Disconnecting external hard drive error - PLS HELP!

im an iMac newbie so i didnt know i was gonna encounter a problem when i manually disconnected my external hard drive from the USB port. when i disconnected it, an error message popped up saying something like the USB device was not properly disconnected..make sure to eject the device... this may cause loss of data, etc. So when i tried to plug in my external hard drive again, a message box popped up saying something like "the device is not compatible with this computer.." so i went and tried to connect the external hard drive on to my PC... as i expected, an error message popped up saying that it is not formatted yet and it was asking me if i want to reformat it..
what should i do??? did i permanently lose all the data in my external hard drive?? is there any way to restore the files?? please help..

As indicated in the previous post, you need to 'eject' the drive before you disconnect the cable or power down the external drive.
to eject:
click on the drive icon then press command-e
right click or control click on the drive icon then select eject
plus other methods
I'd plug in the device & power up the device before starting the mac. This will force a drive check.
With the device connected & power up, then run disk repair.
harddrive > applications > utilities > Disk Utility
On the left you will see a list of devices with the partitions on the device below the device icon. Select the device icon of the external device. Be sure to select the device not the partition on the device.
Select the First Aid tab. See lower right.
run verify
run repair
run verify
what should i do??? did i permanently lose all the data > in my external hard drive?? is there any way to restore > the files?? please help..
If the repair doesn't work you need to try a utility like disk warrior. If that dosn't work, you will need to try a commercial recovery firm.
Robert

Similar Messages

Hi Everyone. I have an old Mac Book. I have saved a ton of emails in my inbox 'On My Mac'. There are so many it is slowing down my computer. Where do I find the folder with all the emails so I can cut and paste them to an external hard drive?Pls.help.

Hi Everyone. I have an old Mac Book with software updated to 10.6.8. I have saved a ton of emails in my inbox 'On My Mac'. There are so many it is slowing down my computer. Where do I find the folder with all the emails so I can cut and paste them to an external hard drive? Pls.help. Tks.

Depending on which email client software you use
the files should be in 'your home folder' library, esp.
if you use Mail application.... ~/Library/Mail
Since you don't specify what mail application,
that would most be associated with the file.
I notice there are some items to the right of your post
where it says "more like this' so that may be worth a
look to see if similar issues were answered. Also, the
Help viewer in your system is a searchable database.
Seems that google also brings up fair information, too.
Do you have a complete bootable clone of your entire
Mac system on an externally enclosed hard disk drive?
Good luck & happy computing!

My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?

My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music on my ipod to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?
New itunes is trying to wipe the ipod. But have many many playlists (many hours making) which I want to save. Any help would be appreciated.

If you want to just extract the playlists from your iPod, plug it in iTunes. When it appears under devices, right->click on it and choose Export Playlists. Save them to a location such as your desktop and them import them into your library once you have copied and imported all of your music back into it.
See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

Hi,disc wiped ,OSX10.9 back on ,how do I restore my data from external hard drive ?Any help welcome .

Hi,disc wiped ,OSX10.9 back on ,how do I restore my data from external hard drive ?Any help welcome .

There's Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant. The cleanest way to do it is Setup Assistant, but you only get that option once when you fire up a fresh install of OSX. If you're past that, you could reinstall OSX by booting with Command-R, or you could use Migration Assistant.
Setup/Migration Assistant instructions:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5872

My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

Hi,
In order to recover the tags/albums, etc, you need to have the catalog db. Since currently you only have images, the organization done in the older catalog is probably lost.
Which version of PSE you have and is there any chance, that you have access to catalog location (default is : %programdata%\adobe\elements organizer\catalogs on Windows and ~/library/app support/adobe/organizer/catalogs on MAC) ?
Thanks
Andaleeb

External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

I am having problems with a particular external hard drive. Device is a Transcend StoreJet 25M (640GB) currently formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It was previously formatted in FAT32, exFat, and also Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It started giving me problems when I used it to store all my music on it. My iTunes library and music files were all stored on it, and at one point iTunes started acting funny - it would play a song for a few seconds, pause, play for a further few seconds, pause again, and so forth. I decided to stop using it and when I shifted the iTunes library to the Mac internal hard drive and the music file into another external hard drive, iTunes worked fine. So I figured it must be a problem with the external hard drive itself.
I recently reformatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and transfered some data on to it (include a back up of the music folder). I noticed that Spotlight keeps trying to index the drive but never actually managed. Times indicated for indexing runs into days. The hard drive tends to be slow to load files expecially when there are multiple folders and tiers, and is generally unreliable. It occasionally unmounts, or when I try to unmount it I get an error saying it cannot unmount because it is being used (but no indication as to which app is using it even if all apps are closed except for Finder).
I tried repairing it using disk utility. The attached image shows the results. It seems that it can't be repaired by disk utility. At this point, and after much deliberation, I would have to questions:
1. Should I just smash the thing on the floor?
2. Is there another application I could try and repair it with?
3. Even though I have reformatted it several times, it keeps giving me the same problem. When I do a disk verification of the hard rive itself it all seems fine, however when I do a disk verification or repair of the volume I get the error shown in the image. Is this a problem being caused during formatting?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, I forgot to attach image....
Message was edited by: TheSpoon

Time Machine Not Backing Up to an External Hard Drive - Error 11

Hi!
I am unable to backup my MacBook with my external Hard Drive. My Mac is a fairly new machine (September 2009) and I have backed up since upgrading to Snow Leopard previously but I cannot backup at all at the moment.
I have run disk utility and repair completed without any issues, in fact it told me that the drive was running ok. I have also reformatted my drive (mac os extended (journaled) ) and made sure the partition is GUID. The following is the message that appears when the backup fails:
"The backup was not performed because an error occured while copying the files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use disk utility to repair your backup disk."
I have had a look at the log using the Time Machine Widget and the following is what has been generated:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
Backup content size: 100.2 GB excluded items size: 85.9 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 17.11 GB requested (including padding), 148.45 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz, /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb/Eric O'Mahony’s MacBook/2010-05-02-210743.inProgress/E450C379-52F6-48A3-99D7-F45043074122/Macin tosh HD/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz
Aborting backup because indexing of file failed.
Stopping backup.
Copied 158300 files (12.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font?? Can anyone help me? It is driving me crazy and I need to backup my files.
Thank you for your help!

ericomahony wrote:
Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz,
The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font??
Yes, indeed. Start by just excluding it, per the blue box in #C3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If the backup then runs ok, you'll need to figure out what's wrong with that file.
If you get another error, see the rest of #C3.

HT5958 We are 4 min in to editing a video on final cut pro. now my computer is freezing up. I have heard that this is a glitch from downloading. (beyond frustrated) is this from working from 2 external hard drives? PLEASE HELP! =)

PLEASE HELP. =)
we are about 4 minutes into editing a video for the first time on final cut pro x 10.1. everything was going very smoothly, but then it started freezing up. I had to do a hard reset and took it into the computer store that actually installed final cut for us. they suggested that our mac actually is not capable of keeping up with final cut. (I FIND THIS HARD TO BELIEVE!!) We work on an IMAC 2.66 ghz intel core 2 duo. 8 gb 1067 mhz ddr3. software os x 10.9.1 (hopefully that info will help for your suggestions) Because we have soooooooooooo many hours of high def video, we are working off of two external hard drives.... is this a problem?? or do we really need to upgrade our computer?????

Like Russ said, check Activity Monitor and see what else is running and turn off any Applications that aren't needed.
Turn off wi-fi or disconnect the wire that goes to the Internet
Turn off Background Rendering (if you see an orange line on the top of the time line that moves along and gets shorter while you're not doing anything that is a good sign that Background Rendering is running.
I haven't used 10.1 yest but on the previous version there was a small circle approximately in the middle of the screen, about 1/2-inch or 1 cm in diameter, and it would have a number inside. The number is the percent complete of what is hapening. When it is Rendering the percentage will be shown.
Basically, you probably need to free up resources.
For what it is worth, my previous Mac Pro was a 1,1 2.66 machine, also with 8GB of, I think, 667 memory, and it would process FCPX 10.0.9 okay. It did have an upgraded video card, though.

Unmounted External Hard Drive, Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed

Earlier today, I disconnected the external hard drive while it was working.
Now, the External Hard Drive won't even show up on my computer. However, on the Disk Utility it does. I have tried to verify & repair the disk. Plus click the mount button nothing work.
Whenever, I ran the system verify or the repair. I got this error: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed
Ok. So I have searched all over the internet and forums. Tried everything. Nothing works.
I even tried Disk Warrior. It would work for a while, then when it came to step 8. It would make my computer go black and hold down the power button to restart.
Any suggestions? Please let me know, I would like to recover the files if I can. Thanks.
P.S.Yes I have tried to restart multiple time. I have tried with my USB 2.0, firewire 400, & 800 too.. Nothing.Everyone except the USB shows up in the disk utility but doesn't mount.

I have had the exact same situation occur, but was able to follow these steps to successfully save everything!!
The Unix program "dd" will instruct a drive to stream out all of it's data from beginning to end without regard to file structure, therefore creating an exact block-for-block duplicate. By doing this, it will allow you to copy everything off without having to mount the drive. It also ignores any corruption or physically damaged blocks on the drive which would otherwise crash or freeze the Finder. It saves the data to a disk image file which you can then open and use without fear of imminent failure (the format of the disk image will be the same as the original drive). Now that the data is preserved, you can safely go through and recover your files. Keep in mind that if a file was damaged or corrupted on the drive, it will be unusable, but at least you'll be able to get to the good ones safely. In my case, using "dd", I had no problems and got every file off. If it doesn't work for you, at least it's impossible for just trying it to further damage your files. I can recommend a few other remedies if this doesn't work for you.
Note: The computer must be able to at least recognize the drive. That means either 1) It mounts 2) When you connect the drive the Finder asks if you want to erase or ignore, click ignore and you should be able to do this, or 3) Nothing happens in the Finder, but the volume in question does appear in Disk Utility. If you connect the drive and absolutely nothing happens and it never shows up in Disk Utility, it won't work.
Note: As always, it is suggested that you backup important data on your startup disk before proceeding with stuff like this. It is possible to wipe a drive by mistyping a terminal command, so double check before you hit enter.
_Now, on with the show!_
Prep: Restart your machine so that it goes straight to the login window. Enter your user name and password. As soon as you press enter after your password, immediately hold down the shift key until the Finder finishes loading (this prevents any background startup items from running that might interfere).
1. Attach the drive to the computer and make sure you have another drive with enough free space to hold the entire capacity of the bad drive, not just it's used space, but the WHOLE size of the bad drive (for exception, see very bottom of this post).
2. In Terminal, type:
+diskutil list+
Look for the drive you want to recover in the "name" column, then write down it's "identifier" (ex. disk1s2)
3. In Terminal, type:
+dd bs=512 if=/dev/disk#s# of=/my_directory/image.dmg conv=noerror,sync+
!! Replace "disk#s#" with the identifier you wrote down before !!
!! Replace "/my_directory/" with the path to where you want to save !!
!! Replace "image.dmg" with the name you want to give the disk image (must end with .dmg) !!
4. To confirm that something is happening, open Activity Monitor (in the Utilities folder) and click "Disk Activity". Once you determine an average transfer rate, divide the size of the drive by that and then divide by 60 to see how many minutes it will take to finish. *+! ! FOR LARGE DRIVES THIS WILL TAKE A VERY LONG TIME ! !+* To be safe, do not use your computer for anything until the process finishes, you can leave Activity Monitor open so you can see when it's finished.
If you're only really concerned about a certain files and you know their exact path on the bad drive, let me know and I can give you modified instructions to copy just those files, saving the time and space of doing the whole drive.

External Hard Drive(ERROR CODE 0) .DMG Back Up Issues. How to get more than 4gbs in .DMG back ups.

I am currently using a my external hard drive for my late 2009 Mac Mini, my brothers MBP and my sisters HP laptop. I have a Western Digital My Passport 1T external Hard Drive to back up all are information. I formatted it to work on mac and pc and its on the "MS-DOS(FAT) setup at the momment. Im trying to back up DMG files from my HDD hard drive in my computer to the External Hard Drive to pass them onto my brother. I understand the whole part of me getting the "Error Code 0" where i can only put 4gbs of storage for that. I wanted to no is there a way for me to format my external hard drive for it to work on a Mac and a PC but for me to also transfer my .dmg files with more than 4gbs of that storage to my external hard drive?
p.s Im running on OSX 10.6.8 and the DMG files are alittle more than 4 gbs. From 5-10gbs. Thank you for all the replys. It helps me out and others in the Apple community out!

Hi, Steve. Your proposed procedure is just fine until you get to this point:
...reformat the WD to be Mac friendly *and reformat in FAT32* ...
Reformatting the newly-reformatted Mac-friendly drive as FAT32 will, as you say, simply put you back where you were before, but with your data on a different drive. Omit that step, and you'll have a Mac-friendly drive that you can copy your data back onto.
If you normally work with files exceeding 4GB in size, you won't want any hard drive in FAT32 format. If for some reason you'd like all your external drives in NTFS format, download and install the NTFS-3G driver, which will enable your Mac to read *and write to* that disk format.

External Hard Drive and iTunes Help

iTunes
Here is my impossible question that many people keep giving me the wrong answer or at least differing answers. This involves "senior advisors" in apple.
Few things to note:
- I'm using iTunes 11.0.1
- I have the newest gen Apple TV
- I have the newest gen AirPort Extreme
- I'm using a western digital (for Mac) external hard drive
I don't consider myself extremely gifted when it comes to using computers but I understand things from trial and error.
I don't want to have any music on my internal SSD (MacBook air). I want to keep all of it on my external.
I downloaded all of my music from transmission and changed file location to my external HD.
I put my file location of iTunes media folder onto my external.
I also have my file location (opt+iTunes) to that media folder when I open iTunes.
All works great and works like it should. I can unplug this external - and my iTunes won't open of course cause my external isn't plugged in. I understand that. When I plug it back in it works again and I'm happy.
Here's where things get difficult.......
I unplugged my external and plugged it into my USB port into the back of my AirPort Extreme. Connected to the external via MacBook Air.
When I opened iTunes all my music was gone.
I quickly unplugged my external from the airport and plugged it back into my MBA and my iTunes library was gone again. Even when I directed it to my external.
I can transfer songs back but that's tiresome every time.
I want to be able to access my big iTunes library wirelessly through my AirPort Extreme and stream movies/music through iTunes/ATV Then when I travel I can unplug it and have that same library connected directly to my MBA and do the same thing.
Do I have to change my library location each time?
Please help!
I would appreciate detailed instructions on what to do?
Everyone gives me wrong answers and many people say this can't be done!
Hope everything was worded properly and makes a bit of sense!

I can understand why you'd want to attempt this if you didn't want to drag your laptop all over your house, porting the external HD along, but do you really need full iTunes access in every room on the laptop? If not—if you basically use your laptop in one area, forget ever seving media from the base station; just connect your external HD to the laptop and turn on Home Sharing for ATV, streaming with AirPlay, etc... I have three computers connected to three externals, all serving via home sharing to three sepaprate ATVs. This works well.
If you really need to hook up this drive to your AEBS via USB, first know that this option could be slow, depending on your drive (7200RPM is better) and connection (USB 3 may make this more acceptable, IDK). My only guess is that this may be possible by creating two libraries on the MBA. One, which you will set to keep your music organized and be the one you use to manage the library (however you want to do that—corded will be faster), and the other that will leave files as they are found. You will have to re-add your media to the secondary library, but it won't faff around with your file locations. This is only a test scenario, as I have no idea if this solution would work. You may find it useful to try out if your other options are exhausted.

External Hard Drive Error

I connected a 60 gig external hard drive to my iBook G4, to transfer a 6 gig final cut pro final from my computer to another.
In the middle of transfering, finder opens a window thata says "Error, this file cannot be moved"
Why is it doing this?

Select the disk in the Finder and choose Get Info from the File menu; if it's format is listed as MS-DOS, it cannot accomodate files that are 4GB or larger. In this case, available options include:
1. Using the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to reformat the whole drive in the Mac OS Extended format. You should choose this option if you don't need to use the drive with a PC, and there's nothing on it that you want to keep and can't temporarily copy off.
2. Segmenting the oversize file with one of these applications.
3. Following the instructions in this article.
4. Installing MacDrive on any PCs which need to access the drive, and then following #1.
5. Install and use MacFUSE on your computer, and reformat the drive to NTFS in Windows.
(22718)

How do I move my iTunes Music to an external hard drive? Please help!

I bought an external hard drive and moved the iTunes Music folder from my local hard drive to the external hard drive and now the iTunes library appears empty. I moved all my music back into the local hard drive and the libarary is now full full of music again. How can I move all the files to the external drive and have iTunes retrieve the music from there?
Thanks!
Paula

This article tells you the proper way to move your music:
iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder
After a successful move, always connect your external disk, before running iTunes.
Failing to do so will iTunes cause to reset the 'iTunes Music folder location'.
That means your next ripped CDs will be stored on your internal disk.
If that happens, just set the proper location again in the preferences.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

External Hard drive error: "because a usb devise was drawing too much power from your computer, one or more of your usb devises has been disabled.

I plugged in three external hard drives (at different times) and the above error was reported and now external drives will not work on other computers. What happened and how can I save data on external drives?

Have you rebooted the computer? If not do that and check. If it still won't see USB devices take it to Apple and have them FIX it.

Why can't I copy files from my external hard drive - error code -50.

I sm trying to back up an external hard drive to a network drive. Some files copy but not all;. SOmetimes a folder seems to have copied but then I see that most of the files inside have not. And sometimes I just get 'An unexpected error has occurred'. Error code - 50.
I need to have a back up copy of the files on this hard drive. How can I stop this happening and copy files properly and securely?
The external hard drive is a LaCie bought from Apple, share formatted FAT32.
The network drive is a WD MyBookLIve Duo which WD tell me should work equally well with any operating system.
Please advise. I need to archive a security copy of this data urgently
John Wood

Have u tried the usual? Safe boot. Delete finder plist files? etc. And the drives are formatted for mac yes?

Disconnecting external hard drive error - PLS HELP!

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for