Dictionary launch causes external hard drive wakeup

Occasionally, when I launch the Dictionary application, one of my external hard drives (FireWire 400) "wakes up" (it's not off or anything, but the spindle has to do its thing). Only after it has woken up the Dictionary window appears. This delay is somewhat annoying, since it can take about 10–15 seconds.
This problem is sometimes occurs when I'm in Safari and click a link. My assumption is that Dictionary uses the WebKit foundation, as does Safari, so I'm guessing that this might be a Mac OS X web page rendering engine problem.
Any idea why this would happen?

Me too. It's super annoying – ever since installing Snow Leopard.
I have a Seagate FreeAgentPro (FW4 Media) connected for Time Machine and extra storage purposes which is often asleep. Ever since the upgrade to Leopard the drive gets wakened every time I want to save anything within any app, causing a spinning beachball delay until the drive is up and running – even if, as is usually the case, I intend to save to the internal disc. Why can't they make it so that if you choose the external disc as a destination, only then do you have to wait for it to be wakened?
Now with Snow Leopard every time I choose Look up in Dictionary from within Safari, it does the same thing and waits until the external drive is up and awake again.
I assume it's either a Snow Leopard or Safari thing? If there's a fix for this I'd be grateful to know.
Edit: I just noticed it happens in Pages too, though not in TextEdit.
Message was edited by: CRhysB

Similar Messages

I am trying to launch my external hard drive through maxtor central access manager. It will not launch and I keep receiving a KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE error. Through discussion threads, it sounds like it may be a disk utility, repair issue. Please advis

I navigated to disk utility and verified disk, which returned no errors.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you're "trying to launch" an external hard drive, but you don't need Maxtors software to mount it on the desktop. Is this a new drive? Have you formatted it using Disk Utility?

Launching iTunes at Startup using Library on External Hard Drive

I have iTunes set to launch at startup. I just moved my iTunes library to an external hard drive, but now when the computer boots it launches iTunes before the external hard drive can mount. This causes an error message requiring human input.
Is there anyway to reorder this sequence so that iTunes boots after external drives mount?

i had the same problem before i got my new computer i didn't have the room to keep the files on my hard drive so i just moved the music over not the library file its named iTunes library and that is the thing that stores all the library info
also be sure to turn off the move files to iTunes library in settings under "preferences, advanced, general" its a tick box and untick it. when you boot up itunes shouldnt need your imput you just cant play songs untill your external drive mounts.

My efforts to remove malware from a network external hard drive connected to my Intel based iMac is now causing programs to hang when I try to open them.

I own an iMac, recently updated with OSX 10.75. It is the core computer on a home network shared with an iPad, Apple TV, two network printers,my wife's laptop, two iPhone, a BlackBerry and a BlackBerry Playbook. I am experiencing three if not four problems that are overwhelming.
My original problem is associated with Windows emails files or documents stored on my external network hard drive. One or more has malware and is sending malware laced files across the Internet to points unknown. As someone pointed out in a forum my iMac may be hosting,sharing and propagating Windows malware. I originally used Trend Micro software on my IMac to monitor any viral activity. Two weeks ago I noticed a number of notices from servers around the world saying my message was not undelivered. Since I had sent messages to the people I simply deleted the emails. Next I noticed the emails on my BlackBerry and my BlackBerry playbook.I configured the Trend to do a complete scan and although it did a complete scan it did not perform a full network scan. It did identify a series of .x27 document files with the same name tbut each had a sequential number. I assumed hat these were the source files that had sent out the email documents selling Viagara and othernproducts. I manually deleted thousands of the source documents and the files. This caused some disruption to my computer but it did not produce a hardware or software problem. By following this effort in conjunction with security scans I do believe the malware was activated by Iranian students who were able to activate the malware through my BlackBerry and BlackBerry Playbook. I learned this from an encounter I had when trying tondelete these files on my computer and my BlackBerry.
When using my PlayBook after deleting the files from my computer I noticed more messages being returned from servers. I realized that email accounts connected to my BlackBerry and BB Playbookn were not protected from this problem. As I searched for remedies I learned about turning on the firewall in the previous version of Lion but that did not stop the BlackBerry problem. Each time I deleted a source file on my computer more documents were released. I eventually received McAfee from my ISP. It provided security on the entire network. My first full scan of my external drive identified two malware files. One of them was associated with the Cialis ad the other was from a firm in the Middle East called ADP. it could not remove the latter file.
Moreover each time I attempted to remove the source file from my hard drive a file labeled A239A076F would show up on my Blackberry. As I removed them thousands of these files would show up. Ultimately I eventually disconnected the external hard drive and removed the battery from the phone and not use the email accounts these messages had used to enter my iMac. I am contacting ATT about BlackBerry data security and switching to a different phone for business purposes. I will probably change to an iPhone or Android phone for business purposes. I am also looking at ways to resolve the malware on that drive. There are a number of business and personal files on thatbdrive that I hope to keep. I dread having to pay McAfee to configure the software to eradicate the malware.
Moving on...last week I updated my iMac to 10.75. It simultaneously updated every Apple based program as promised. It did not update the non-Apple programs. I am not an IT professional and assumed that it had done so. On Saturday I attempted to download a file associated with my router extender using my untethered Playbook and BlackBerry desktop software. The program hung. I attempted a reboot and it reopened with the hung program. It created an alias file on the desktop. My inclination led to put the alias file in the trash can and delete it. My computer did not respond well to that action. It has been rebooted with Cmd-s-esc tens of time to see if that would activate a file check. It did not. I was able to run a disk utility check. And in spite of the hung process it eventually said the drive was okay.
Long story in a nutshell. My iMac is responding as if it is looking for a subprogram to complete its a function. Or it is attempting to finish the BlackBerry operation it began on Saturday. I hope this makes sense to someone and the know how I can restore functionality to my iMac.
Thank you.

I think the McAfee suite will do the trick when I pay them a one-time fee of $69 or $179 for a year for unlimited support.
Your call of course but IMO a waste of money. Please read this first:
There are many forms of ‘Malware’ that can affect a computer system, of which ‘a virus’ is but one type, ‘trojans’ another. Using the strict definition of a computer virus, no viruses that can attack OS X have so far been detected 'in the wild', i.e. in anything other than laboratory conditions. The same is not true of other forms of malware, such as Trojans. Whilst it is a fairly safe bet that your Mac has NOT been infected by a virus, it may have another security-related problem, but more likely a technical problem unrelated to any malware threat.
You may find this User Tip on Viruses, Trojan Detection and Removal, as well as general Internet Security and Privacy, useful:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2435
The User Tip (which you are welcome to print out and retain for future reference) seeks to offer guidance on the main security threats and how to avoid them.
More useful information can also be found here:
http://www.reedcorner.net/mmg/

My external hard drives are causing problems when i capture DV in FCP

We have external hard drives (2 different brands lacie and WD) are causing dropped frames when I capture DV in FCP. This only happens when they are connected via firewire 800. When I connect them using USB everything works great. Any ideas why this could be? We have 2 of each drive and 2 older mac pros and they both have this issue with every combination of drives I try. I've also tried reseting the ports with no luck...

Connecting your camcorder to even 1 FW drive constitutes daisy-chaining. Even if you have two FW ports in your Mac, connecting a drive to one port and your camcorder to the other is the same as daisy-chaining as far as your Mac is concerned.
Try capuring from your camcorder with no exernal FW drives attached. Verify that works before trying anything else.
Also, I noticed your profile says you have a Mac Pro. You might consider adding a FW card in order to get extra FW ports that are not on the same FW bus as the built-in FW ports. Then you could connect your external FW drives to the card; and your camcorder to the built-in ports and it should work.

TS1717 I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC.

I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC. Anyone know how I do this? I cannot seem to find anything on Google, which is surprising.
iTunes helper launches OK, but not iTunes itself. Am I being dim?
Thanks

The iTunes application should be installed on the system drive. You may need to repair iTunes to fix that error regarding a missing .exe.
To organize your library properly see Make a split library portable.
If you don't have a working version of the library that can be transformed into a portable shape I have tools and techniques that can repair the broken links.
tt2

Organizing clips in external hard drive probably caused the problem

I wrote this to a friend and am posting it here because it is clearer than what I wrote last night. Lorna
Mon, Dec 24, 2007 10:27 AM PST
Xxxxx, thank you so much. I was and am very happy about that video but now that I have moved some iMovie '08 footage/clips folders around in my external hard drive, many of my clips in the Event Library (the raw footage, much like the Library in iPhoto) have disappeared and my video of Cheyenne does not play correctly. There are many little yellow triangles with question marks in them and irregularities which lead me to think that my housekeeping of iMovie '08 material in the external hard drive has bollixed up the works.
One thing I want to do is buy a good, good book on iMovie '08 .... one that explains about how to organize and store video clips etc. And then I have to learn that and understand it.
All of the clips that I lost, I still have in the original cassette of footage. Thank God I didn't decide to tape over it! However, I am uncertain about importing the clips again because I am not certain that just bring in new clips is going to make the old deficiencies all better again. Things have to connect right, pathways have to be right etc. And so I don't want to upload the footage until I have a better sense of how I should maintain/organize my movie materials.
That footage was mostly used for making the Cheyenne video, but there are also a lot of clips of ducks that came to our swimming pool and swam around in it for a while. I wanted my second video to be of them and of Cheyenne observing and chasing them.......... but now cannot, since all the clips in the Event Library are gone. The Rise Up videos are still there because they are newer and I didn't touch them in the iMovie '08 housekeeping I did yesterday.
I had a thought that I could go back in time with that special program called Time Machine, but am not certain that it would work with what I did in my EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, as opposed to my iMac system. I suspect the answer to that is one which would bring me no relief
Anyhow, Xxxxxx, I am so glad that my Cheyenne video was uploaded to Web Gallery before I did the housekeeping chores and missed up my iMovie '08 clips.
I might copy this email and paste it into the iMovie '08 forum. ........
In spite of all this, I feel lucky and happy, Xxxxxx. I see this as just a small obstacle, but one having great significance about the importance of knowing how to handle/organize/store my clips, media stuff, etc. Lucky I learned this so soon. It could have happened when I had a lot of footage.
And this all hangs on my assumption that the cause of the problem is me mishandling/misorganizing the clips/media etc in my external 500 gig hard drive. It seems a logical assumption, though I could be wrong but I see no reason why the video would be working in iMovie '08 at 7 PM but malfuctoning right after I did the housecleaning. ............
Lorna
http://web.mac.com/lorna6

Yes it "disappears" from the "entire Library" but you can still view all images under "All Projects." Or you could easily make an Album of all images.
-Allen Wicks

ITunes causes Windows to lose contact with external hard drive

I'm running iTunes on Windows, with my music library on a 160gb external hard drive. System has been set up this way for a couple of years with no serious problems.
I recently received a used iPod which I successfully synched with iTunes a number of times. The last time I tried however, I got a strange error message (can't remember what) and the synching quit.
Since that time, whenever I open iTunes, it causes Windows to 'lose' the external drive; i.e. if I check to see if Windows detects the external drive before I open iTunes, it's there. But when I open iTunes and attempt to perform any function (like play a song) I get the "Delayed Write Failed" error message, the lost track error message by the song titles, my music folder location has switched from the e:/ drive to c:/ and a check of Windows explorer shows that the e:/ drive is no longer there.
Lots of tech friends of mine - and the tech support at Ximeta (the external drive maker) - are stumped by this problem.
Any and all answers, suggestions would be hugely appreciated.
PC Windows XP
PC Windows ME

that's an odd issue.
by way of experiment, do you get the same sort of issue if you try opening a different sort of file (with a different application) that is stored on that hard drive? say, a Word document or something like that?

Time Machine is causing my external hard drive not to be recognized or read

I have been using Time Machine on my MAC. I don't like it. I now have gone into preferences and stopped it from further backups. Now, I want to restore my Toshiba External Hard Drive and have it backup. When I look into my Macintosh HD, it does not "see" the drive. It doesn't appear in Finder. I am assuming that Time Machine configured it or reformatted it? So, how do I get it "back" from Time Machine? One person commented that this is an issue of formatting my hard drive, but the problem started with Time Machine. Where should I post this question, if not here?
Thank you!

I'm guessing that Time Machine hides it from Finder as most users aren't going to want to be mucking around in it. Try opening up Disk Utility and see if you can see it. You can reformat it from there as well.

Will using an external hard drive cause me to have duplicate files on my itunes library?

I put all my ITUNES MEDIA folder on my external hard drive from my older computer.. I recently bought a new computer and installed Itunes. I synced some of my Itunes purchased songs back on by using my Ipod.. however the songs I ripped from my cds are still not reinstalled in my library.. I will have to use my external hard drive or re rip those.. and there are a lot of them.. since I have already replaced some of the ones I purchased back on using my Ipod will it duplicate them if I use the prefrences method and return them all from my external hard drive? If i delete my files that I have already returned on my new computer before using my external will Itunes remember which are Itunes purchased music and which arent as well>??? also how exactly do you move music from an external? just plug it in and click the prefrences box about syncing files and keeping Itunes library organized?? any other thing to click?

An iTunes library consists of both the media and the database that knows which files are in the library and hold details of ratings, playcounts, playlist membership and other details not stored in each file's metadata.
Depending on how you have moved content to your external drive you may find you are only moved the media, but not the database. If you import this media into a new library it will work, but your library will be seen as "new" with respect to any devices that you have and iTunes will want to erase and reload them, losing you current selections, settings and data on the device.
These are two possible approaches that will normally work to move an existing library to a new computer.
Method 1
Backup the library with this User Tip.
Deauthorize the old computer if you no longer want to access protected content on it.
Restore the backup to your new computer using the same tool used to back it up.
Keep your backup up-to-date in future.
Method 2
Connect the two computers to the same network. Share your <User's Music> folder from the old computer and copy the entire iTunes library folder into the <User's Music> folder on the new one. Again, deauthorize the old computer if no longer required.
Both methods should give the new computer a working clone of the library that was on the old one. As far as iTunes is concerned this is still the "home" library for your devices so you shouldn't have any issues with iTunes wanting to erase and reload.
I'd recommend method 1 since it establishes an ongoing backup for your library.
If you have an iOS device that syncs with contact & calendar data on your computer you should migrate this information too. If that isn't possible create a dummy entry of each type in your new profile and iTunes should offer to merge the existing data from the device into the computer, otherwise the danger is that it will wipe the information from the device.
If your media folder has been split out from the main iTunes folder you may need to do some preparatory work to make it easier to move. See make a split library portable. Alternatively you could copy over the iTunes folder and make sure your external drive has the same drive letter on the new system as the old, however moving the library into a portable form will make every subsequent move that much easier.
Should you be in the unfortunate position where you are no longer able to access your original library, or a backup of it, then see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for advice on how to set up your devices with a new library with the maximum preservation of data.
tt2

My external Hard Drive won't transfer files to Mac HD and causes Finder to crash

My external Hard Drive (Western Digital 2TB hard drive in a ICYBOX 2-bay USB 2.0 HD Dock) won't transfer files to the Mac HD. The transfer box comes up but stays at the 'estimating time' stage and remains like that. No matter how big the file/group of files are (biggest I've tried was only 500-odd MB) it won't transfer and stays at the 'estimating time' stage. When I try and stop the transfer, the transfer box remains at the 'stopping' stage until I restart the iMac. I can access other programs during this 'stopping' stage, as long as it doesn't involve the External HD.
When I attempt to open files from the External HD in Photoshop CS4, both Photoshop and Finder stop responding and have I have to 'Force Quit'. However, upon force quitting finder, I loose all icons on the desktop until I restart the Mac via holding down the 'Power' button on the back.
Ive looked at a few forums already and done a couple things they suggested to similar topics.
- I excluded the Ext HD on the Spotlight>Privacy tab.
- I verified the Ext HD via System Utilities. Some errors came up but the Repair was successful and subsequent Verifications have returned as 'OK'.
- I tried the Mac Diagnostic tool as suggested by Apple, but when I press the 'D' key on start up nothing happens.
The annoying thing is that this problem came out of the blue, the Ext HD was working fine 3 days ago.
My system:
iMac 21.5inch, mid 2010
3.6GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
The Ext HD:
Western Digital 2TB
Mac OS Extended (Journalised)
1.91TB available on the HD
Shares a 2 Bay ICYBOX dock with another 2TB WD HD
Connected to the iMac via USB 2.0 to a 4-port USB 2.0 hub
Any help suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Tom

WD EHDs have an extremely high failure rate so don't be shocked if it is failing. However what you can do first is reset the SMC and PRAM first on the computer, do the SMC reset 2-3 times, sometimes the first try does not work. If this does not work then using another computer move the files to another EHD, this time buy a high quality HD, something like one of these

Send to Final Cut Pro in Color off an external Hard Drive, causes Color to Crash

Okay, so I'm having some Color issues guys...
I'm color correcting a feature right now, and just completed the CC with Color. I did the entire color correct on an internal hard drive on a Mac Pro. My client wanted to take a look at the CC on a different machine, so I transferred all of the FCP files, Color Projects, footage, etc. (the ENTIRE directory from my machine) onto an external hard drive....
...When I opened the color project from the external drive on his machine, all of my media was gone, so of course I reconnected the media (directly from the source, the same source files I edited with in FCP), and everything was fine. My grades were there, and everything looked great....
....I rendered my Color sequence and tried to Send To Final Cut Pro, and color crashed on me. It continued to do this....
....I went back to my machine and tried to Send To Final Cut Pro, and everything worked just fine. What went wrong with the data transfer? Is that the reason Color keeps crashing? Is it because I relinked the footage in Color to the original source files? It doesn't make sense to me. All of the data from the original drive was moved to an external and relinked.
I'm pretty new to Color so any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much!
-Chris

Copy the original project and media to the external drive using Media Manager. It will maintain the links.
x

External hard drive has caused library to lose content

after a number of low disk space notices, i got an external hard drive and thought i had solved a problem. shortly after, a large number of songs disappeared from itunes (as well as my playlists) and i haven't synced since, fearing purchased and loaded songs would disappear on my ipod.. . Is this a fact that the sync would replicate my current itunes library? or would the sync result in yhe songs on the ipod returning to my computer?

Forgot to add, my iPod touch is backed up on iCloud

Media on new external hard drive causing problems with FCP 4.1

Hi gang
I bought a new 160 gig external hard drive due to my internal media drives becoming fairly full of media (20 gigs left on each). The external is being used only for media. I removed ownership permissions on all the media drives but now when I boot up the computer, the external won't show on the desktop (am using the encryption keys that came with the drive). If this is the case I can open any FCP project. If I can get the external drive up on the desktop (usually by switching the firewire port from back to front), then none of my FCP projects will open up (have to force quit due to "not responding"). This is drivng me nuts!!
Any ideas ??
thanks . . . .

Thanks for the replies. I bought the drive from an Apple reseller, told him it was for media storage and he sold me the drive with a Macally hardware encrypted "enclosure". I guess I could (or should have) increased the size of my three internal drives but will return this sucker as the replies I have received all indicate the encryption "feature" is one I don't need. Taking it back and thanks for the advice . . . as always this forum is extremely helpful !!
Craig

[Solved] External Hard Drive mount point in fstab crashes launch

Hi there,
I have an external hard drive that I'd like to automount when I plug it in. Sometimes it seems to work, but other times I have to manually mount it. In order to make this a little easier, I copied the mounting info into my fstab file so that I could just run:
mount /dir/to/mount
However, now I can't actually boot up my machine unless the external drive is plugged in. I get some error from systemctrl saying one of the drives couldn't be loaded.
An obvious work around would be to write a one line script that mounts the drive for me, however, I'd like to learn how to do this correctly. I think the rules have changed a bit with systemd, as I didn't have this problem a few years ago.
Thanks for the help!
Last edited by B-80 (2015-05-17 08:14:08)

B-80 wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Add "nofail" to the options section.
EDIT: ...in /etc/fstab
Thanks for the answer, that fixed it.
You're welcome but I think Mr.Elendig's post gives the actual solution (my proposal is just a workaround -- using fstab for a filesystem that is not permanently attached is sub-optimal)

Dictionary launch causes external hard drive wakeup

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for