Can't find external USB drive

Okay, I can't figure out why or exactly when it occured, but I realized I can't access my external LaCie drive through my Airport Extreme. I never had any problems with it before, but maybe after installing an update or something, it has now made it inaccessable. I can see the drive in the Airport Utility, but when I can't mount it onto the desktop or use it at all. When the Airport Disk Utility tells me that its available and I try to connect to it, it tells me "Connection Failed". Also, if I try to connect to it through the Finder, it tells me it can't locate the alias for the Aiport base station to which I have the drive connected. It all totally confuses me. I can't really tell where the problem lies. I'm having no problem connecting to the internet through the Airport, but I can't mount the drive from it. Aargh!

Hi John, and welcome to the discussions!
For the busted alias, might try...
Finder>Preferences>Sidebar>Show Network Icon... toggle this OFF then On... sometimes a re-boot between the two helps.
But first, use Disk Utility to repair permissions... a good idea both before and after any update/upgrade.

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Can i include external usb drives in Time Machine backups

Can I include external usb drives and sticks in Time Machine backups?
This was the question I searched a week for. My machine is a MBAir with Yosemite. I have a bunch of USB HD and sticks. This is a sharing of what it took to solve. I lost a couple of important document revisions lately because of not having differential backups on them, so wanted to include them in Time Machine.
Yes it can, I found. But it's a wee bit backwards. And apparent inconsistencies drive you crazy. Time Machine is supposed to do this by default, and wants you to tell it what NOT to include. Trouble is, formats create many troubles.
But the USB sticks and HD's you buy are PC formatted. And you'd like to share, as the Apple does with FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT (to overcome the 4G size limit on the others). Even NTFS can be plugged in and be read-only. Turns out you just can't incorporate into TM backups.
Open Time Machine Options, and look at the drives listed in the exclusion window. Drives that you know to be plugged in and registered by Finder, may or not be registered in the exclusion window, and if registered and their icons may be bright or dimmed. Bright will NOT be included. Dimmed are excluded. Normally the operation is to use the or to exclude these drives from your next BU operation. (this instruction is lost the next time in manual mode). So if a drive or stick is shown and is bright it WON'T be backed up. If you it from the window, then it will grey out and WILL be backed up. If it's not there to offer you exclusion, you can browse to such a file or device so you can exclude it. TM's exclusion window will show the PC formats: FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT greyed out (as not included). NTFS is bright looking like it might work, but when doesn't dim, it disappears, and is ignored in the actual BU.
Sources are supposed to be included in the backup if it isn't shown bright in the exclusion window. In this respect I only use TM manually, and not for programmed BU's, so I cannot speak to that.
If everything you have is formatted for the Apple disc system (Mac OS Extended) then there are no contradictions or partial equivalences. The mounted disc or stick will show in TM exclusions window, and if you it, you'll see it in the Time Machine pile of calendared directories, with all the files. And of course it will do the differential backups for it that we use TM for in the first place. Just remember to prepare the BU by not excluding.
BUT NOW THE VARIABLES. It now depends upon the formats. I use the Paragon NTFS program to permit writing NTFS. (Apple can normally read but not write NTFS). Paragon is lovely because for normal computer use, I can read and write both Apple and PC files and disc formats in Finder (for 3 years now). But Time Machine cannot be reached by Paragon so it's NTFS behaviors are outrageous. Paragon reaches Disk Doctor so you can read, write, format and heal both Apple and PC formats. And this really confused things respecting Time Machine. I literally worked through every variable, from stick to disc to prove what did work, and when false appearances of working showed up.
Respecting that very Time Machine display of Finder windows piled backwards through time there's a confusing bug. When first opened, TM shows NOW as the current setup and works just like a Finder window in present time. And the outboard discs and sticks show as in Finder. BUT working back in time, the left window DOES NOT SHOW THE CONDITIONS AT BACKUP but rather in all left windows shows the present setup. So you need to work from the right hand side dates and times to go back and see when you had that stick or HD plugged in. And then, finally, you will see the files you wanted saved. But if there is a stick on the left than TM doesn't like but Finder likes you'll see it left but nothing will be in the files. Clicking on the pretender just jumps to the root.
My Disk Doctor provisions (with Paragon) show, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive Journaled), MS-DOS (FAT), exFAT, Windows NT Filesystem, Windows NT Filesystem (compressed). It's a better utility than in Microsoft and I use it for such maintenance.
Bottom line, I like TM very much. 2 years ago I lost my air and TM was able to reconstruct my machine many times in the course of the troubleshooting - all the way from the start to the last without ever missing a beat or a file. So I accept this limitation and make copies to another HD formatted in NTFS when I work on PCs.
Hope's this sorts out being lost in the desert for a few of you.
Jock
<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Storing normal data files on the Time Capsule is unfortunately not as easy as dropping the folder on the Time Capsule.
Open up Macintosh HD on the Mac
Look for the SHARED heading on the left
Click on the Time Capsule icon and a folder named "Data" will appear (unless you have renamed it)
Double click the "Data" folder to mount the drive on the desktop. You may need to enter the device password for the Time Capsule when you do this the first time
Once the drive icon is on the desktop, you can drag data to the icon and drop it there. Double click the icon to open up the drive and see the files

Suddenly can't share external USB drive

I have all of my iTunes music on an external USB drive called 'iTunes_Drive', attached to my G5 iMac in the basement. For a long time, my wife would just run iTunes on the G4 iMac in the living room and play music through the Shared Libraries feature. However, this is slow to start up each day, so I came up with the idea of just sharing the external drive, and having her maintain her own library based on the music in the shared drive.
Just today, it became impossible to access this shared drive from the G4. Interestingly, when I shared a FireWire external drive with the same settings, then that drive WAS visible as an available shared folder when connecting from the G4.
Rebooting both computers hasn't changed anything. The firewall on the G5 is turned off, and it's allowing AFP, SMB and FTP sharing of the drive. The G4 CAN mount the iTunes_Drive using SMB, but iTunes doesn't recognize it as the same drive (possibly because under SMB it's called "ITUNES_DRIVE:" whereas in AFP it's "iTunes_Drive").
Is there something new in security which is preventing AFP sharing of external USB drives? Neither googling nor searching through this forum has turned up anything that helps me.
I should note that the G5 is running Leopard 10.5.1, and the G4 is running Tiger 10.4.11, and I just ran Software Update on both computers last night, with the attendant reboots this morning.

I've experienced a similar problem with my two external hard drives connected to my AirPort Extreme Base. Since installing yesterday's security update, I can no longer see either hard drive. From my Shared folder in Finder, it's now constantly in 'Connecting' mode. I've tried rebooting and checking everything to no avail.
Any help out there would be appreciated.

Can't find External Hard Drive on Finder

My external hard drive is no longer visible on the desktop, or in the finder. It appears to still be working, because my sons' iTunes accounts (located on the external) are both working fine. How can I make it appear again?
(Bonus question: This reminds me of the problem with ejecting an iPod, leaving it plugged in to the USB, but then wanting to re-access it. Is there any way to make iTunes find your iPod again without unplugging/replugging the device?)
Message was edited by: cvw2

I'm having a similar...but slightly different problem.
My external drives (both firewire and usb connected) are showing up just fine in Finder...and I'm able to do all the normal things that I can do on them (moving things around, adding things, copying things, re-naming folders, etc..etc..etc).
BUT, what Finder has indeed stopped doing, is it has stopped showing search results for anything that is located IN these external drives.
For instance, my externals are where ALL of my music is kept. I do a lot of dj'ing, and therefore have quite a bit of music digitized (around 400 gigs)...so I've never kept music on my internal hard drive on the laptop. As well, I have another external USB drive that serves as my hard drive for dj'ing. It goes out with me to gigs, and my dj software reads from it (because music that I would actually play out at gigs is only a percentage of my overall music library, and I certainly don't want to be lugging my main music library hard drive around town all the time).
Anyway, at various times, I end up searching for song files, or album folders, or whatever in Finder...and it has (out of the blue) completely stopped "finding" things in the external drives.
Quite baffling.
Has this happened to anyone else....and/or does anyone know how to fix this?
Thank you!!!
cheers.

Can't access external USB Drive

I have a Seagate external USB drive that I'm trying to access. This drive has not been used in awhile, but as far as I know it ok.
When I plug it into my G4, and power it up, it never comes up on the desktop. Instead, I get a message saying "the disk you have inserted is not readable by this computer", and gives me the choice of "initialize", "ignore", or "eject".
This drive has worked in the near past. Why do I now not seem to be able to access the data on it?
I tried a "restart" with the external drive hooked up, but get the same message. I really don't think the drive is bad.
Is there any way I can force the computer to recognize an external drive?
Note: System Profiler sees the drive, but it just never mounts.

Hi Japamac, good to speak with you again. You have helped me in the past.
Sorry for the repeated posts in multiple forums. I've been desperately trying to figure this out, and was looking for maximum views of my problem.
A couple of days ago, I was able to get this drive to mount making me believe that is (was?) formatted for Mac. Nothing that I know of has changed since then except that now the drive will not mount.
Disk Utility sees the drive, but verify disk and all other choices are greyed out. Clicking on "mount disk" also has no affect.
Under disk utility, I clicked on the "info" tab for the external drive, and under "Partition type" it says "WindowsFat32" but I don't know what might account for that if the drive is Mac formatted.
My primary concern is if the data on this disk is still ok. If it can still be accessed on a PC, I can get together with a PC owner this weekend.

Can't find external hard drive for time machine restore

I recently installed Lion (mistake) and I'm now attempting to reinstall Snow Leopard from a Time Machine back up. I get to the point where it starts searching for external drives in order to find the Time Machine back up; however, it is not able to find my drive. I've tried plugging it in before I start the computer, and when it starts to search for the drive. I did not plug in my hard drive while I had Lion running (it never backed up from Lion). Help?

I have a Mac Mini (late 2009) and I have an iomega 1TB external hard drive connected to my mini via firewire and usb (usb allows me to use the usb ports on the external 1TB drive to daisy chain other devices). Since I installed Lion, my Time Machine and this 1TB drive (and its partitions) is finicky. Sometimes it is mounted and sometimes it is not. This issue has only surfaced post Snow Leopard and in the Lion era. I am not the first to say this but the whole reason I went Mac was b/c of Vista. I am beginning to think that Lion is the new Vista. Sorry for the latter, just venting... b/c this ain't the first issue with Lion.

Migration assistant can't find external hard drive

I bought a Macbook Air and I can't move my files from the Time Machine created by my previous MacBook. Specifically, migration assistant can't find the external disk. I can see the external disc on the desktop, it's just the migration assistant that can't find it. I've done software update, I've attached and detached the external disk and restarted the Air in all imaginable combinations, migration assistant still can't see the external disk. Anyone know how to fix this problem?

franz1 wrote:
The top one has icons showing the two partitions from the external drive and the Air's HD.
That sounds like the Today (Now) display, the one that's show in full when you first Enter Time Machine. It's not a backup; it's the current contents of your Mac.
When I clicked on the 2nd window, it seems to be a back up from July 20, which I remember making on the old MacBook. It has one folder on it with my username.
Yes, that's a backup.
When I click on this folder, I find 4 folders inside it titled: Applications, Users, Library and System. I clicked on Applications and it was empty
That sounds like you'd excluded Applications from backups. Or else you didn't wait long enough for all the apps to be displayed.
sometimes the names of programs covered with a see-through "no parking" sign - a circle with a slash through it
That's an incompatible app.
Is this the Time Machine's records?
Yup.
Can I click on the July 20 date and click on restore? Will everything just come back on it's own?
No. You can restore individual items that way (if you have permission to them), but not a whole system. You can restore "simple" apps that way, too, but not "complex" ones -- ones that came with their own installers, because they install other files in other places. If you don't restore those other things too, the app won't work well, if at all.
Can you post a screenshot of the Migration Assistant window that should show your backups (something like this):

Can't use external USB Drive

Hello
I have 500 GB Hitachi usb drive , it was working fine until now, i can see the disk in disk utility, but i can't format it. I tried to repair the partition but it failed, now the partition dissapear but i still can see the disk in disk utility list, when i try to format it, after few minutes i get this:
Disk Erase failed with the error:
Couldn’t open device."
and previously i got this when formatting partition only:
Disk Erase failed with the error:
Couldn’t open device."

For SMART checking, I understand that has been a problem with external drives.
Looks like there may be a combination solution here and here.
Any help from drive manufacturer site?
Have you reformated it before? Some drive mfrs write invisible partitions for Windows.
I had one drive once which I had to reformat as FAT32 and erase before I could reformat as Mac OS Extended.

Can I swap external usb drives to keep a backup offsite?

I'm switching to a mac and I want to keep 2 usb drives for backup. One drive for hooked up doing the current backup and a second to put in it's place (probably weekly) to maintain a backup offsite.
Aside from the obvious changes week to week, can Time Capsule/Time Machine be set up for something like this. I'd like to know before I spend $500+ on hardware.
If this won't work, do you have any suggestions?

Time Machine is an extremely complex piece of software.. far more so than I first imagined.
It is well worth reading the Pondini KB to understand what it does and how.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html is very useful. Troubleshooting.
But he has more info under the home about what TM does. It is helpful to understand it .. even if just skimming, so you know where to look.
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
I will also make a recommendation that you do a disk image or disk clone with a different software. It can still be loaded onto the USB drives.. and it doesn't need to be done often. But it will get you out of trouble quickly.. and there are excellent free ones.. I think superduper will do a full disk image.. from inside the Mac OS.. but I would use a tool like clonezilla.. free download linux based tool but with simple menus.. (you don't have to recompile the kernel). That is on a bootable CD or USB stick. That means if things break you are quickly back to exactly where and when the image was taken.. TM can then get back the incremental backups.

Can't find External Hard drive in Finder / Disk Utility.

I have a Seagate 3TB drive that I have split between Time Machine and general storage. The drive is no longer able to be found in Finder or Disk Utility. I've restarted the drive, reset the PRAM and SMC (another thread suggested this) and it still has not worked. Any idea how to view this drive?

Is it a USB drive? Is it detected in another port?
Do other computers detect it?
If you boot to recovery (hold cmd + r) does disk utilities see it there?

Mac can't find external hard drive

Hi,
I've had an external hard drive for my mac now for over a year. It's been working wonderfully, however, recently the hard drive can no longer be recognized by my mac. It doesn't come up in the Disky Utility and it doesn't come up in System Profiler. Naturally, there's a lot of stuff on there I want to keep. How can I get this thing mounted again?

Our company's system admin made me aware of Scannerz, which is a test tool. Their web site in the how to and downloads section has a lot of info on that type of stuff. The link is:
http://scsc-online.com
I saw that happen once when the drive became corrupt and Disk Utility wouldn't see the drive. There's a command line way to use Disk Utility and the drive doesn't show up with a name but with a disk id like /dev/disk023s23 (something like that...that's an example).
Also, check your drive cable. It might have gone bad.

Help? Can not find external hard drive after upgrading to 10.6.3

I upgraded my iMac to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and now my external hard drive does not appear. Not sure what to do.

It is powered (the light is on). I was uploading photos from the drive yesterday, so it worked perfectly fine before the upgrade to 10.6.8 (which I did during the night). Is there anything else to try before I move it to another computer to see if it works? Again, thanks.

Can't connect external usb drive

I bought a WD mybook essential 500gb drive to use with my macbook pro. It worked for about a day, and then it would randomly connect and disconnect from the computer, and eventually wouldn't appear in disk utility at all. I searched the internet for a solution but all I could find were forums saying that WD is garbage and the best solution is to get a new enclosure and put the drive from the Mybook in it. So that's what I did, and I still can't get the drive to work. I can hear the drive spinning, the power light is on, the drive appears in System Profiler and sometimes appears in disk utility as "Generic External Media" but it doesn't work.

It is possible that the actual drive mechanism is damaged and not the electronics in the enclosure.
Sounds like junk to me. It is better to cut your losses and buy something known to work.

Can't find external hard drive

Hello, I just bought a 60GB External 2.5" SATA Laptop Hard Drive for my new macbook, and I can't locate it when I plug it in. The green light lights up fine, but it doesn't appear on my disk utility page. Not sure how else to look for it.
Any suggestions?

Hi, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Is it self powered, or does it also have a Power Supply?
FW or USB?

Where can I find the USB driver for the serial to USB adapter?

I have a Palm IIIc with the serial HotSync cradle and USB adapter but I dont have the driver disc for it and was wondering if there was a page within the site here I could download it from?
The OS platform needed for the driver is Win2000 / XP.
TIA,
-guitardude
Post relates to:

I did a Google search and found this link:
http://www.gilsson.com/usb_drivers_download.htm
It had the Prolific USB-to-Serial driver for WinXP. I downloaded & installed it. It created a COM5 port that my Palm Desktop found automatically. I hit the HotSync and, presto!, everything works perfectly. I only spent 5 hours trying to solve this problem for my dad.
He hadn't HotSync'd his Palm IIIxe to his home laptop since NOV2005!! And he hadn't HotSync'd to his work PC since he retired in JUL2008 (and he doesn't have access to that PC anymore).
I'll repeat this post in the other threads I queried on. I hope this helps someone solve their USB-to-Serial Adapter Driver problems.
-mark
Post relates to: Treo 650 (Sprint)

Can't find external USB drive

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