Mounting external Hard Disk

Hello.
I have an external HDD (USB) that I use for moving large files between computers. I plugged it into my Mac and it mounted fine, worked great. Unfortunately, Spotlight immediately took over and started indexing the heck out of the drive. I tried adding the drive to Spotlight's Private pane, but it wouldn't add and kept on indexing. I killed mdimport, but the CPU was still through the roof and the drive wouldn't eject (dialogue said that it was in use). I didn't have time for any of this crap, so I did the only reasonable thing to get the Mac to quit working like crazy on the drive--I yanked the USB cord. Worked great, even if the computer bitched at me about not doing that. Yeah, I know it was a bad idea, but I didn't see any other choices in my immediate time frame.
So, now Finder won't mount the HDD. All the data appears to be there. The drive works fine. Windows has no issues mounting it. Is there some hidden file (like all those .ds_stores) that might be corrupted on the HDD, or some file on my Mac that I can trash that will get the HDD to mount like normal again? I haven't tried mounting the HDD on a different Mac. Any suggestions appreciated.

1. You wrote: " But my CPU usage goes to near 100%, and Activity Monitor does not list any processes to account for this (mdimport is not listed)."
1.1. Is that CPU utilization as reported by Activity Monitor?
1.2. Have you sorted the list of processes in descending order by %CPU? In Activity Monitor, click the %CPU column heading until the list is in descending order.
1.3. Before connecting and powering-on the drive, set up Activity Monitor as noted above. Additionally, in Activity Monitor, select View > Update Frequency > Very Often. Then connect the drive and power it on, watching Activity Monitor.2. Per your other questions re: Finder, if it was a Finder issue, Finder would be the process consuming the CPU per Activity Monitor. 100K files is nothing for Finder. Is the drive or a folder on the drive open in a Finder window when this happens?
3. Is this a new drive? If so, I'd contact the manufacturer or vendor: it may be defective. If not a new drive, what changes did you make to your system before this problem arose.
4. Have you tried a different USB cable? Different USB port?
5. See if an errant Startup or Login Item is causing the problem: see my "Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items" FAQ.
6. When the problem occurs, immediately check these Console logs for clues.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Thanks Pascal for your reply.
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Upgraded to 10.4.9 on MBP 15", now, I can't mount external hard disk!

Hi all,
I have a LaCie 500GB drive that I've been using perfectly since I've gotten it, but alas, I upgraded to 10.4.9 and it no longer mounts either by it's USB interface or by its Firewire interface.
My machine is a MBP 15" (2.16 GHz, 2 GB Ram), which works perfectly in all other respects and is now running 10.4.9.
The symptoms are that when I plug it in, I usually get the message, "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" with the options "Initialize...", "Ignore", and "Eject". So far, I haven't pressed any buttons except Ignore or Eject. Sometimes, I do not get this message, but it still doesn't mount, it just silently does nothing.
So, after pressing "Ignore", I've opened Disk Utility and had a look. The physical drive appears and there is one volume named "disk2s6" which for all purposes is probably my normal, logical volume (partition). However, last time it mounted on this machine, it was named "Archive". This logical volume is grey and will not mount no matter how many times I press the "Mount" button. It just does nothing.
OK, so, while I'm in Disk Utility, I ran Verify Disk and, after the normal routine, it comes back with "No Repairs Necessary". I've also tried "Repair Disk" and this comes back "No repairs were necessary", again after the full, normal processing of the various things.
I also performed a Fix Permissions on my startup-volume, but this didn't help either.
Next test was to mount the disk on my MacMini (PPC) instead, also running 10.4.9. It mounts perfectly and it properly comes up with the name "Archive" as expected.
I've then tried to mount other devices on my MBP including a USB memory key, and another external Firewire drive. These both mount perfectly on my MBP.
While I was at this, I've also tried new USB and Firewire cables, this didn't affect my results in the least.
I've finally verified that there is nothing in /Volumes out of the ordinary that might prevent it from mounting by doing a "sudo ls -la" whilst in /Volumes/. There's not a thing that would affect the mount-point.
I then disabled my folder actions that I've been running on the directory /Volumes *I had an action used to backup my USB key). Unfortunately, I still have the same issue.
Finally, I downloaded the Combo 10.4.9 installer, booted into Safe Mode (to trigger an automatic fsck), then rebooted and installed the 10.4.9 Combo installer, in case there was some weirdness in the Software Update upgrade to 10.4.9.
What stone have I left unturned? Why won't this drive mount, but it works perfectly elsewhere? I want to get back to using Aperture on my MBP and my entire photo Library is on this disk (well, and backed up on another external drive, but it lives normally on my MBP).
MBP 15" 2.16GHz + LaCie 500GB Ext Firewire drive Mac OS X (10.4)
Mac OS X (10.4)

Here's some additional info...
When executing a manual mount: I get this:
sudo mount -v /dev/disk1s6 /Volumes/Archive
/dev/disk1s6 on /Volumes/Archive: Incorrect super block.
During a normal plug-in-the-disk-and-expect-it-to-mount-automatically, this is what diskarbitrationd reports:
22:45:40 iokit [0] -> diskarbitrationd [41]
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1.
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1s3.
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1s4.
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1s6.
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1s2.
22:45:40 created disk, id = /dev/disk1s1.
22:45:40
22:45:40 diskarbitrationd [41] -> diskarbitrationd [41]
22:45:40 probed disk, id = /dev/disk1s6, with hfs, ongoing.
22:45:40
22:45:40 diskarbitrationd [41] -> SystemUIServer [289]:13363
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s1.
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s2.
22:45:40 dispatched callback queue.
22:45:40
22:45:40 SystemUIServer [289]:13363 -> diskarbitrationd [41]
22:45:40 dispatched response, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s1.
22:45:40 dispatched response, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s2.
22:45:40
22:45:40 diskarbitrationd [41] -> diskarbitrationd [41]
22:45:40 probed disk, id = /dev/disk1s6, with hfs, failure.
22:45:40 probed disk, id = /dev/disk1s6, no match.
22:45:40
22:45:40 diskarbitrationd [41] -> SystemUIServer [289]:13363
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s6.
22:45:40 dispatched callback queue.
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s4.
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s3.
22:45:40 dispatched callback, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1.
22:45:40
22:45:40 SystemUIServer [289]:13363 -> diskarbitrationd [41]
22:45:40 dispatched response, id = 914042DE:00000000, kind = disk peek, disk = /dev/disk1s6.
22:45:40
Mac OS X (10.4)
Mac OS X (10.4)

Hi there! yesterday I installed Mavericks on my Macbook. Since then, it doesn't mount my external hard disk drive anymore, which he did a week ago (without the update). Is there anyone out there who knows a solution?

Hi there! Yesterday, I installed Mavericks on my Macbook. Since then, it doesn't recognize my external hard disk drive anymore (at least not on the desktop. In Germany they call it "it doens't mount it". I don't know if it's the same expression in english?)
I just used it a week ago, before I did the update and it worked perfectly fine.
Is there anyone out there who knows a solution for this problem? I've been googleing for hours now and can't find any answer.
Thank you!!!

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.
Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a Fusion Drive or a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Can't mount my external Hard Disk

I bought a new mac book. I have been using an external Hard Disk with the laptop i am currently using. I tried to connect the 160GB external hard disk to my mac and it doesnt mount. It worked well for the very first time I connected, but then it showed up some error msg that the disk has been ejected improperly and the data might be lost. It doesn't even show up in the disk utility after I connect it. It works fine with my thinkpad though. Could someone help me with this....
Help is greatly appreciated....

hi there--
try an smc reset of the macbook http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303319 and then see if the drive is recognized then. if not, then try a different port if there is one available, or try a different external device with the same connection type to see if all devices with that connection type aren't recognized. good luck.

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Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
Looking at the Activity Monitor, I saw that sustemuiserver was not running.
Reading around, I discovered that this usually follows a FrontRow hack (which I haven't installed). I tried deleting the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file and logging out and back in again. Everything seems to work again, for a while. However, the same thing happened this morning.
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I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

External Hard Disks Not Mounting

I am having trouble with external hard disks appearing on my desktop.
Sometimes they appear, sometimes they don't. I have run Disk Utility when they do appear. No problems were found.
It seems to have started after I updated to iTunes 10.
Has anyone any suggestions?

No answer to your problem, I'm afraid, but I have been having similar problems but with CDs rather than external hard disks since I installed iTunes10-they appear greyed out in Finder.

Disk write cache corruption on an external hard disk

Recently I purchased an external hard disk, to put all of my pictures of my baby due to space limitations on my internal laptop drive. Since my Canon camera 10 megapixel pictures take up a ton of space this was occurring at an alarming rate. My intention was also to back up to DVD but never got to it. This is both a comment and a question.
Now said baby, is getting really good at pulling cords etc. He managed to do this on the external drive firewire cable. As far as i know the drive was not in the process of actually writing. However, after a few minutes and trying to re-plug the drive the OS crashed with a Grey Screen of Death hardware error that tells you that you need to push the power button..
This apparently corrupted the drive's directory. Upon reboot the drive would not mount. Since there were time machine backups on the drive too Diskwarrior was not able to reconstruct the drive in the built in memory available on the computer. Time machine stores millions of files and Diskwarrior apparently wants to keep it all in memory at once. Since my computer has 2GB you would hope that would be enough but apparently not. So that failed. Other utilities seemed to be able to find the files but not restore the directory. I also took it to the apple store they were not able to recover it.
I have to say this is extremely distressing, and hard to believe that a simple accident like this could cost the loss of thousands of pictures. I did send it to a rescue company but that was expensive but I think apple needs to do something about this situation.
On Windows there is a way to disable the write cache for external drives. This is not available for Mac OS X. This would prevent this rather common occurrence of a plug accidentally becoming disengaged when the drive is not in the process of writing. This reduces the odds but I still think apple, in order to become clearly superior, needs a better solution.
I know Apple has experimented with ZFS would this not eliminate this possibility of this kind of disaster? Is this in Snow Leopard desktop? I know they are thinking this is a business customer focused technology but clearly if it can eliminate this kind of thing then I think it is extremely useful to their non server customers. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this issue but ZFS is designed to deal with these issues. HFS+ is extremely fragile to disk corruption.
I know my situation is not that uncommon and this is not the first time this has happened to me with an external drive. You would think I had learned. I hate to think of how many other people have had the same thing happen to them.

Disabling a write cache would not help you with the problem you are having. Besides the write cache is on the hard drive and operates independently of the operating system. But nothing can protect you from disconnected an external drive improperly, and if the drive is in the process of being written to, and the problem comes from directory corruption, not file corruption, as in the case you have described, disabling a write cache would not have made any difference.
For the future the magic word is: Backups.
< Edited by Host >

How do i retrieve file vault protected files from an external hard disk that used to be my mbp's hard drive? the hard disk got corrupted and will no longer boot. I put it in an enclosure and attempted to copy my files but failed because of FV encryption.

This external hard disk used to serve as the main drive of my mbp. It got corrupted and the OSX would no longer load. I upgraded to a 500gb hd and used the old hd as an external drive. I tried to copy my files but i could not access them because of the filevault encryption. 110gb of hd space appears as used which means that my files are still in the drive. Is there a way to retrieve these files? thanks

According to your post, you're using Leopard, so FileVault only encrypts your user folder (unlike Lion). On the mounted external drive, in your user folder, you should see a file called username.sparsebundle, with username being your user name. Double-click that file to open it and it should prompt you for a password. Type in your password and the file will mount as a volume in Finder. You should be able to copy all of your files over.

Finder freeze when opening folders of my Western Digital external hard disks

I'm facing a big issue. I'm runnin' Mac Os Lion, I realized a clean install a few days ago. Everything is going fine, but every time I plug an external hard disk on my MBP, I can see the disk appearing on my desktop or in the finder, and when I open it, the finder freezes, I have to reboot manually, or wait to relaunch the finder. My disks are in HFS format, used to work great on Snow Leopard no longer than a week ago... What is weird is that my time machine (external hard disk usb) works fine... Moreover, I can see the disks in the Disk Utility, I can't click on "verify permissions" but on "verify disk" and it says that the disks are fine... Any idea ?
PS : I could have erase everything on them and reformat, but I need the files inside...
Thanks

Hi!
Here's a suggestion from BDAqua:
In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes".
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra number on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a number, and reboot.
cornelius

External hard disk not recognized by time machine

I have an external backup disk, Passport, that is no longer recognized by time machine or my computer. I used it a couple of weeks ago to restore my wife's MacBook. Hers is an older model and uses Lion. Since then my MacBook Pro--mavericks will not mount the external hard disk.
OKAY==after leaving the Passport on for a couple of hours it now is mounted. Don't know what happened, but it is now working.
CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

External hard-disk not working with firewire under Snow Leopard

Hi. I have a LaCie d2 external hard-disk that has Firewire 800, 400 and usb2. I previously used it on my old (angle-poise) iMac connecting using the Firewire 400 socket. I've just a got a new mac with Snow Leopard and I thought it would we best to connect to the LaCie with Firewire 800. However when I do this, the disc mounts ok, but browsing in the Finder is really slow and copying files from the disk to the imac seems to work at a really slow rate (less than USB1 speed) if at all ! However, I switched to using the USB2 connection instead and it works like a dream. What gives ? Is Firewire in Snow Leopard buggy ??

There's no problem with the drive.
Maybe true, and the drive would probably work fine with Leopard. One thing that's obvious is that Apple did make changes in the way that FireWire works in Snow Leopard. Many drives and drive manufacturers work well with SL, but there have also been reports of firmware issues by Western Digital and other companies.
Have you checked with your vendor to see if they are offering a firmware update for your drive?
BTW, I got a new FW case a few months ago while at a Fry's electronic store. The brand new USB2 and FW400 cables worked fine. The FW800 cable did not, but another cable came to the rescue. Just saying...

Dismount multiple external hard disk drives

I have multiple external hard disk drives and was wondering what the command line is that will dismount all of these at once? Note that there is also one external DVD unit as well which I would not want to dismount.
Thanks,
Lyman

diskutil unmount "/path/to/disk";diskutil unmount "/path/to/disk";diskutil unmount "/path/to/disk"
Just replace replace "/path/to/disk" with the path to the mount point, leaving the quotes.
Good luck!

External Hard Disk not showing up on Finder

Hi
My HP Pocket Media Drive (USB), when plugged into my MacBook, does not show up on the Finder, even though it shows up on System Profiler. It only shows up on Disk Utility in certain occasions (such as after shutting down and starting up again). I have checked my Finder preferences, that external hard drives are shown on desktop.
I have tried resetting my PRAM and SMC too, but I still can't access the hard disk.
Any help will be appreciated.

Ian Sen wrote:
I get the following message in a window:
“connecting to server: resolving alias to… (my itunes folder on the external disk).”
On the chance that your Mac has a phantom folder in its Volumes folder, with that external drive not mounted, invoke the Finder menu option Go > Go to Folder. Enter "/Volumes" (without the quotes) in the field and click "Go". In the resulting window if you see anything with a name that resembles your external drive, trash it.
Anyone know how I can have the external hard disk automatically mount onto my desktop (and thereby bypass the need for several click-thru’s via the finder window)?
Once you're able to mount that external drive, open the Accounts panel of System Preferences and click on the lock in the corner to authenticate if needed. Select your account on the left, then the "Login Items" tab. Drag the mounted disk icon into the window then close System Preferences. That disk should now mount when you log in. A Finder window will open, but you can close that manually. If that bothers you sufficiently, if you search these discussion groups you may be able to find threads that discuss how to work around that.

How to format an external hard disk Mac Os Extended (Journaled)?

hello
I connect an external hard disk (2.5' IDE Western Digital Scorpio Blue, WD2500BEVE) via USB or FireWire to my Mac mini. The Disk Utility tool shows an external disk drive of 128 GB - but the disk has 250 GB. How can I format the external USB/Firewire-harddisk 250 GB "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"?
I tried also to format the disk on a Windows PC (Windows XP). But I could not find a software to format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
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andreasmarx wrote:
As I use theses hard disks in a external hard disk case, I'm asking me whether my hard disk cases do not support more that 128 GB disk capacity. Is that realistic?
It is not only realistic but probably the reason your Mac cannot see more than 128 GB of the capacity of the drives mounted in them. It has nothing to do with the interface between the Mac & case (like Firewire) but instead with the controller in the case that connects the raw ATA drive to that interface. Older ATA standards used a 28 bit LBA (logical block address) scheme to access the disk. For 512 bytes per sector this works out to a maximum of 128 GB of addressable disk capacity. The ATA-6 standard, also called Ultra-ATA/100 or just ATA-100, increased the bits in the address space from 28 to 48, with a disk capacity limit of 2 petabytes.
ATA-6 was introduced in 2001, so any external drive case made before then for ATA drives will be forever limited to 128 G. Even now, some come with a controller that does not support the ATA-6 standard, & essentially none have all the hardware to support its full 48 bits of address capacity. However, since 2 PB (2000 terabyte) drives won't be available anytime soon, all you really need is a case that is ATA-6 or better compliant & supports enough address bits for the largest drive you intend ever to put in it.
Case makers don't usually make this information easily available but many now include a "bullet" spec about the maximum capacity their case supports, typically rounded off to simple numbers like 320 GB, 500 GB, or whatever. If you can't find this info, you can assume that the newer the case the more likely it is to support larger capacity drives, or just buy one with a good return policy & test it yourself with the largest raw drive you own.

Mounting external Hard Disk

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