External drive has problems every day

I've got a 500GB Toshiba USB drive that I use for TimeMachine backups. When it works, it works. However, it breaks once a day.
At the end of each day, I eject the drive and store the computer in a drawer. The next day, I wake up the computer and then plug in the drive. Each day when I do this, there is an attempt to run TM backups, and that attempt fails. I get the message "Backup Disk Not Available. Try backing up again when "BACKUP" is available." On the following detail screen, the message says "The backup disk could not be found. Make sure the backup disk is connected or select a different backup disk."
Of course, the disk is mounted and visible in the Finder when I get these messages. So I try to eject and remount the disk. The disk won't eject in Disk Utility, but in the finder I can manage to force eject it. (It never ejects normally.) Then the trick is to remount it. Disk Utility succeeds in remounting the disk about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, my only solution is to reformat the drive and run the whole backup from scratch. I do this about 3 times a week.
The drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Is there a better way?

Reindexing the external disk may help.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Similar Messages

3 different external hard drives keep disconnecting every day -HELP

I have 3 external hard drives on my 2.7GHz Core i5 iMac. It's got 16 gigs of memory. One external drive is in a basic external case and 2 are exposed on my desk using an Adapter Converter Cable. I've never had this kind of problem with these hookups in the past. And it's completely random. They work for a day or 2 at most and then suddenly when I wake the machine 1-2 or all 3 have dropped out and I have to unplug and restart the drive. The internal drive has never done this - it has 2 partitions. It rarely happens WHEN I'm actually using the machine and it's never happened when the computer was reading or writing to the drive and caused any corruption that I know of.
It started when I first hooked them up right after I got the iMac and has been the same every day since. I can't remember if it happened with SnowLeopard or if it started when I installed Lion a day or two after I got the machine. I have not tried booting into Leopard to test that.
2 of the drives came from my old G5 and one is new - all Seagate
1T
1.5T
and 2T
Thank you for any help with this,
Jay

Jay,
No where did you mention how the EHD's are connected. Is it USB, Firewire, FW800 and if so are they connected directly to the back of the computer or via a hub. If they're USB are they bus powered or powered with external power? You need to be specific so we can begin helping.
If they're USB drives with external power and are connected directly to the back of the computer then try doing a SMC reset 2-3X.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Exclamation mark! Not recognising external drive has been reconnected.

All my Itunes music is stored on an external hard drive. Foolishly I must have pressed play whilst the drive was disconnected and I now have an exclamation mark next to every track. This will mean that the next time I connect my Ipod there will be a problem.
How do I get Itunes to recognise that the songs are there when the external drive is reconnected?
Is there a simple way to remove the exclamation mark without playing every song individually?

Just exit iTunes and open it again. All you have to do is make sure the drive is connected before you open iTunes.

Wondering if my external drive has been backed up on Drobo or not

I apologize in advance for my long question that may sound confusing and/or repetitive.
I have been backing up my Mac and external firewire 800 drive to my Drobo using Time Machine for a year now. Recently my Drobo started having problems, cannot mount on the desktop. I have been dealing for over a month now with Drobo tech. support trying to fix the issue, had 2 failed attemps of repair via Disc utility and for all this time I haven't been backing up. (for 1.5 months).
Finally today I tried Diskwarrior on Drobo to save the data on it. I could only see the previews of my backups though the external hard drive seems to have been backed up only 3 times (at the beginning) and never since (for 10 months). I haven't changed anything in my set up since I started Time Machine. So I am wondering why I cannot see the external hard drive's backups? Could it be because the data is corrupted or because Time Machine never backed it up after the first 3 days?
I also tried Data Rescue Beta today to run a quick scan on the Drobo and had the same result. I asked their support service the same question and waiting for their answer now.
I am asking this because since yesterday my external drive that contains really important data cannot mount on the desktop. So I may loose very important data I haven't backed up neither archived.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. I hope to hear some suggestions.

irem-888 wrote:
So I am wondering why I cannot see the external hard drive's backups? Could it be because the data is corrupted
Probably. Time Machine backups have a very complex structure, and are all interlinked. So when something gets corrupted, there's no telling what was there before things went awry.
or because Time Machine never backed it up after the first 3 days?
Anything's possible, but that's doubtful. If the drive was connected, and not specifically excluded, it would have been backed-up. If there was a problem backing-it up, the backup would have failed with a (more or less) descriptive message.
If Time Machine was still able to do backups in the last week or so, you might be able to find the messages it sent to your logs, including how much was backed-up from each volume. See #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Most likely, you'll need the instructions in the pink box to use Console to see the previous logs.
I am asking this because since yesterday my external drive that contains really important data cannot mount on the desktop.
If Disk Utility can see it, try a +*repair disk+* (not permissions). See #A5 in Troubleshooting if you need instructions. If that (or Disk Warrior) can fix it, obviously, back it up immediately, via the Restore tab of Disk Utility, or a 3rd-party app such as CarbonCopyCloner or the similar SuperDuper (either easily found via Google).
If not, you'll need specialized +Data Recovery+ software, or a service that performs the function. It's not cheap, and there are no guarantees.
The app mentioned here most often is Data Rescue 3, and it seems to get good reviews, but I haven't used it myself, so can't recommend it over any of the others.
Another is File Salvage.
Some of these have a free "trial mode," that will tell you if there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file. For more, you have to pay the $$.
You'll also need another drive to receive anything it can recover.
Look for apps or services under +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.
But don't expect to get a nice list of folders and files, organized in any recognizable way. It will be a random list of files. You may get the original file names, in some cases, or there may be some assigned names (if the actual name couldn't be determined).
Because of that, if you need to do recovery, do it from the external, not the Time Machine backups; sorting out what was found won't be easy either way, but practically impossible on the backups, since there are probably several hundred thousand, or more, files on it.

CD drive has problems with some disks (tangerine, 10.2)

My son's piano teacher burns copies of the students' recitals for the students. The first CD plays fine in this old iBook, but last years and this years mount, but when you I try to open the CD in either finder or iTunes, it repeatedly spins up to high speed and back down, and the system becomes unresponsive to the point that I have to force-quit whatever was trying to read the CD and then figure out some way to coax the OS to eject the CD.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that this kind of thing might be the drive trying read faster than it's actually physically capable, and that there was some way to limit the speed in the driver settings. But I haven't figured out a good search phrase to find what I read before.
If such a thing is possible, I'd sure appreaciate a clue about where to set the CD's maximum speed, to see if it would work. (And/or any other clues about why I can't read these CDs.) I mean, this would be a good excuse to get a PPC Mac Mini before Apple dives off the deep end, but I'm really poor right now.
(Sure wish Apple would just simply start producing a parallel ix86 line and keep up the PPC line. I'm pretty sure there would be plenty of customers to for each line.)
Anybody have any idea what I'm talking about?

Hey Joel -
I too have an ibook (clamshell 366 firewire) and my CD drive also acts up in the same way - however I also have and external drive/writer that I use to read the discs my ibook can't. I think what is happening is modern CD's are being written differently than they used to and the older clamshell drives have trouble getting all the information. For me, it usually happens when I have a disc that has a lot of info/data on it. When I place that in my clamshell drive it'll read/encode/copy most of it and then it gets 'hung-up' and I have to force-quit the app. or sometimes restart my machine. But when I place that disc in my external drive ...no problem Of course I can't say for certain, but I'm thinking the older drives just aren't capable of reading CD's (full ones!) created on newer drives.

IMovie 6 Why? audio extract, copy file to external drive, delete problems

Why are these problems occuring in iMovie '06
+the remaining clip, after an audio extract, no longer has audio, and the extraction does not only extract the selected clip, but the whole movie
+copy and paste an iMovie (.iMovieProject) file 10.66G to a 30G external drive results in "error code 1309" and fails to finish copying
+a 10.66G movie where about 99 percent of the clip was deleted still reads as 10.66G even though the clip is only 26 seconds long.
Premature release of program me thinks.
Powerbook G4 12" 1.5Ghz, 768K RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4) also a powerbook G4 15" 1.25Ghz 256K RAM (with only one good RAM bay)
Powerbook G4 12" 1.5Ghz, 768K RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4) also a powerbook G4 15" 1.25Ghz 256K RAM (with only one good RAM bay)

Welcome to iMovie Discussions ..premature posting of question, methinks. (..without, perhaps, having searched for or read any previous discussion of these or similar topics..)
a - This is the iMovie HD (version 5) Discussion ..there's a separate area for iMovie HD 6 ..but I'll still be happy to answer your questions!
1 - When audio is "extracted", the original clip is simply muted, and a copy of the original audio from it is pasted into a separate audio track below the video. Normally, you'd select an individual clip (or clips) from which to extract (Copy) the audio. If nothing specific is selected, then everything may be extracted.
2 - An external drive must be formatted as 'Mac OS Extended' or HFS+ for iMovie to be able to work with files stored there. It may be formatted in PC (Windows) FAT 32 format, and there may be a file size limit in that format which is incompatible with your Mac operating system. See this page of error codes, where "error -1309 fileBoundsErr: file's EOF offset mark or size is too big" ..that means that the End Of File marker is incompatible with what's being copied. Googling will find other info, such as this discussion, which prompts a handy reminder that your external drive must be connected by FireWire, not by USB, for you to be able to edit and play via the external drive: a USB connection isn't consistently fast enough for playing video.
3 - When you delete part of a clip, in iMovie HD (any version) all the rest of the material is still saved, in case you want to Undelete, or make other alterations which need still having access to the original material. [ This is part of the enhanced "non-destructive editing" which was recently introduced into iMovie. In previous versions, when you deleted something, it was irretrievable! ] That's why the full 10.66GB remains. You could 'Share' (Export) just that 26 sec clip to DV, then re-import it as a new clip, and you could then delete the entire original clip, thus regaining the full 10.66GB of space.
So it's not a premature release: it's a considered, robust, thoughtful release, which now incorporates several solid features which make it more reliable than some previous releases.
Once you get to know how - and why - it works the way it does, you may be glad that it does work as it does.
There are still some bugs in it - many to do with "rendering" ..the rewriting of adjusted video, particularly of adjusted still photos within iMovie - but don't judge it just on a quick first glance!
Hope you find it works for you ..it's a great program, I think.

External drive partitioning problem

while trying to resize partition on my external drive with disk utility I get a message:
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled
Disk format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - isn`t it HFS+? Then, what am I doing wrong? It is important to me not to loose my data

Rod,
Finally solved the mystery. Obviously, it would not be in the Help section, even though I had followed the directions exactly. Once I typed in the Size: 70GB, I then had to click on the left hand grey, partition box. At that moment, the box enlarged and the 70GB did not change in the Size window. How is one supposed to know to do all of that????
Anyway, it worked.
By the way, the Apricon Enclosures came and the setup was extremely easy. Took about 5 minutes and it was a Firewire External Drive. I got very good support, getting answers by email and phone in hours, not days. They are even sending me a cable that was missing. No Problem.
Now, I will work through the SuperDuper program. In corresponding with them, they suggested strongly that I Clone, and not Image the drive.
Thanks
Herschel

External drive recognition problem

I am having issues with my iMac recognizing an external drive. I have:
iMac 5,1 10.4.11, Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, 1GB Memory, PIONEER DVR-112d in a BYTECC ME-525U2FW Aluminum External enclosure connected through Firewire.
The iMac initially recognized the drive, no problem. Trouble is, when I turn off the drive and then power it back up, the iMac can't recognize it. I was able to solve it initially by powering down the drive, unplugging it from the firewire, reconnecting to firewire, and the powering up the drive again.
System profiler states all software up to date.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
drayman86 is online now Report Post Edit/Delete Message

Thanks for the reply.
Has performed this way since install, which was about 72 hours ago.
When first connected through firewire and turned on, drive immediately recognized by iMac. Drive works, both ripping and burning. Turned drive off. Went to power up drive, and problem arose.

My external drive has disappeared although i shows up in disc utility, and flash drives also do not appear. Any ideas? Have tried restarting but.....

My back-up has stopped as my external drive is shown as "not accessible" and has disappeared from Finder although it shows up in Disc Utility. Similarly my USB flash drive has disappeared. Restarting does not help! Any ideas?

That's good news but maybe run a Repair Disk on it anyway given that it has been somewhat unpredictable.
With Time Machine, one expert helper here named pondini has an extensive knowledge of that software and has prepared a lot of material on it. Here is a link to some of it.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine back up failed on my external drive & more problems

Hi,
I'd be grateful for any help.
I have a G-TECH 1TB external drive (7 months old) and decided to use that with Time machine to back up my files. I hadn't used the drive for about 4 months but it had worked fine the last time I used it. I connected it to Time Machine and a back up failure message of some kind appeared. Since then the drive is unusable... I'm lucky if I can get the drive to mount ("the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer)" yet I can't reformat it - disk utility can't erase or partition it. It throws up a variety of error messages (can't unmount drive & resource busy are a couple) which usually ends with the spinning ball of death. Tonight I spent my hard earned money on Disk Warrior, which appeared to check and rebuild file systems and the drive mount now mounts but I still can't reformat it or use it in any way. Have now spend hours trying to mount and reformat it and it's driving me mad...
Thanks very much.

Yellowvan wrote:
Hi Pondini,
Yes, I bought DiskWarrior 4.1.1 - it came up with this report:
" DiskWarrior has successfully built a new optimized directory for the disk named "Untitled."
The new directory is ready to replace the original directory."
Did you let it do that? If not, nothing was changed!
The drive is still under guarantee - can they really fail this quickly?
Sure, a few drives from any production run will be D.O.A, and a few others will fail very quickly, as with nearly any manufactured product.
But you don't know yet whether the drive is bad. If you didn't let DW replace the directory, run it again and do so.
If it's still troublesome, try the other things in my last post before deciding it's the drive.

Calendar has marked every day in monthly view

Hello,
I'm using my (German) 3G with Exchange Active Sync. It works fine except for one problem. The monthly calendar marks a event for every day with the small rectangle. This makes it of course difficult, to identify a day where a event exist.
Any idea, how to solve this?
Regards

Hornfrosch wrote:
Hello,
I'm using my (German) 3G with Exchange Active Sync. It works fine except for one problem. The monthly calendar marks a event for every day with the small rectangle. This makes it of course difficult, to identify a day where a event exist.
Any idea, how to solve this?
Regards
Just to bring it up again, here you can see a screenshot:
http://www.av3.de/003.png

External Drive Formatting Problems - Please Help!

I formatted an external drive (just a 1gb memory stick, i intend on formatting an external hard drive i have coming in the post in the same way. This is to test that it will work) with 2 partitions.
Half in HFS+ for my storing documents from my intel imac and the other in FAT32 to use as a windows partition to store documents from my windows laptop.
(I know that FAT32 works with both but FAT32 has a 4gb transfer limit and is general untrustworthy - if possible i'd rather format the windows partition in NTFC if possible?)
I'm doing the formatting/partitioning in apples disk utility and it appears everything works fine, my mac detect both partitions as separate drives as its supposed to.
However, when i then insert the drive into my windows laptop it detects the drive and tells me that it needs to be formatted, i say yes... and it formats the whole thing as FAT32, whereas i want half FAT32 (or preferably NTFC) and half HFS+.
I tried formatting half as HFS+ and half as 'free space' (again with apple disk utility) then inserting it into the windows laptop, it asks me to format it and it formats just the HFS+ side into FAT32 and the 'free space' stays that way.
Does anyone have any solutions to this?
Any help would be MUCh appreciated.

In Disk Utility, when you partition (tab) again, click on "Options..." at the bottom, then change it to Master Boot Record so your PC is happy.
MacFuse 2.0 can read, write and create NTFS and other foreign formats.
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/17/167220
Disk Utility defaults to GPT and puts small 200MB GUID, adds an EFI partition for each user volume, and those are what probably confuses Windows, especially XP.

External Drive Reading Problem

So,
I'm transferring files to my Mac using a FreeAgent Drive by SeaGate. I click on the external drive button and I see the files, but when I click on them, they disappear. I view the files on my other machine, they open up with no problem. What gives? I'm assuming that this is a setting problem since they are viewable on the other comp. What gives? Any Settings I need to tweak?
-gotmud

If your Mac were older, it would probably work fine. Before 10.4, the Mac would have treated it as a "foreign" file system and mounted it and read it just fine.
In 10.4, the advent of the Intel Macs meant that you could now boot from Windows-formatted drives, and Windows formats were now "native".
I know the history, but I do not know the implications of Windows formatting. It should be FAT-32, but I don't understand what the Mac is trying to do with it that would make the Icons jump around or disappear.
There is a hint that there may be trouble in this document. It suggests that when you want to copy a bunch of Windows documents, you put them in one Folder on your Windows machine, then copy that one Folder, then open it when it gets to your Mac. I think the key is that the files are hidden in folders, so that exactly which Icon they should have, and where they should be in the window cannot cause confusion.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1529.html
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

External drive/OS problem with itunes

I had itunes installed on an external drive, thought everything was there and safe, but now after my C drive on my computer has been swapped out to upgrade to Windows 7, I don't know how to make itunes work again. There is an itunes folder on my external drive, and a media folder that sems to have about the same amountof data as is on my ipod. Can't see anything that looks like a program file. Do I need to reinstall itunes, and if I do, will my ipod and phone fill the library and apps back in? i did a backup a while ago, but not recently, and the change to the computer happened before I had a chance to do a new backup. I'm not smart about iTunes; thanks for any help.

I'm back at my computer....I do have .itl files....here is a screenshot of what I have inside the iTunes folder on my external drive, plus I have the media folder:
So what do I do.....do I sitll have to reinstall iTunes? My plan had been to eventually move the external drive and iTunes to a different computer. Thanks.

External drive boot problem

I have a Verbatim USB external drive plugged into my iMac used for backups with time machine. When I start the computer it immediately stops at a blank white screen. If I turn the computer off and unplug the external drive and restart it works fine. Is there anyway to make the computer boot with the external drive plugged in?

Open Sys preferences then Startup disk and select your internal drive and click Restart then again restart from the drop down that Drops Down.
Once you have done that and the system restarts shut it down and connect the external then start it back up. It should now go to the internal drive automatically.
If it doesn't then you have some other problem which may be a hardware problem. Post back with your results.

External drive has problems every day

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for