cannot dedicate one to iMovie and one to everything else. They will both have everything, so you may still have a space problem.
One way to overcome this is to back up the iMovie volume by using a tool like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. The good news is that your Event files should be pretty stable and there is no need to back them up every 15 minutes. So something like SuperDuper, which you can set to automatically backup once a day, for example, is probably fine. I am pretty sure that this would work if you kept the Projects on the same external drive. As long as Projects and Events are on the same drive, then the cloning stragy should work (but you should always test.)
Because projects change more often than events, and projects can become corrupted, I would definitely back up the Project Library to Time Machine. You can do this even though it is on an external drive. (And even though you may be periodically backing up the entire drive that contains the projects.)
Here are some thoughts on how I approach backup, copied from an earlier answer...
============================================================
Great question. I think the issue of backup is a important one, and one I always worry about since I have a lot of video footage that is irreplaceable.
For back-up, it is helpful to define the risk you are trying to protect from.
For example,
1) risk of corruption in iMovie --> I use Time Machine
2) risk of hard drive failure --> I use SuperDuper! nightly for bootable backup) and Time Machine all the time
3) Risk of theft or fire --> offsite backup
Here is what I do...
1) I back up my boot disk with SuperDuper automatically each night so I always have a bootable system.
2) I back up my original video files. For my Motion JPEG, VHS-->AIC, DV, and 8MM to DV, the EVENT is the copy I back up. (I keep the tapes, but I never want to have to import the tapes again.)
For my AVCHD high def video, I back up the camera archive of the AVCHD, but I am not currently backing up the Event files, because I would need from 4 to 8 TB to back up these events depending on whether I made one copy or two. I can always re-create the Event from the camera archive.
3) I use CrashPlan for my offsite backup. It costs less than $4 per month, and I seeded the initial backup to an external drive to minimize having to transfer video files over the Internet. I currently have over 2TB of data backed up to CrashPlan, which includes my entire boot drive, and the files described in #2.
4) All of the above is automated, so I don't have to think about it too much. If I have to manually do stuff, I tend to get behind.
You have to consider the value of total multiple redundancy vs. the likelihood that 2 or three unlikely events would all happen at once. For example, CrashPlan could lose my data. My hard disk could fail. I could lose everything in a fire. But it is unlikely that they would all happen at once, except in nuclear war, in which case, who cares?

Post external hard drive crash, imovie6 files no longer open despite all data being present

my external hard drive crashed.
Thanks to ontrack, I recovered most if not all of the data, and this included the iMovies, I was told, but not one iMovie will open.
The data size is the same as when they were functional. Yet, when clicking on the icon for the movie, it opens and then I see a prompt that says, "A project file is missing..." If I ignore all, the movie never opens. I dont ignore all, the movie does not open.
My questions:
(1) can I fix these files myself? If so, how?
(2) If this is too hard for a novice, is there a company who can look at priceless imovie files and fix themquestion
(3) is this a lost cause?
I've lost upwards of 15 imovies (and the countless hours and love put into each). I'm willing to go to some lengths to fix them, including paying someone.
Thoughts/advice/suggestions?
Thanks.
Damon

I'd like to amend my original post... This should be helpful to anyone out there...
my external hard drive crashed.
I DID NOT have documents backed up properly.
....I KNOW....
sigh...
Thanks to Ontrack, I recovered most if not all of the data, and this included the iMovies, I was told. Yet, when trying to open each file, none will open.
I've tried almost everything, including:
(1) show package contents (and trying to drag and drop "TimelineMovie.mov from cache to new iMovie)(nothing happens when dropping it into the new iMovie--quicktime opens but then nothing)
(2) show package contents (and clicking on the backup copy with ~ in the file name)(again, nothing happens)
What I know is the following:
(1) The data size is the same as when they were functional.
(2) Yet, when clicking on the icon for the movie, it opens and then I see a prompt that says, "A project file is missing..." If I click "ignore all", the movie never opens... i see it loading, loading, loading, and then it stops about 3/4 in.
(3) If I dont "ignore all", the process is the same.
(4) when I go into the media file, i see that all of the data is there
(5) while my new external hard drive(S)...lol... have plenty of space, my current macbook pro is maxed out and I operate with just under 1gb of available memory
My questions:
(1) do I have any hope here?
(2) If so, how do I fix these priceless files myself? I know, if priceless, why not backed up? again, sigh...
(3) If too hard for a novice, is there a company who can look at priceless imovie files and fixes them?
Again, I've lost MANY imovies (and the countless hours and love put into each). I'm willing to go to some lengths to fix them, including paying someone.
Thoughts/advice/suggestions?
Thanks.
Damon

External Hard drive crash - lost all music

The external hard drive where I store all of my iTunes music crashed today and the only other copy of it is on my iPod. Is there any way I can set up my iPod to transfer the music back to my hard drive without losing it? My iPod is set to sync automatically and I'm afraid it will erase everything if I hook it up to my computer. I've poured over the help topics on the Apple site, but nothing addresses my particular problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

*Is there any way I can set up my iPod to transfer the music back to my hard drive without losing it? My iPod is set to sync automatically and I'm afraid it will erase everything if I hook it up to my computer.*
If your iPod is set to update automatically you need to take care connecting to an empty iTunes. You can use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on Windows with iTunes 7.3 or later installed hold down the Shift + Ctrl keys together. This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer: iTunes - Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows
When your iPod appears in the iTunes source list change the update setting to manual, that way you can continue to use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default: Managing content manually on iPod and iPhone
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
The transfer of content from sources such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. Have a look at the web pages and documentation, this is just a small selection of what's available, they are generally quite straightforward. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod2PC Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
SharePod Windows Only
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac and Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows
Floola Mac & Windows
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.

Streaming media from wireless external hard drive and MBP to TV?

Hi everyone. I have a retina MBP and have recently bought a Sony Bravia smart tv with wireless. I have a time machine (the new one) with an external hard drive connected to it with all my media, photo, movies etc. My tv is connected to my wireless from the time machine and I'm wondering how do I stream media from my external hard drive to my tv? And how do I stream media from my MBP to my tv wirelessly? I can't seem to figure it out. Also mirroring my MBP desktop to my tv wirelessly, can it be done without an apple tv? Thanks in advance.

I had the same issue. It was due to the appalling performance of the USB connection to the disk, not any issue with the wireless connection itself. My iMac was within 7m of the router, on the same floor, with a clear line of sight and good reported connection speed. I have the latest late-2009 version of the AEBS running the 7.5 firmware. This has loads of performance problems (read these forums). I'm hoping that Apple will release the new firmware (7.51) for download soon and then the issue may be resolved.

External hard drive crashed...need to move iTunes music files

I had all my music on an external hard drive which recently crashed. Fortunately I did have the library xml file on my laptop hard drive so I still have the library info, playlists, play count, etc. So I used 3rd party software to dump the music files from my iPod back on to another external hard drive. However, when I go to preferences and change the iTunes directory to that folder it still does not recognize the songs. I have gray exclamation marks beside each song and when I try to play songs it says that it can not locate the file. I have a huge library with close to 13,000 songs in it so I am really trying to figure out the easiest way to restore the music back to library so everything will play. Can someone please help me figure out what I need to do. So to summarize I still have the library xml files...I just need to know how to associate the actual songs with the library so that when I try to play a song I do not get an error message saying the file can not be found.

If I do that won't I have duplicates of songs and will the songs that are added have the play count and etc?

External Hard Drive Crashed - Lost my songs

I was storing all my songs on any external hard drive which recently crashed - I lost everything. I can't figure out how to get my songs off my iPod and back on to my computer or new hard drive. Anyone know how to do this?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
You can't directly sync or drag music from your iPod to iTunes library.
If your iTunes is set for "Automatic" in "Preferences -> iPod" (the default setting), connecting your iPod to iTunes now would automatically delete all the content off your iPod. This action cannot be reversed.
Instead, hold the "Shift" and "Ctrl" keys together for about 20-30 seconds as soon as your iPod displays “do not disconnect” to prevent this automatic syncing from happening.
Now, onto the transferring. There are a couple of ways to copy the songs over to your computer.
You can try the method of manually copying songs from your iPod to your computer by accessing your iPod's hard drive.
See this link for the details:
MacMuse - Transferring iPod songs to iTunes
If you would like a program to do this for you in a more automatic way, then select one you'd like to use from this list.
iPod Access Mac and Windows Versions
YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
PodPlayer Windows Only
iGadget Windows Only
I hope this helps you,
-Kylene
If any post helps or solves your issue, please mark it that way accordingly. Thank you for helping the boards!

HP Simplesave external hard drive crashes/freezes HP Windows 7 machine

Okay,
I have a Simplesave 500GB and an HP Windows 7 64 bit laptop.
1) On AC. When the laptop is on AC power, attaching the external hard drive will sometimes freeze the computer, and sometimes not. Windows must be rebooted. The mouse can move, but the "busy" icon shows up.
2) No AC. When the laptop is running on battery, attaching the external hard drive will always freeze/crash the computer. Mouse will move, click is not available, and computer must be rebooted.
3) Attach external before boot. When the external hard drive is attahed before booting the laptop, everything is fine.
Any ideas, anyone?
--Mark
{Personal Information Removed}

Guys I had the same problem on my SimpleSave and traced the issue to swapping it to three computers--a PC Laptop running XP, my laptop running Windows 7 and a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard OS. The problem is the data is available only on the Mac but not on the Windows--but still it cannot download to the hard drive. I called the Philippine HP guys and they told me to reformat the hard disk. I told them "are you crazy? They have no other solution for me. It seems that the length of time on this thread, even HP has no solution. By the way in the Philippine PC Online Forum a lot of HP SimpleSave users have had the same problem. Could it be a product defect?

Missing Library - External Hard Drive Crash

had itunes library stored on external hard drive (in case of computer meltdown) and instead, the external drive crashed - can't seem to revive it. have 60 GB ipod with lots of music - i uninstalled itunes; re-installed and now would like to get library on ipod onto computer; how to do this? itunes only moved the items purchased directly from itunes - is my other music "stuck" on my ipod?
thanks is advance for any help

For all other non purchased content (your own CDs etc) try this method which works on some Windows PCs.
Enable your iPod for disk use.
See: iPod Disk Use.
Open iTunes and select edit/preferences/advanced/general. Put a check mark in the box marked "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" and also "keep iTunes music folder organized", then click 'ok'.
Connect the iPod whilst holding down the shift/ctrl keys to prevent any auto sync, and if you see the dialogue window asking if you want to sync to this itunes library, click 'no'.
Then go to file/add folder, open 'my computer', select your iPod and click 'ok'.
The music files should transfer to your iTunes.
If this doesn't work (and it may not because officially it's not supposed to), check out the instructions/suggestions here.
Music from iPod to computer (using option 2). This a manual method using "hidden folders" and although it works, it is a little more involved than other methods.
Much easier ways are to use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Other free programs are Pod Player, SharePod and Floola.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.

I have Lightroom 4. My external hard drive crashed and now my file is missing from the hard drive.In Lightroom, it has ? on the photos used. I've backed up the photos onto another hard drive and wanted to use it so I can work on my folder of images. Can s

How can I use my backup external hard drive to sync into Lightroom and still work on the same photos I was working on and get rid of the ?. The photos are on a folder so I need to someone sync the folder into Lightroom. Please help!

When I right click on an image, then went to Go to Folder in Library, it pulls up the new external hard drive where I made the new link. When I try to work on the photos, the image still says file image is offline or missing. When I right click on the image to Show in Finder, it says the image could not be used because the original file could not be found. I eventually did click on their locate and found the image. When I linked those two together, a few minutes later ALL the "?" went missing and now IT WORKS!!!!
That was weird!
Hope this helps someone else in my predicament.

External Hard Drive with MBP C2D

Greetings Everyone,
I just purchased a new C2D MBP. I have a Seagate 250 GB external (USB) hard drive that works great with my PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz, Dell Dimension, and MacBook 1.83. However, this drive does not work on either of the USB ports on my MBP.
My MBP does something strange to this drive. After plugging the drive into my MBP, it will not work in any other computer until I power it down. I thought this was a bit strange.
Is there anyone reading this forum with an external USB hard drive that does or does not work on your MBP?
I would like to hear of others' experiences with external drives. I would greatly appreciate any replies.
Sincerely,
Roger
MacBook Pro C2D 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Funny how I had exact same problem (Seagate 300Gb drive, works great with PB G4 1.67, worked fine with 1st Gen MBP 2.0Ghz, new c2d MBP 2.16 does something strange to this drive. After plugging the drive into my MBP, it will not work in any other computer until I power it down.) - I am sure you get errors in system log after plugging in the HDD (just open Terminal.app and type sudo dmesg to verify)
I called AppleCare, they had me take it to store to confirm the problem. Next Apple initiated return. Now I am sitting without a laptop since Nov 8 and replacement will come on Nov 17th at the worst and 15th at the best.
I would suggest you call Applecare and have them initiate a return. The USB controller has a problem. Let AppleCare know of the details of your problem.
Forgot to add - Since it also is a OS issue (I had kernel panic after plugging/unplugging the external USB drive) I filed a bug report with Apple.
You can also file a bug report with Apple - http://bugreport.apple.com) and remember to provide drive model, serial number and model number, and dmesg output with errors in the report
Message was edited by: Parag Warudkar

Recovering from an External Hard Drive Crash..

Hello - My internal drive was starting to get full so I consolidated and copied all files to an external drive and began to run iTunes from it. Thankfully, I never deleted the files from the internal drive because the external drive crashed taking with it all the files I had imported since switching to using it. I have a new external drive and when attempting to re-consolidate, I receive the error message "Copying music failed. The required file cannot be found." I had hoped to leave iTunes as is and just re-import all the files that had been lost using the songs listed as missing files as a guide to what I need to do over. I have already changed the location for the iTunes folder to the new external drive and have also been unable to re-import missing files from the original music CD. Received a similar error message: "Error occurred while converting the file "*song name*". The required file cannot be found." I read in one thread how there are third party apps that can pull files back from iPod. I think I have iPod set to automatically update once connected. I'm afraid to connect it as I don't want to lose what's there. Is there a way to change the setting without first connecting iPod? Perhaps then I could aquire one of the third party apps to restore library that way? Any suggestions on how to deal with this would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely yours,
"Upset and Unwell"

The backup only saves files.photos and possibly program settings. You will have to reinstall Gimp and iTunes. If your music,photos are in the folder move them to your Documents folder in the proper folder..ie, My Music, My Pictures.
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How to copy everything from my ipod, back to my itunes library? Crashed external hard drive- containing all music/media that was linked to itunes.

My external hard drive crashed and that is where I had all of my music/media files. I do have some content on another external drive, but not all (and not my movies, etc).
How can I copy everything, from my ipod classic, back to my itunes on my PC with Windows XP?

The media is laid out on the iPod in a completely different stucture to that used by iTunes. However, if all your files on the iPod have tags (i.e. are not wav files) then you can try the following:
Create a new empty library by holding down shift and clicking the icon to launch iTunes, then select Create. Choose a location with enough room for your media, ideally on the same drive letter your missing media folder used to be on.
Copy the contents of \iPod_Control\Music into the Automatically add to iTunes folder of the new library.
Move the resulting iTunes Media folder into the location that your current library expects to find it. (If you can't do this for some reason move on to the next step, then use my FindTracks script to reconnect your media)
Hold down shift and click the icon to launch iTunes, then select Choose and select your original library.
tt2

External hard drive crash MBP

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