External Hard disc problem

I just bought a Samsung portable hard-disc (external) but I've run into some trouble.
I don't have a problem transferring files to the hard-disc from my old dell laptop (plug and play), and I can copy the files from the hard disc to my MBP. However, whenever I try to copy files from the MBP to the hard-disc, I get an error messag that goes: "xxx file may not be transferred because "New Volume" (title of hard-disc) cannot be modified.
I tried erasing the hard-disc using disc utility, and that allowed me to copy files from the MBP to the hard-disc. However, after doing so, my dell laptop couldn't detect the external hard-disc. I then formatted the hard-disc and gave it a disc-path on my dell, but when I did that, I got the aforementioned error message when I tried copying files over from my MBP to the external hard disc.
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

The reason your Mac couldn't write to the disk initially is probably that your Dell formatted the disk as an NTFS volume (most Windows disk are formatted as NTFS these days). OS X can read an NFTS disk, but cannot write to it.
When you erased the disk with Disk Utility in OS X, it's likely that you reformatted the disk as an HFS+ volume (most OS X disks are formatted as HFS+ these days). Unfortunately, Windwos cannot read or write HFS+ without some third party software.
You have two solutions available.
First, you could use Disk Utility (or the Windows equivalent) to format the drive as a FAT32 partition. Both Windows and OS X can read and write to FAT32. However, FAT32 is a bit of an outdated standard, inferior to both NTFS and HFS+.
The other option is to keep the disk formatted as HFS+, but use third party software to work with the disk in Windows. Google "Macdrive" and you will find some nice software for this. The downside here is that you have to buy a third-party program. However, HFS+ is far superior to FAT32, and at least you can try out Macdrive for free before deciding to pay up and go this route in the long run.

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I have a La Cie external hardisk which I connect to my MacBook Pro with a firewire cable. It is formatted with UFS/Unix filesystem and was very fussy about being unplugged without being ejected under 10.4. If it was accidently unplugged with 10.4 it would take about 10 minutes to mount the next time it was plugged in, while it was checked, but would work fine.
Now with 10.6.1 the permissions show me having only read access (so I decided to make a copy of the disk and reformat it). Unfortunately when the disk is plugged in, it immediately shows in the finder, but is behaving strangely - it only shows some of the files in the filesystem and ceases to function at all after a few minutes. If I try to verify the disk using Disk Utility I get an error message saying that it is unable to unmount. I've also tried DiskWarrior, but it says the filesystem is unsupported.
Any ideas would be gratefully received...
Thanks!
Chris

this very much sounds like a failing/failed hard drive. you can try reformatting it wile booted from the snow leopard install dvd using disk utility there. if that does not work (I suspect it won't) I would get rid of it altogether.

Problem when mounting my external hard disc

When I mounted my Western Digital Elements external hard disc to my iMac, a window appeared stating Mac OS could not fix this external hard disc, please reformat it. But I can still access to the content of the HD. Is my HD corrupted? BTW I got this HD for just about a month. Thanks for your help. _Julian

If you right click on the drive in the Finder, what is the Format of the drive?
Further down under Sharing & Permissions what does it say the Privilege is for (Me)?

User account on external hard disc frequently gets corrupted - reasons?

Dear all,
I have recently written a question regarding a problem with my user account; in this question I have described that I have my data for my user account on an external hard disc (USB2 hard disc), and that all data in this account seemed to be deleted one day (in fact, it was simply set to a wrong path, see below); user V.K. has helped me out of the problem - the problem could be solved by renaming the external hard disc and setting the path to my user data folder in the "user account" settings to my old folder on the renamed disc; You can find our discussions here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1513799&tstart=0 By the way, I use OS X 10.5 (newest version).
Now, several months later I find myself in the situation that the problem returns frequently, although I do not yet see regularities or the reason; each time the described renaming-procedure helps, but anyway it is annoying, and some programs who have data on my user account folder (such as Linotype FontExplorer X - latest version!) even fail to notice the change and have to be very reset with lot of effort.
Now, as I can not imagine that I am the only one who uses a user account on an external drive, I start wondering what am I doing wrong. Did anybody else ever experience problems like these? Does it also occur when the user account is stored in a network (on a server) - which must be a very common workplace setup? Is there anything known about the reasons?
I do not understand what causes this problem; and also, the problem seems to be very intricate - I do not know enough about the internals of Mac OS X, but (if You look into my old post cited above), if You simply try to reset the user path in the user account settings to the folder on the NOT renamed disc, the account stops to work completely, and the user cannot log into it at all; somehow, there seem to be different "stages" of corruption of the account on the external drive - I think that this may help somebody with detailled knowledge to understand the problem, but I am out of the game here... also, all the old names of the external drive keep to be mounted in the "Volumes"-folder on Macintosh HD - although they don't exist anymore.
I have formatted the external drive to "Mac OS Extended"; is this okay - or should it better be formatted to "Journaled"? The drive is a 500 GB external drive from LaCie - I think it should be okay (I have two of them - one for TimeMachine - the drives themselves work reliably, it appears).
Is there anybody who can help - or anybody with a similar setup and who could tell me whether or not he ever experienced a similar problem, and what he did against it (if necessary)? Thanks in advance!!!
With kind regards and greetings from Berlin,
Björn

Aside from starting over, losing whatever you've done on the new machine, see Pondini's Transferring files from one User Account to another. If you haven't done much and can afford to lose that data, I suggest starting over, following the steps in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide. That should result in just one user account.

Time Capsule and external Hard Disc

Hi,
I have a problem with my Time Capsule (1 TB) and External Hard Disc (1 TB). The external HD is connected via USB. The idea is to have use the device as a shared HD in my network. First it worked perfect. After upgrading to Snow Leopard i have following problem.
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
Can anybody help?
Thank you.

Emma1609 wrote:
Hi,
hi emma, and welcome to discussions
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
you could try a power cycle on your devices. turn off modem, TC, and HD for, say, 10 minutes. turn the modem back on for 2 minutes, followed by the HD, followed by the TC.
then go airport utility > manual setup > disks. see if your HD is showing beneath the TC

I am unable to transfer my pictures from iphoto after editing back to my external hard disc. How do I do it. Previously I used Windows and this is the first time I am using a Macbook. Need help and tutorials.. Where can I find em..

Hi there, I am new to Apple Iphoto. I am having lots of problems in transferring my edited photos back to my external Hard disc after editing. How am I able to do it. will it be able to open in Windows OS... Previously I was using Windows and now i m new in using the Apple OS.. Need guidance.. Would really appreciate if any1 of u guys could help me through. are there any other applications that I could use to edit pictures.

Best if you try and explain what you are trying to acheive.
Iphoto is a different paradigm than you're used to. I don't understand why you are trying to transfer your edited photos back to an external disk.
There are tutorials here
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/photos/
Regards
TD

I use Time Machine with an external hard disc which has worked perfectly for some years. Recently Time Machine has aborted backups if the screen saver starts when back-up is in progress. I use a Maxtor OneTouch4 back-up system. Any ideas?

I use Time Machine with an external hard disc which has worked perfectly for some years. Recently Time Machine has aborted backups if the screen saver starts when back-up is in progress. I use a Maxtor OneTouch4 back-up system. Any ideas?
Has Apple recently up-dated my OS (Lion) such that every time the screen saver starts it disables Time Machine. I have to switch-off the computer and re-start in order to undertake a back-up. I have now switched of all screen savers.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)

Disk Utility cannot verify External Hard Disc

Hi,
Trying to get Disk Utility to Verify and repair an external Hard Disc, which is seen but only as 'disk1s1' not it's proper name. On plugging in it asks if I want to initialise the disk - obviously No.
DU sees the HD in the side bar but it's grey'd out, I can't mount it, Verify is greyed out.
Running diskutil in Terminal (which I'm not confident in) brings back the following - disk0 is my OS, disk1 is an install disk of Disk Warrior and disk2 is the external one I'm trying to sort out, as you can see it's got an FDisk_partition_scheme, which I think is the problem.
(BTW Disk Warrior doesn't recognise the disks either, however as this is an Apple Forum, I've not asked for advice on that here, unless someone wants to chime in on that software!)
I'm running OS 10.9.5, and it happens on multiple external disks, running in USB caddies of different manufacture, I've tried different cables, ports, restarts etc.
MBP 2.5GHz, i7, 16Gb, 500Gb SSD HD
Any advice would be most welcome as how get correct this
localhost:~ anthonyupton$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            DW                     *67.6 MB    disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk2
   1:                       0xEE                         375.1 GB   disk2s1
localhost:~ anthonyupton$ sudo gpt recover /dev/disk2
Password:
gpt recover: /dev/disk2: no primary or secondary GPT headers, can't recover
localhost:~ anthonyupton$ diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk2
Unable to repair this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)
localhost:~ anthonyupton$

That is just a statement of optimization. It is not stating that there IS or IS NOT any errors on the disk. DiskWarrior does not actually have a separate "error detector" function. You basically let it run its disk directory data optimization routine on the volume. If it finds problems, it will attempt to fix them as it goes.
When it finishes, it will let you review its findings and results, and then you get to choose to apply the changes or not. Until you apply the changes, you are safe; if you do not apply the changes, the drive is not changed. If you apply the changes, DiskWarrior will replace the existing disk directory data with the optimized (and repaired if there was damage) version.
You should make backups of your valuable data before making repairs, in case something bad happens during your attempt to repair.
Be sure your copy of Disk Warrior is compatible with the Mac OS X release. Version 3.0.3 or later is compatible with Tiger.

How can I boot from my recovery dvd to reach the system recovery C: on a extern hard disc

I think a have a virus in my notebook Pavilion 15 and want to restore my C partition with a system back up. I made this system back up a month ago and it is stored on a extern hard disc. I have also made a recovery dvd. How can I boot my notebook from my dvd to start the procedure? I have 2 partions on my notebook. The second partition contains My Documents.
Thanks in advance.
Tineke

It is unlikely that the back-up of the system recovery, that you have stored on an external drive, will be useful in recovering your computer. Please see HP PCs - Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 8), for instructions on using the HP Recovery Disc set your created earlier. Typically, the disc set is 4 to 6 DVDs.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Please click the white KUDOS star to show your appreciation
Frank
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Please click the "Accept As Solution" on my post, if my assistance has solved your issue. ------------V
This is a user supported forum. I am a volunteer and I don't work for HP.
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External Hard Disc won't show

My iMac hard disc is getting full so I bought an external hard disk. I changed my iTunes folder over to the external hard disc without any trouble and removed the old iTunes music folder as per directions. After that iTunes played fine, the next day when I turned on my iMac the iTunes music folder had reverted back to my iMac's hard disk, and the external hard disk no longer shows. I opened Disk Utility and the external disk shows there but when I try verify disk or repair disk i get "FIRST AID FAILED, Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
Can anyone help, i have moved other data to the external drive also and its no lonfer in my iMac hard disk meaning if I have to send the external disk away for looking at I'll likely lose everything on it.

I think what you need to do is get a second external hard disk to attempt to recover data off that drive before you do anything else by using Subrosasoft Filesalvage to do the recovery.
External drives are best used as backup. If your itnernal hard drive is becoming too full, you need to know how to better manage your data, or get a larger internal hard drive. My FAQs* here should help you:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Good luck!
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

Music stored on external hard disc not found after re-boot

I moved all my music onto an external hard disc becuase it was taking up too much space on my Mac. Now every time I reboot I get an error message saying music not found, please find. ie. I have to point itunes to all the folders on my hard drive again. How can I stop this happening?
Thanks for your help
imac g5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

I followed other comments on the forum and succeeded. Thanks! -Migs

External hard disc not recognized

I have been using a WD external hard disc with Time Machine. Today I had it plugged into a USB powered hub when the house electrical power briefly went off then on, twice. A message appeared stating that device was removed incorrectly (or words to that effect). Now the HD does not appear on the desktop. It is recognized in "about this computer" as a USB device. It is not recognized in disc utility and thus can not be mounted.
All suggestions appreciated.

Answered my own question. Working now. Connected directly to computer USB and ignored it for a couple of hours and now it is visible on the desktop and appears to be working.

Running iTunes from an external hard disc, deleting songs on local disc

I've moved my iTunes library to an external hard disc, so I could free up room on my Macbook Air. Everything seemed fine, so as a test, I deleted 1 song from the iTunes media file on my Air, and then tried to play it from the external disc.
I get the "original file could not be found" message. The preferences in iTunes point to the external drive, and the song is there. I get find the individual file, but that's clearly not going to be a good solution for ALL my music!
What should I do? The only advice I find online is to go to preferences, advanced, find the external hard drive and click OK, but that's all be done!

You have to move the library database too, or you have to use a method for just moving media. Unless you know the details of how iTunes works I would move it all otherwise you are more likely to encounter issues such as the one you are seeing and won't know how to resolve them.
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 - Basically what ChrisCA recommends
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449 - moving just media but leaving all else on your main drive.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
Image of iTunes folder structure Dec. 2011 - https://discussions.apple.com/message/16923545
see also:
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/13025536 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17457605

How to copy my iphoto from one external hard disc to another?

Hi, I am trying to copy my iphoto library that is on my external hard disc to another empty external hard disc, but i keep getting this message:
You can’t copy “iPhoto Library” because it has the same name as another item on the destination volume, and that volume doesn’t distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters in filenames.
What am I doing wrong? all I want to do is to beck up my iphoto library into another external hard disc.
Thanks a lot!

If the destination EHD is empty try reformatting it and try copying again. I don't use RAW files but there's no reason I can think of why you'd get that message when trying to copy.
Here's another approach:
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and use it to rebuild your library.
2 - set the location of the rebuilt library to be on the second EHD.
Maybe iPLM will get around that obstical and let the library get recereated on that EHD. See the Note 1 at the end of the following:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
Download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.
Click on the Add Library button,
navigate to your Home/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
Click on the Create button.
Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.
Note 2: your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.

I am not able to open few files from my external hard disc in snow lepord

i am not able to open few files from my external hard disc in snow lepord

Need more information. Is there a message when you try to open them?

External Hard disc problem

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