External hard drive disconnected

My external hard drive has about 75% of my iTunes music on it. The hard drive became unplugged and the sounds could not be found. When I plugged it back in, iTunes was not able to find the songs itself. I have to find every individual song. Is there a way, that, if I show iTunes where one song is, it can find the rest from that source? iTunes was able to do this on version 6 and before.
Windows XP

Did the drive letter change from before? If so you can change it back to the original letter, then restart iTunes.
To change the drive letter, right-click on My Computer on your desktop and choose "Manage". In the "Computer Management" window that appears, click "Disk Management". Find the external HD in the list of drives, then right-click on it and select "Change drive letter...".
If the letter did NOT change, then I think all you need to is restart iTunes.

Similar Messages

External hard drive disconnect--photos disappeared!

My external hard drive (with my iphoto library stored on it) was disconnected when iphoto was open, and when i reconnected the drive and reopened iphoto, the display claimed there were no photos and didn't give me the window to find the library. All the files are still on the external hard drive, so I just need to re-link it. How do I do that?? Thanks

In Finder, navigate to your user's Library >Preferences folder. Find the file named "com.apple.iPhoto.plist" and drag it to the trash. When you next start iPhoto, you should be offered a dialog to either create a new library, or find an existing one (I'm assuming you have no iPhoto Library folder in your user account Pictures folder).

External Hard Drive disconnects when I pick it up from idle.

It started doing this recently. I'm guessing its a power issue, I recently had my logic board replaced but I narrowed down the symtom.
When I connect my external hard drive, it works fine. No problem, I pick it up, move it all around, jiggle the wire, nothing.
But when it is idle, then I suddenly pick it up, it suddenly disconects ONLY from idle.
I used different wires, even replaced the HD case, gives me all the same problem.
It never did it before, it only started happening in the past 2 months.
I have to DJ with this laptop and hard drive so I cant be continuing to have this issue.

Sounds like a good plan, you can never be to safe and having a second External HD is safer than one.
The only thing that I would do different, is setup the 3T as my TimeMachine Backup and then erase and move my Photos, Videos and perhaps even iTunes Media to the 1T. That way you will have room to backup both the Internal Hard Drive and the 1T External Hard Drive to the 3T using TimeMachine.
Take your time, study and use the > Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions if you get stuck or aren't sure how to make the move.
Also see > iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location
iMovie ’08: Storing or moving your video library to an external hard disk
and > iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

Why does my external hard drive disconnect itself/take SO long to load?

i use a Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 Media external hard drive and it is connected by 2 usb ports. it's driving me insane, and when it does so happen to behave and connect longer than 5 minutes, it takes me up to an hour to transfer something on my laptop from that range from about 600-800 MB. help!

helloangela wrote:
i use a Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 Media external hard drive and it is connected by 2 usb ports. it's driving me insane, and when it does so happen to behave and connect longer than 5 minutes, it takes me up to an hour to transfer something on my laptop from that range from about 600-800 MB. help!
It is possible that the drive is failing as suggested above but it's also possible that your cable is flakey. Have tou thought to try a new one?

Time Machine External Hard Drive Disconnected Incorrectly

I have an external USB hard drive functioning for my Time Machine back-ups. I usually turn off my iMac by using the sleep function. Often, when I activate out of sleep, I get the error message that the hard drive was disconnected incorrectly (I assume this means not ejected properly). But I haven't disconnected the USB wire. I can't figure ot why I am getting this message so often. Any ideas? Thanks.

mr1213 wrote:
I have an external USB hard drive functioning for my Time Machine back-ups. I usually turn off my iMac by using the sleep function. Often, when I activate out of sleep, I get the error message that the hard drive was disconnected incorrectly (I assume this means not ejected properly). But I haven't disconnected the USB wire. I can't figure ot why I am getting this message so often.
It may be that your TM drive isn't "waking up" quickly enough for Time Machine.
An improper disconnect (yes, not ejecting first) can cause directory damage to the disk. Do a +Repair Disk+ (not permissions) on your TM drive, via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
Depending on your drive, one or more of the following may help:
Un-check the +Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...+ option of System Preferences > Energy Saver.
See if it has an auto-sleep or "spin down" mode you can disable.
Check with the maker to see if there's a firmware upgrade for your model.

Windows 8.1 external hard drive disconnecting

Have this problem on two late 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina (full spec) and late 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina (also full spec), all now running Windows 8.1 Pro with the latest update.   Two machines were clean installs into new bootcamp partitions and one was an in-place update to an existing Windows 8.0 Pro install.
Issue Description
Updated bootcamp from Windows 8.0 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro through the MS store last night.    Made sure to download the new, correct Bootcamp drivers for the 2012 Macbook (the drivers are different between the 2012 and 2013 models).
External USB drives now disconnect every 10-15 minutes.
I am using the High Performance power plan and in USB settings disabled USB selective suspend.   In Device Manager under USB Serial Bus Controllers double-clicked all USB root hubs and cleared the checkbox on the Power Management tab (so the computer is not allowed to turn off the device to save power).
Also tried removing the Quick Removal policy on the attached drive but Windows still disconnected the drive, even though a Windows Explorer window was open showing the root contents of the idle drive.
Contacted MS support and they won't support Windows on a bootcamp partition.
Out of ideas based on internet searching, sounds like it might be a driver issue in Bootcamp.
Installing KeepAliveHD from Codeplex to write a file to the external drives as a workround to the problem.

The issue appears to have been the StarTech USB 3.0 to 2." SATA enclosure with encryption.   (I say "appears" because anybody familiar with Murphy's Law knows that these drives will eventually disconnect once I click <Add Reply> to this thread. <g>)
The WD 4TB MyBook drives stayed connected for the entire weekend without issues.   A bare metal Samsung 840PRO SSD connected with a USB 3.0 to SATA 6G cable also had no problems.
To fix the problem I had to lookup the hardware ID of the device in Device Manager (the VID and the PID) and then create a new key under USBSTOR under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.   For the new key I added a new 32-bit DWORD with a value of 400 (hex).   Disconnected and reconnected the drive and it hasn't disconnected since. Solution worked on all MBPr machines.
Interestingly there is a blog on MSDN that suggests the above-noted fix should not be required subsequent to a Windows update that was pushed on April 8, 2014 (all of our machines were fully-up-to date as of last Friday April 25, 2014 and they did need the fix).
The required registry key for the above-noted device enclosure (mfg PN S2510BU3PW) is 04C52028.

HELP: WD External Hard drive disconnecting by itself after Maverick OSX update.

Hello!
I just finished updating my OSX from Mountain Lion 10.8 to Maverick 10.9
I am using 15 inch Macbook Pro late 2011 processor is i7 and 4GB memory.
Before on ML I'm rarely or never expirience this where my external drive is disconnecting
by itself. I am using USB hub (10 ports) I have 2 HD's both are 1TB and on that usb port
my cooling pad is also connected as well the data plug for iphone. My USB port has another
power cable which is also in use.
Now I have three questions
1) Do you think that one of my HD has an issue? because this is the only one
that is disconnecting by it self? when I unplug and plug it back it shows to Utility Disk
but it is not mounting. I manage to restore it by clicking the repair button several time
but it keeps disconnecting by itself and I am not comfortable on doing this time to time.
2) Do you think updating to Maverick is one of the reason why this is happening?
3) What solution i can do to solve this issue.
Thank you in advance.

Hi to All
It seems my issue is already solved I didn't expirience any auto ejecting anymore after I formated my 1TB using the Disk Utility. I already bring back the files that I removed before from my 1TB and so far its all good.
Another tip is if you will plug your external HD's to a usb port give a one interval slot because if you do there's a possibility that it may auto eject again, this happen to me since updating to Maverick but in Mountain Lion maybe it happen to be once or thrice maybe because of bad ejecting that i've done to my 1TB.
This all is as per my intuition, observation and pure guts but now im good and my usb's are not auto ejecting anymore from the day I'd format it to disk utility using erase (of course in exfat format) until now. I wish this will help others too...
Have a nice day!

External Hard Drive problems with iTunes and iPod

I recently purchased a 320 gig external hard drive for my computer, hoping in part to load my iTunes library onto it. Obviously I'd have much more room on disc than my actual iPod, so I was going to manually manage my music (an option I didn't have selected on my iPod before).
I followed all the online help topics which have all been helpful so far. I organized my music files, changed my directory, consolidated my library, and now everything is on the external hard drive and is working just fine.
The problem comes when I connect my iPod. iTunes barely even seems to recognize my iPod all of a sudden, saying that it has been corrupted and needs to be restored. When I try restoring it, nothing happens, and I can't seem to do a thing about it through iTunes. Of course, there's actually nothing wrong with the iPod at all, since it still works fine and plays music exactly the same as before. It simply won't update or do anything at all when hooked up to my computer.
I know this has something to do with the new hard drive, since everything was just fine a few hours ago, I just can't figure out why I can't get my iPod to sync all of a sudden. Like I said, my iPod is working fine otherwise, iTunes is playing music through the external hard drive without any issues, and I haven't touched any files other than music files (I haven't even deleted them off my original hard drive yet, so all the original fines remain unchanged, even though I switched the directory).
To the best of my knowledge, all my software is up to date, and the iPod is a 30 gig photo. Any ideas?
pc Windows XP

Yeah, I gave the new drive the letter Z, so there shouldn't have been any conflicts there. I also tried your other suggestion, and while the computer recognized my external hard drive, it didn't seem to make any difference once I plugged in the iPod again.
I've been wrestling with this for days now. I've tried changing the drive letters for both the external hard drive and my iPod several times (but no matter what, the iPod always seems to take F when it's unplugged and then plugged back in). I've tried restoring the iPod on multiple occasions. I've tried reinstalling all my USB drivers. I've consolidated my music library on several occasions (I now have two identical libraries on my external hard drive), yet annoyingly, iTunes seems to keep switching file paths away from the external hard drive and back to their original locations on the C drive. I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space, not house 30 gigs of media on it. That's what this new external hard drive is for.
Somehow, I was able to get them both to be recognized at the same time, but it never lasts long. I'll start iTunes with the external hard drive disconnected, plug in my iPod, wait for the iPod screen to come up in iTunes, then plug my external hard drive back in. Then, I can miraculously start to transfer music back onto my iPod, but iTunes doesn't seem to want this to happen for some reason, and will usually cut off the transfer. So far I've managed to put three whole songs on my iPod.
So now I'm trying to do two things. One, the same as before, get my computer and iTunes to recognize both my iPod and my external hard dive at the same time. And two, get iTunes to stop changing the file paths back to the C drive. These files are already on my external hard drive and don't need to change.
(As a side note, I should comment on how helpful people are on this discussion board. The Apple representitives I called on several occasions seemed totally unwilling to help, acting more like pushy salesmen than anything, while people here seem to be much more friendly and knowledgeable. Just thought it needed to be said.)
pc Windows XP

External Hard Drive for large itune library

Every time I click a song I have to "locate." Is there any way to have resolve that in one step without having to do it on each song?
TRacy

How do I do it?
My external hard drive is connected to one computer. It gets turned on first. Then the other two. They are connected by a LAN. I have the external hard drive set to mount on the other two at startup. Now the external hard drive is connected to all three at the same time. iTunes on all three point to it, but the Library.xml file for each computer is on it's own startup disc. Only the music files are shared.
If you are happy with the location of your files and you don't care about playlists and play count etc., open iTunes WITH THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE DISCONNECTED and delete everything in the library and close iTunes. Them turn on and mount the external hard drive, open iTunes and do File/Add To Library and point to the external hard drive.
Moving the files by hand instead of letting iTunes do it in the first place is one reason iTunes can't locate them now.

Can I disconnect the external hard drive even if Time Machine is set to back up every so often?

I noticed that Time Machine backs up the system ever so often. What happens if I disconnect the external hard drive I'm using as the back up and Time Machine tries to initiate a back up? Will it corrupt anything?

As long as you properly eject the drive before unplugging it, TM will detect that is no longer mounted and will not do anything until you plug it back and OS X mounts the drive again.
TM was designed with the knowledge in mind that many people would be using it with laptops, and thus inherently unplugging and plugginh in their TM backup devices many times.

How can I edit lightroom 5 smart previews on mac book pro (mbp) when the lightroom 5 master image files are on my external hard drive is disconnected from the mbp

How can I edit lightroom 5 smart previews on mac book pro (mbp) when the lightroom 5 master image files are on my external hard drive is disconnected from the mbp? So far when I try to disconnect the external HD from the mbp, I get the following pop up window: The disk "external hard drive A" couldn't be ejected because "Lightroom" is using it. Quit that application and try to eject this disk again. When I do that and restart Lightroom 5, the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Select Catalog screen pops up but doesn't list my external hard drive A as a choice.
I've reviewed Adobe's Lightroom Help | Smart Previews Lightroom 5 web page and still haven't been able to figure what I'm doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Your internal HDD. by default, is named 'Macintosh HD'. From what information you supplied, it looks like there is already a Lightroom catalog installed on you local (internal) HDD using the standard naming convention Adobe uses as well as a Lightroom catalog on your external drive which you created. To be sure of which catalog Lightroom is loading when it starts up, To do this, start Lightroom as you normally would. After it starts, select the Lightroom menu item, then select the Catalog Preferences item and finally, navigate to the General tab. The Location information will tell you exactly what catalog Lightroom is opening by default. This will likely be the Photography Mac Book Pro Versions catalog on your external HDD. Once that is confirmed, you are ready to proceed. As an additional test/verification, you can shut down Lightroom and, this time, start Lightroom while holding down the ALT/OPTION key. This will cause Lightroom to pause and display a screen which will allow you to chose a different catalog to open. Navigate to the /Users/[user name]/Pictures/Lightroom folder and select the Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat file. When Lightroom comes up, there should be no previews or folders as this catalog should be empty. Now you can be certain which catalog is being used and which catalog has all your data and you are ready to migrate your current catalog. Shut down Lightroom.
To migrate your current catalog, use Finder to locate your Photography Mac Book Pro Versions folder on your external drive. Select the folder and select COPY from the context menu. Next, use Finder to navigate to the /Users/[user name]/Pictures/Lightroom folder on you internal HDD. You can start at the Macintosh HD level and work your way down by opening each level (Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures). Select the /Pictures folder and then select PASTE... from the context menu. When the COPY/PASTE is complete, you should see the following files on the Macintosh HD:
Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures/Lightroom/ and
Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures/Photography Mac Book Pro Versions
The Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures/Lightroom folder will contain the empty default catalog the Adobe created when Lightroom was installed and Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures/Photography Mac Book Pro Versions will contain a copy of the catalog you created on your external HDD.
You are almost done now. Make sure your external drive is still attached for this step. Restart Lightroom using the ALT/OPTION key again. When the Select Catalog screen appears, select the Choose a Different Catalog button (lower left side). When you do, a Finder window will open to allow you to navigate to a catalog of your choosing. Navigate to Macintosh HD/Users/[user name]/Pictures/Photography Mac Book Pro Versions and select the file Photography Mac Book Pro Version.lrcat. This is the copy you just created. Select the Open button and Lightroom should start. You should see all of your previews and settings just as before. Also, in the left hand panel, all of your folder should show up and none of them should be dimmed and none of your previews should display a small exclamation point badge. Either a dimmed folder name or an exclamation point badge indicates that Lightroom can't find the associated image file. If everything looks good, go to the Lightroom menu, select Preferences and then select the General tab. Under Default Catalog, select an option to either load the LAST catalog opened or select the Users/[user name]/Pictures/Photography Mac Book Pro Versions catalog from the drop down. Shut down Lightroom and then restart it normally. This time, when Lightroom starts, you should be viewing the new copy of your catalog. You can confirm this by looking at the General tab on the Catalog Preferences screen (Lightroom/Catalog Preferences menu items). Shut down Lightroom once again and this time, eject your external drive before restarting. This time, your folders in the left hand panel will be dimmed but you should be able to work with your smart previews. If Lightroom should display a Select Catalog screen with the external drive detached, double check your settings as it indicates Lightroom is still looking at the copy of the catalog on the external drive rather than the new copy you made.
Finally, if you are seeing dimmed folders and/or exclamation point badges with the external drive attached, this indicates a problem. You can select any folder and select Update Folder Location from the context menu. This will allow you to navigate to the copy on the external drive and select it. Lightroom will then update the catalog (select to synchronize the content). This will not only clear the dimmed folder problem but also remove the exclamation point badges for all photos in that missing folder. However, it may indicate that not all went well with the copy of the catalog so make sure to verify all went well. You can use the Get Info option on the two folders. You should see the same number of files/folders for both the copy on the internal drive as well as on the external drive but you can't rely on the byte count because of the possibility of differences between the geometry of the two drives. Hope this all helps!

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

External hard drive keeps disconnecting and then reconnecting

External hard drive on Time Machine, running via USB keeps disconnecting. Get the pop us that the drive wasn't disconnected properly. This Mac is brand new as is the hard drive. It is a Seagate 1T Free Agent.
After a minute or two it reconnects. I've run Seagate diagnostics and it says the drive is fine.
Any suggestions?

See #A1 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for a handy widget that will display the backup messages from your logs.
See what that shows; there may be a problem with the backup, which results in TM ejecting the drive. If so, the disconnect may be a symptom, not a cause. If so, see #C2 there. If not, or if you're not sure, copy and post them here.
Also, to rule out other USB problems, disconnect everything but keyboard and mouse; connect the drive directly to your Mac (no hub).
Make sure all connections are snug and secure.
Try other ports, cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another one, and throw intermittent errors).

When i run Time Machine to back up my computer onto an external hard drive, i have no way of knowing when the back up process has been completed. I don't know when it is safe to disconnect the external hard drive - which is store in a separate location.

When i run Time Machine to back up my computer on to an external hard drive, i have no way of knowing when the back up process has been completed. This is necessary to know because i don't leave my external hard drive connected to the computer. I routinely disconnect it after backing up the hard drive, and then i store the external hard drive in a different location from the computer. So, knowing when the back up process has been completed would be a very helpful thing to have the computer specify.

Just enable Time Machine's menu extra (System Preferences -> Time Machine -> Show Time Machine in menu bar.
This will add a little Time Machine icon to your menubar. When Time Machine is actively backing up your data, the icon will spin as a visual indicator. You can also click the menu icon to see the backup status, including how much data is left to back up.

My iphoto library (located on an external hard drive) was open when the hard drive was accidentally disconnected. We plugged it back in, but the library is frozen. Any suggestions on what I can do without corrupting/losing my iphoto library?

The cable to the external hard drive that houses my iphoto library was accidentally disconnected while the library was open and up on the screen. We plugged it back in, but now the screen is frozen. Has anyone experienced this before? If I force quit, will I corrupt and lose access to the library on the external hard drive?

Shutdown the Mac. Disconnect and power off the external drive (if it has its own power supply). Reconnect the external drive and power on (if applicable). Boot Mac. If the external drive is not reading properly, open Disk Utility, select external drive, run Repair Disk.

External hard drive disconnected

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