External Hard Drive Mounting Issues

Hi everybody!
Problem:
My G Technologies external hard drive mounts inconsistently since the Pro Tools session I was working on today crashed. When it does manage to mount my Trash Bin on the dock fills up with trash automatically and this trash cannot be emptied.
In addition I have been unable to even open up my external hard drive on the desktop once it has mounted--I get the infinite pinwheel of death! If it does open, I'll eventually get to a folder that upon opening also brings up the pinwheel of death. Each time this happens I am forced to manually shut down my computer. Any suggestions? You help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you in advance.
I'm using a MacBook Pro with OSX 10.4.11 and it has a Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The ports I'm using with the external hard drive is Firewire 800.

Try booting in safe mode and emptying the trash. Try doing a Finder - Secure Empty Trash deletion....
I believe your problems are related to large files that were marked for deletion not being deleted...

Similar Messages

  • After installing Mountain Lion doesn't external hard drives mount or stay mounted. Anybody else with this major problem?

    After installing Mountain Lion doesn't external hard drives mount or stay mounted.
    I have tried resetting my Mac's PRAM but the problem still remains.
    Even USB memory sticks are unmounted efter a few seconds.
    Anybody else with this major problem?

    I have the same problem, although mine has not been solved by ESET update, finder settings, PRAM & SMC resets or anything else.
    Don't get it, my external hard drive still works on both my housemates computers - one macbook pro (with snow leopard) and one dell, just not on mine with mountain lion.
    Any ideas for me guys?

  • TS1550 Do external hard drives mounted on my Mac get backed up by time machine on a time capsule wireless Apple external back up disk? How can I see what folders have been actually stored in the wireless back up disk?

    Do external hard drives mounted on my Mac get backed up by time machine on a time capsule wireless apple external hard disk? How can I see what folders have been actually backed up in the external wireless disk? any help would be appreciated

    They can provided you remove them from the Exclude list. Normally, Time Machine does not automatically backup external drives.

  • External Hard Drive mounts, but can't be selected or opened

    I have a 1 TB Western Digital external hard drive. When I plug it into the Firewire 800 port of my 13" Unibody MacBook Pro (running Snow Leopard), the drive shows up on my desktop and in Finder windows, but when I try to access the drive, or "select" it, I get the message "The alias "[name of drive]" can't be opened because the original item can't be found". If I select the fix it option, it gives me a finder window to identify the item to which I want it to refer (the hard drive), but when I select the hard drive in this window I get the same message. I've used Disk Utility to verify the disk and it says that it is fine. Also, I have two other external drives, a smaller WD drive and a smaller Seagate, and they both mount and are accessible. Any thoughts?

    having the same issue with a mounting a hard drive that drovers is. any solutions? funny thing as that the drive will mount on a G5 running 10.5.8. have spent several hours on the phone with apple help to no avail. final suggestion was to wipe drive and reformat. cant't do this as I do not have enough space to back-up to. Would appreciate any suggestions.

  • External Hard Drive Sync Issue with Deletion

    So I recently set up my external hard drive to be my main music folder. The external HD runs continuously on my Mac Pro desktop. I've set it up so the external HD is mounted remotely on my laptop, so I can get all my itunes music without having to physically connect to the drive. I've set it up and everything loaded in, works fine. . . .
    But then I tried to delete some files using itunes. It deleted them from my itunes library alright. But they did not delete from the external HD. Furthermore, it did not even prompt me to "keep files" or "delete from library".
    I then ran an test. Could i change ID3 tags? Maybe I didn't have write permission or something. Nope, I was able to change ID3 tags just fine.
    Does anybody know a way to make this work? Why it doesn't prompt me to "delete" my files?
    Thanks.

    is there perhaps a problem with permissions? does this problem happen whether you're using either computer or only with the laptop? maybe the laptop only has permission to delete songs from its local database and but not to delete the tracks from the shared master music folder.
    i use a wireless external drive for my music too. though i've never had your problem, i have experienced something similar. if i delete a track via Finder then open iTunes, it still thinks the track is there. so if i then delete it in iTunes, it doesn't ask me if i want to keep the files or not, it only removes it from the iTunes library. in other words, i don't get prompted to keep or delete tracks if the track is already gone from the hard drive but still in the iTunes database. i haven't tried changing the tags in that scenario however.

  • Macbook won't recognize external Hard Drive and issues with Time Machine

    Hello everyone,
    I have just bought a new Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion and I am currently having problems with Time Machine.
    The issue begun in Snow Leopard: Time Machine was taking too long to backup, and would often not finish the backup because the external hard drive would be unwillingly ejected.
    Now with Mountain Lion I have reformated the drive (Mac OS Journaled) and about a third of the way through had the same issue: the drive was ejected before the backup could be finished. I restarted the machine and it happened again. However, now the computer won't even recognize the external drive when I plug it in. I have also tried to power off/on the drive itself to no progress.
    I have tested the USB port with another drive and the port is fine. I have also tested the usb cable and it is fine. And Disk Utility does not recognize the drive (even when I try the >diskutil list command in terminal).
    Now, I can hear the drive humming normally when I turn it on, and it is not usb-powered (my electricity current does fluctuate).
    Could the interrupted backup procedures have damaged the drive? And if so, wouldn't the computer recognize it anyway?
    It is a 4 year old WD 1 TB that is used exclusively for TM and has never left the house.
    Thank you for your time reading this and let me know if you need any more information that could help out.
    Cheers!

    From your description, I'd suspect a failing drive. Maybe time for a new external, especially as you've already re-formatted and it's still playing up.
    I had a similar problem with one of my clone backups a few weeks ago - it failed, I erased it, re-cloned, worked a couple of times and then it failed again. Disk Utility didn't throw up any errors after re-formatting. I guess all disks die at some point.

  • [Solved] External Hard Drive mount point in fstab crashes launch

    Hi there,
    I have an external hard drive that I'd like to automount when I plug it in. Sometimes it seems to work, but other times I have to manually mount it. In order to make this a little easier, I copied the mounting info into my fstab file so that I could just run:
    mount /dir/to/mount
    However, now I can't actually boot up my machine unless the external drive is plugged in. I get some error from systemctrl saying one of the drives couldn't be loaded. 
    An obvious work around would be to write a one line script that mounts the drive for me, however, I'd like to learn how to do this correctly. I think the rules have changed a bit with systemd, as I didn't have this problem a few years ago. 
    Thanks for the help!
    Last edited by B-80 (2015-05-17 08:14:08)

    B-80 wrote:
    Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
    Add "nofail" to the options section.
    EDIT: ...in /etc/fstab
    Thanks for the answer, that fixed it.
    You're welcome but I think Mr.Elendig's post gives the actual solution (my proposal is just a workaround -- using fstab for a filesystem that is not permanently attached is sub-optimal)

  • External Hard Drive Mounts & Finder Quits

    Upon updating this new iMac to 10.5.2 everything went well until I plugged in a particular LaCie external hard drive. Then the finder and desktop disappeared. Using Disk Utility to unmount the hard drive restored the desktop and finder. Remounting it causes the finder again to disappear. I first updated from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 via the computer's software updater. I tried running the combo update with no improvement. Another, older, external LaCie hard drive works perfectly fine. I am able to back up files to the suspicious hard drive using Retrospect and I can view files on it from an "open" or "save" menu from an application like Word. And I can open and save files, including to the desktop. But with the drive mounted there is nothing on the desktop.
    Is there an obvious way to correct this or is it something that Apple needs to fix, or LaCie?

    Is that Lacie drive the one you've setup as your Time Machine backup drive? If so, go into System Preferences->Time Machine and select "Change Disk". In the sheet that appears, click the "None" entry and then click the "Stop Backing Up" button. That should fix it. You can then re-set that drive as the Time Machine volume if you want. Good luck...

  • External hard drive mounted as Zero KB available?

    Hi, when I plug in my USB external hard drive Tiger will mount the disk as having zero kb available. Under the disk utility it shows the hard drive nave 20+ GB free space. the hard drive works well in other operating systems. I have a MAC BOOK. Any suggestion what might have caused this?

    Hi, and a warm welcome to the Forums!
    What size drive is it?
    What format is it? DU, highlight it, then the Info button.

  • External Hard drive connection issue

    I'm using Mac G5, FCP 5.0.
    I bought a La Cie external hard drive, and transfered all the files which relate to this feature length project. It opens and works well, but every time when I open the project on FCP, it starts searching maybe 30 files, and I have to wait about 7 minutes.(It's not the one which is in a big gray window and ask you if you want to reconnect. It is a small white box, and it says "it is searching"file name"", and it actually finds the files automatically) Is it normal? Or did I do somthing wrong when I transfered the files?
    If there is someone who knows how to solve this problem, please teach me how.
    Thank you very very much in advance.
    Kiki

    Select the drive on the desktop and type cmd+i. This opens a window that reports the formatting of the drive. If it's msdos you need to reformat it Mac OS Extended with Apple's Drive Utility found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. You'll lose all of the files, but it will actually work right.
    Jerry

  • Why won't my external hard drive mount?

    Hi
    I am having problems getting my new iMac to recognise an external hard drive.  It is a 40gb Western Digital hard drive that I copied over photos and music from my old computer (not an Apple) on.  When I plug it in to the USD port it recognises the hard drive but then drops it after about 2 minutes and then it won't recognise it again until I restart the computer at which point it recognises it again for 2 minutes.
    The hard drive work's fine on my Thinkpad and my Dell desktop.
    Can anyone help?
    Thanks.

    It doesn't make sense.
    Anyway, I found the solutions. Download software for solving this problem.
    Here is the link:
    http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g

  • IPhoto External Hard Drive Backup Issues

    Hi All,
    I'm have trouble with iPhoto on my iMac G5.
    I'm running out of space on my hard drive so I want to permanently move my iphoto library over to my external Lacie hard drive. I've created a copy of the iPhoto library on the external hard drive, but it does not update automatically when I add new photos, and ultimately I want to move the entire iPhoto libray over to this drive to save space on my iMac.
    Any ideas on how to do this?
    Thanks in advance
    Sky

    Sky:
    Welcome to the Apple Discussions. What you need to do is launch iPhoto with the Option key depressed and, when asked, opt to locate your library. Then navigate to the library on the external and select it.
    If you have photos in your old library that you want to copy to the external library either drag the appropriate roll folder in the Originals folder into the open iPhoto window to import those files or use iPhoto Library Manager to cpy the rolls from the old library to the new one like this. This way you can retain any keywords or comments you've added to those files. When you're satisfied that your external library has all of the photos you can delete the one on your boot drive.
    Do you Twango?
    TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
    I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

  • External hard drive corruption issues

    Hey folks. Really not sure what the best place would be for my question, but I'll try here.
    I have a 4 year old LaCie external HD with a 160GB capacity. It stores my iPhoto and iTunes libraries for my iBook, along with a few other bits and pieces.
    About a year ago, I noticed some of my files were corrupted and couldn't be played. Whenever I tried to open one of those files, the drive would start knocking and whatever program was trying to access the file would need to be Force Quit. Hoping to solve the issue, I moved the data,(or course, getting stuck on corrupted files along the way) erased and reformatted the drive and moved the data back. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem.
    I have the data backed up on another, newer external drive, but I'm wondering if there's a way to isolate the bad sectors in the old drive so they can't be written to anymore? Should I use Disk Utility and repair the disk?
    I know the drive's old and could fail at any time, but I'd like to keep using it as long as possible. Also, when it does finally fail, could I just purchase another hard drive and place it in the enclosure? I suppose I should also note that the FireWire 400 ports don't work on the enclosure. I'm sure it's not a defect, as I accidentally dropped the drive shortly after I'd purchased it. That fall is probably the cause of the corruptions as well =/
    The USB port works fine and I haven't been able to test the FireWire 800.
    Thanks for any advice y'all have!
    ~Lyssa

    Your drive sounds very sick. I am not sure how likely it is but I would be concerned about your OS becoming seriously corrupted and possibly unbootable as a result of continuing to use this bad external drive.
    It would be better if you could test it connected to a non-critical computer.
    Do you know the drive specification? - not the make of the box.
    Many drives self-repair and also communicate likely future difficulties to the OS but eventually you come to the end of this process.
    I am not sure if disk utilities any longer map out bad sectors. Years ago I used a mounting screw that was too long and damaged the magnetic surface. In those days you could manually map out the bad sectors. I then put partitions each side of the mapped out sectors and continued to use the drive for many years.
    More recently I had a drive with an intermittent power connection. However even after repairing this and reformatting the drive was never very reliable.
    Good drives are relatively inexpensive. You could try a new drive in your box. I always advise buying server quality drives normally identified by a 5 year guarantee. I prefer Western Digital but Seagate also make reliable drives.

  • Why won't my external hard drive mount in Disk Utility even when it shows up on the list?

    Hey all,
    For the last few years I've used a Samsung S2 1TB external harddrive to back up all my files, this includes photos, music and a vast amount of resources required for Uni. However I plugged it in for the first time in about two months and discovered that neither my Macbook Pro (late 2011) or my Mac Mini (early 2013) are able to mount the hard drive.
    It shows up in Disk Utilty however the harddrive is greyed out and when I manually try to mount it I get an error message saying that it can't be mounted and to use the first aid 'Repair disk permissions' feature which would be all good and well were that not also greyed out.
    I've read a fair amount on this forum that suggest that Mavericks has caused quite an issue with harddrives and although I don't know for sure, the harddrive did stop working at a very similar time to when I updated. I've sinced used the basic version of 'Disk Drill' on the harddrive and all the files show up perfectly which leads me to believe that perhaps the issue isn't with the harddrive itself but perhaps a compatibility issue.
    I was just wondering whether anyone had any advice or had suffered a similiar issue, preferably in relation to the Samsung S2 harddrive. The partition type is a Windows_FAT_32 and it's a USB hard drive.
    Thanks in advance!

    Because there's a problem with the disk's directory structure; these are often the result of improperly unplugging drives or forcing a computer to shut down. Proceed as instructed, or try using a more powerful utility such as DiskWarrior to repair it.
    (111975)

  • External hard drive sleep issue

    My external drive contains my share folder for DC++.
    If I leave my computer on when I'm gone, my DC++ shows my share as 0 after a while.
    The hard drive seems to unmount after a while, maybe because the enclose sleeps the drive after a while.
    Is there any way to fix this?

    hdparm cannot read or set anything, a communication error always occurs.
    Also dmesg records some errors on the moment I try to read something from drive and it goes off (always after some period of inactivity) and also logs when it's then detected (some seconds after) and mounted correctly.
    EDIT: dmesg output
    usb 1-3: USB disconnect, address 41
    sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
    sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x07 driverbyte=0x00
    end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 163055695
    sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
    sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
    end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 163055695
    usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 42
    usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
    scsi14 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
    usb-storage: device found at 42
    usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
    input: Western Digital External HDD as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.1/input/input23
    generic-usb 0003:1058:0705.000F: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Device [Western Digital External HDD ] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-3/input1
    scsi 14:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD 2500BMV External 1.75 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
    sd 14:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
    usb-storage: device scan complete
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    sdb: sdb1
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
    EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
    Last edited by Vieira (2009-12-16 02:51:43)

Maybe you are looking for