External disk access - USB change to firewire is it OK?

I have my backup external disk connected to my Airport Express via USB. If I unplug it and connect it using the Firewire connection to my Macbook will I still be able to read the data on the disk OK?
Thanks

Hi Robert
Yes
Dennis

Similar Messages

One USB port does not work with external Disk or USB key

Hello,
Back to my iMAC there is 3 USB port. The second one - in the middle - does not work pluging an external Disk, an USB key or an iPOD nano. However it works well connecting a Wacom tablet.
Is there an explanation to this behaviour ?
More the keyboard is plugded on USB port 1 and the mouse on the keyboard. Time to time - especially at reboot - I have to unplugged the mouse and plugged again it in order it works.
In advance thank you for your answers
Regards

Since it does not work for three different devices, I will assume it is not something simple like a faulty USB cable. Since it does work for one device, I will also assume that the port is (at least partially) working.
As a test to narrow down the cause, I would try restarting from your Mac OS X installation disc (insert disc and restart with the C key held down).
At the first Installer screen (after language selection), go up the menu bar. Under Utilities, select to run Disk Utility. Now, connect the USB drive into that center port. Does it appear in the Disk Utility sidebar?
Please post back the result...

External disk access privileges

I got some VERY bad advice on access privileges and I am now unable to access my external firewire disk. I added my user id to the root of my boot disk and did an apply to all subfolders. I was trying to protect my data, but the disk now disapeared from my desktop. I run the Disk program and it shows the external disk but it doesnt mount it so I can not access it to change the privileges. I get "you can't open the folder because you don't have sufficient access privileges.
Is there any way to fix this? I have done a repair permissions on my boot disk.
Thaank you
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.11)

It happens a very spooky thing, by trying for the N time to check the disk (with the disk program), it suddenly reapear at the desktop... i was very upset, dont know what have I done lastly, but allas, its now healled. I hope it will keep this way otherwise i'll be back here
Sorry to bother you guys, thank you so much for all the links and the patiente!
(Thanx God I dont have to deal with that DOSlike terminal). At least I learn a good lesson, rookies should never mess with volumes's privileges...
my best kind regards!

Full backup ( ~ 1 TB ) using external HD - speed USB vs. Firewire vs. eSATA - what are relative speeds - how to install eSATA on mid-2010 Mac Pro desktop ( dual hex-core processors)_

    Hi All,
     I'm trying to resume regular scheduled Full backup ( ~ 1 TB ) of drives using external HD (to allow off-site redundant backup storage) .
     What are relative speeds of USB vs. Firewire vs. eSATA ?
     I suspect eSATA connection may be considerably faster … how to install eSATA on mid-2010 Mac Pro desktop ( dual hex-core processors)?
      ( The quicker and easier backup protocol is, the more likely one is to use it to backup on a routine repetitive basis.)
Thanks

Jim Bogy wrote:
...I suspect eSATA connection may be considerably faster … how to install eSATA on mid-2010 Mac Pro desktop ( dual hex-core processors)?
      ( The quicker and easier backup protocol is, the more likely one is to use it to backup on a routine repetitive basis.)
Adding a USB 3.0+eSATA PCIe card, which The hatter mentions, is the best solution that I've found. See http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/FASTA6GU3/. The card is not cheap, but the USB 3.0 works flawlessly (which can't be assumed; ask me how I know) and the eSATA connection allows booting from the connected drive. Grant Bennet-Alder's point about HD speed is important to consider; in addition, the size of the individual files being backed up and where on the backup disk they're going will affect overall transfer speed. For example, using the USB 3.0 connection on that CalDigit card going to a Toshiba 3TB external, the transfer rate for a big file (say a virtual machine file) from an internal SSD boot drive was about 145 MB/sec while a bunch of little files might drop to 30 MB/sec and both rates decrease as an inner partition on the external is used. All told, a nearly 700 GB backup took under 1.5 hours. Using a HD as the source added almost an extra hour, though a WD external was used for that. Using a WD green drive plugged into this http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/FWU3ES2HDK/ with an eSATA connection took about 2.5 hours also, but that was bootable whereas the USB 3.0 connection is not.
Another point to consider is that USB 3.0 is ubiquitous on PC's now so there's lots of price competition for externals; not so much for eSATA externals.

How to look at movies with IPAD3 using Airport express and external disk drive (USB connexion to Airport Express)

I would like to stotre several movies on an external disk drive connected to Airport express through USB port. With my IPAD, I am able to use the WiFi network (generated by Airport) buy I don't see the disk.... how to make it happen ? Thanks. JP A

Shoudl I use ICloud instead or another way ?
I have not tried iCloud for this...and understand that it is mainly for your backups. These link might help:
http://www.apple.com/icloud/get-started/
http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/
Or, you could post in the iPad support area since that is really what your question is about.

Wont boot past grey screen after disk access was changed

I have a new 13" macbook pro with OS X Lion. I changed the hard disk access from read only to no access, walked away for a minute, when I came back my computer screen was black. Upon touching the mouse pad the mouse arrow showed up but the screen stayed black. I preformed a hard shutdown and when turning it back on it wont load past the grey screen with the apple logo. Ideas? Solutions? Please help.
Thanks

please explain exactly what you did.

External drive enclosure, USB 2 mounts, firewire invisible!

I have a venus ds3 external enclosure with a 300GB 7200rpm WD hard drive inside it. The enclosure works fine with windows and usb2, and it is also detected and mounted on usb2 on my mini (1.25ghz ppc mini). However, nothing happens when I try to use the firewire connection on the mini. In system profiler, I see:
FireWire Device Tree
FireWire Bus
Unknown Device
It is an oxford fw911 chipset, and I did run the updater to FW911V4_00_0000Release.bin, but still no firewire action. The updater saw the enclosure via firewire on my mac, but os x will not see the drive itself.
Am I doomed to using usb2? Would it still be possible to boot from this drive on usb2 instead of firewire?
mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.7) upgraded to 512MB ram

problem is
you cannot use 300 gigs as fire wire on any mac mini
the max you can use is only 200 gigs before mac os x
no longer recongnizes the drive
so you need a 200 gig hard drive sorry
Is there some documentation that you could cite on the 200gb barrier?
I'm also interested if it's a ppc-mini only problem or if it affects other systems as well.
I have a 250gig firewire drive on my wife's intel mac mini
and it works fine. Even if it only regognized on 200gig and
I didn't notice, it mounted and worked.
I now have it partitioned into 2 samller volumes. So, if it's
a problem on the PPC mac, then he should be able to
partition the drive and make it work.
I just now tried partitioning it again via usb, and made two 137gb partitions (or whatever odd number it came out to be), and it was still not recognized when I switched over to firewire.
If it turns out that john was right, and nothing over 200gb will work, can I still get some use out of the drive? Can I install applications on it or move the swap files over to it?
mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.7) upgraded to 512MB ram

External Disk Access Suddenly Slow

It now takes forever to load files (Open a finder window) when I open an external drive partition that contains my imovie files and main backup partition on the same external drive.
I never had a problem before.
The permissions for the "Backup" partition in the external drive are:
- system - Read and write
- admin - Read and write
- everyone - Read
The permissions for the "Movie" partition in the external drive are:
- <my user name> "(me)" - Read and write
- admin - Read and write
- everyone - Read
Both drives load - very - slowly (5 minutes).
I am the admin, and the only user.
OS 10.8.5
Can anyone offer ideas?
Disk utility found no permissions issues.
Thanks.
Mac

It happens a very spooky thing, by trying for the N time to check the disk (with the disk program), it suddenly reapear at the desktop... i was very upset, dont know what have I done lastly, but allas, its now healled. I hope it will keep this way otherwise i'll be back here
Sorry to bother you guys, thank you so much for all the links and the patiente!
(Thanx God I dont have to deal with that DOSlike terminal). At least I learn a good lesson, rookies should never mess with volumes's privileges...
my best kind regards!

External disk problem with AVI files

Hi
I do have Premiere elements 7 installed on a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista.
I have just rendered (DV camera to AVI files) some 20 tapes to my external disk (usb and fire wire connection) and everyuthing worked perfect.
A week later Premiere complains that I have not the correct codec installed.
However AVI files stored on my laptop still works.
Someone that has a clue about this?
Second problem.
When renering the DV camera to AVI files directly to the laptop the dates works fine.
When i copy them to an external disk, the dates are replaced with todays date and I can not anymore see the shooting date.

Hi,
Thanks, the forum seems to be a good knowledgebase. And thanks for your fast reply.
The thing is that I have a external disk with firewire and USB input.
However the laptop has only one firewire connection, so when rendering I use the laptop firewire for my Sony DCR-TRV33E and connects the external disk with USB.
When I create my videos, I connect the external disk with firewire.
However the problem is the same even if I try with USB or Firewire.
BUT last week it worked with both?????
//Per

Satellite L300 - The external disk isn't visible

At me laptop Satellite L300 Short Model ? PSLB0E with established BIOS 1.50.
At connection of the external disk through USB the system it defines port in Disk Management ,
but without letter assignment. But also after assignment to it of a letter, it in an explorer isn't visible.
USB port works without errors.
Please Help

It is not easy to help you with this. We dont know which device do you use exactly.
Does this HDD works perfectly on other PCs/notebooks?
Does it need external power supply, one or two USB cables and and and.....?
Do you have some problems using other USB devices?

I currently have a MAC Mini, which has 1 Firewire 800 port. I have a 1TB external hard disk that runs at Firewire 400. Can I insert another external hard drive that runs at Firewire 800?

Here's the deal. Currently running SL 10.6.8 on a MAC Mini. Planning for eventual upgrade to ML. Have a 1TB external hard drive partitioned into two volumes, one volume for Time Machine and one volume for SL which I periodically update using Superduper. Thus I always have a point-in-time bootable backup on the external hard drive.
The MAC Mini supports Firewire 800. However, booting from my current external hard disk is pretty slow, since it only supports Firewire 400. I am considering buying an Iomega MiniMax which supports Firewire 800. Then, I would use the MiniMax as my bootable backup volume, and relegate the older hard drive to Time Machine.
So, question #1 is, can I daisychain the new MiniMax between the MAC Mini and my existing external hard drive? My expectation is that the new Mini Max would run using Firewire 800 and that the existing hard drive would run at Firewire 400 speed as it does today. If it doesn't (e.g., daisychaining in the Firewire 400 external disk with the MiniMax Firewire 800 external disk ends up running the whole leg at 400), my resolution will be to run the existing hard disk off an available USB port and have just the MiniMax running at Firewire 800.
Why am I going to all this trouble? That's question #2. I don't trust upgrades; they always break something. When I upgraded from 10.5.x to 10.6.x, the web directories got renamed, and all of my web apps 403'd until I figured out what happened. Plus, I have accounts for other family members, and in order to ensure their ability to use the computer during my upgrade process, I need to have the ability to fall-back quickly to a known-stable version of OSX. So what I'm trying to do is insulate myself from problems by partitioning the MiniMax into two volumes, taking a Superduper image of my current installation on the Mac Mini to MiniMax external drive volume 1, then upgrading to ML on the MAC Mini, and take a SuperDuper image of that to MiniMax external drive volume 2. Then, if the upgrade results in problems I can't resolve immediately, I can simply reimage the MAC Mini from MiniMax volume 1. BUT ...
... I've read that the ML installation creates a "service and support" partition that is different than the startup disk. I'm concerned that I won't be able to reimage the hard disk in the MAC Mini once I upgrade it to ML because of the partitioning changes it introduces on the startup disk. Theoretically, I +should+ be able to use the disk utility on my SL system to repartition the disk in the MAC Mini prior to reimaging it from my backup, but I'm considering the possibility that the new partition may be of a type that the SL disk utility cannot identify, and might therefore be unable to delete or even detect. So I'm hoping someone else has been down this road and can advise me. Even at Firewire 800 speeds, booting from an external disk is still going to be slow, so I want to be able to restore my SL image to the MAC Mini hard disk.
A little background on me. I work for a major disaster recovery provider. I used to have a Mac PRO G5, which I got used, and the first thing I did with it was install a second hard disk, SuperDupe an image from the first disk to the second, and made sure I could boot from the second. THEN I started using and customizing the MAC. I really feel vulnerable with the MAC Mini, since it only has the single internal hard drive - sort of like going out in public dressed only in a long T-shirt. So my whole thing is, I ABSOLUTELY MUST BE ABLE TO PUT THINGS BACK THE WAY THEY WERE before I do the migration to ML.
Obsessive-cumpulsive? Yep. Anal? You got it. That's why I'm in the DR business.

You may have overloaded the port, following the instructions below it should reset:
+1. Shut down the computer.+
+2. Disconnect all devices and all other cables, except the keyboard and mouse cable(s).+
+3. Disconnect the computer from the power outlet and wait for 3 to 5 minutes.+
+4. Plug the computer back in and turn it on.+
+5. Reconnect the device(s) (one at a time if there is more than one) and test. Test with each port if you have more than one.+
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US

External Hard drive USB vs firewire

I purchased a Western Digital external hard drive that has both firewire 800 and USB connections. I initialized the drive using the USB connection so my computer only mounts it when connected with USB. Using Disk Utility, I tried re-initializing but don't know how to switch so it mounts with firewire 800. How can I change this drive to mount connected with firewire?

The connection used to format the drive should have no impact on using another type of connector. I suspect that the chip for the firewire connector is bad. I suggest you send it back to WD for repair.
Allan

2.6.22 kernel and USB external disk ** SUSPECTED BUG**

Hi, as the title suggests, I think I've come across a bug in the 2.6.22 kernel.
I made a post here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=35343 which was basically in regards to initial access of my external USB2 disk after mounting it. I just did a fresh install and some testing and it appears to be a kernel issue somehow. I updated my system doing pacman -Syu, then I enabled the testing repo, installed the 2.6.22 arch kernel, rebooted and the problem occured. I then disabled the testing repo, removed the 2.6.22 kernel and went back to 2.6.21 and the problem vanished.
The problem: Mounting my external (lacie) USB2 hard disk and trying to access it in thunar. The first time I try to access it after mounting, all instances of thunar lock up for around 30 seconds, then it comes back to life, displaying the contents. Even thunar instances that are displaying other directories on the local filesystem freeze. Subsequent attempts to access the content are fine and no lockup's occur. Again, this issue only happens with the 2.6.22 kernel. I even compiled a custom 2.6.22 vanilla kernel and the same thing occurs.
Can other people with external HD's try with this kernel please? I'd like to find out if it affects all external disks.
Notes:
* Automounting / mounting is done via DBUS and HAL through XFCE.
* The issue doesn't occur with optical disks, autostarted with DBUS / HAL in XFCE.
If possible, can anyone suggest a way of me trying to debug this further? I've not done any kernel debugging in the past.

I also have that problem in KDE. I have an external HD with firewire or USB input.
My external disk is mounted successfully, but reading directories of the external disk in Konqueror makes all Konqueror instances freeze for some time (just the same as your problem). Even accessing external folders from konsole makes the konsole freeze for some time.
And another strange thing happens: when the external disk is mounted pacman hangs after looking for inter-conflicts... done. As soon as i switch off the HD, pacman goes on working...
When mounting the HD via Firewire the problems are greater than via USB.
I just downgraded my kernel to kernel26-2.6.20.10-1 and everything works perfect!

USB disk access of every type is hosed - HELP!?

Newbie with the very latest "Don't Panic" running on a laptop. I'm coming off a year with various bloateddistros, looking for something fast and stable.
I've got my internal drive up, networking, x, gnome and openoffice all working great. Next step is to plug in my external 160gig drive with all my data on it. This is a very standard USB2-to-EIDE drive, I've had no problems with it in any distro. It's split between a 32gig FAT32 partition and a 119gig Ext3.
I followed the wiki on autofs. Nothing. Then played with HAL and the like. Made my user a member of group "storage". Still nothing.
I've seen mount problems before of course, so I tried adding gparted via pacman and running that from a root command line just to see what's physically out there. Not good: gparted never finishes getting past the "Scanning all devices....." process with the blue bar bouncing back and forth. When gparted first starts I can hear the external disk spin up and chug for a few seconds, but then nothing.
I tried a 1gig USB flash critter (probably Fat32), nothing there either. I think something is fundamentally hosed in my USB disk support. I do have a USB external trackball working though...so my ports are up.
My daemons at present:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond ntpd hal cups gdm alunnd)
Heeeelp! Neeeed my daaaata!
Wait, something else weird: if I turn on the external disk I see some CPU activity on my gnome panel monitor. Nothing major, a few light spikes. I've got a Celeron 1.6 but with the new 533 memory bus and 2gigs RAM. Once I run gparted it goes bananas and then once I close gparted CPU activity is pegged hard at 100% - yet there's no listed process eating that. Then when I turn off the external drive, CPU activity falls back to normal.
WTF, over?
Jim

Well before reading Veek's post I got further along. Almost there I think.
I went and loaded XFCE4 plus extras, and logged in with a XFCE session. I like having a backup desktop environment anyways in case Gnome gets squirrelly.
In XFCE Thunar shows the disks, but when I try and access 'em I get:
Failed to mount "128G Volume".
(exo-mount:4613): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
You are not privileged to mount the volume "128G Volume".
What I can't figure out is, what permissions? I'm added to groups "storage" and "disks"...any more needed?
The output from fdisk -l:
bash-3.2$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9729 78148161 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 19457 156288321 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 1 3824 30716217 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb6 3825 19457 125572041 83 Linux
bash-3.2$
I'm going to jump back to Gnome and try Veek's concepts...

How to connect my new MacBook Air to a LaCie hard disk with TIme Capsule backup from my old Imac? LaCie has USB 2.0, FireWire and eSata ports.

How can I connect my new MacBook Air to a LaCie hard disk with TIme Capsule backup from my old Imac? LaCie has USB 2.0, FireWire and eSata ports.

You can direct connect your MBA to the LaCie via USB 2 cable. If you have an Apple Airport Router you can USB connect the LaCie drive to the router and then use Airport Utility to configure it. Time Machine can access it either way.

External disk access - USB change to firewire is it OK?

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