External Hard drive was working, now "Original Item..Can't be found"

I have a Air Port Extreme and an iMac and two Laptops in my Household. We also have a External Hardrive connected to the Extreme that we can all access. However one of the Laps tops suddenly stopped accessing the hard drive. It is listed in the Finder, but when we click on it it gives us the following message..."The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “PASSPORT” can’t be found." (Passport being the name of the Hardrive). Any ideas what is happening here? The other computers are working just fine.

Well maybe you can directly connect to that hard drive and use /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility on it and see if can do the Repairs on that disk. The hard disk might be going a little or get a bad block so Disk Utility might be able to repair it.

Similar Messages

My external hard drive is working fine but I can't see any of the files

I've been using a goflex external hard drive to store photos for a little over a year. It has been connected to my Mac desktop for about three months and it is still working but now when I try and view it or any of the files nothing shows up. I can still edit and manipulate files through apps like aperature, but I have no access to those photos? Is there any trick to being able to view these files again?

Attach the HDD to your MBP and open Disk Utility. Take screen shots of of the HDD and the volume. Please note the differences. View the examples from mine:
Ciao.

I was trying to move my photos from the iPhoto library to an external hard drive. I now have a desktop display of thousands of cascading photos. How do I remove them from my desktop screen?

I was trying to move my photos from the iPhoto library to an external hard drive. I now have a desktop display of thousands of cascading photos. How do I remove them from my desktop screen?

Strangely enough we can not see you so it really helps if you share with use exactly what you have, exactly what you did and details about the problem
what version of iPhoto and of the OS? What exact steps did you do? where are you seeing these "thousands of cascading photos" now and using what software and what exactly did you want to accomplish
The correct way to move your iphoto library to an external drive is to verify the drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journal) and then drag the iphotl library intact as a single entity to is
The correct way to move some or all of your photos is to select them in iphoto and export 9file menu ==> export -- https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921 ) to the external drive
LN

Please help! The alias can't be opened because the original item can't be found. Portable Hard Drive, Macbook, OS 10.7

Hi folks,
Desperate for some help!
I have a very cluttered, slow Macbook Pro running 10.7.5. Bought a 2TB WD My Passport for Mac (2TB) with the intention of transferring my many, many files and folders over to it, to increase my memory and boost the performance of my Macbook. (Also handy to have files on the go).sktop
I transferred everything (all files off desktop, documents, photos etc) using drag and drop.
Then I trashed all the files, but did NOT empty Trash because I wanted to check the process had worked
Now, when I plug in my hard drive, and open it up, all my files and folders are there, but with little arrows on the bottom left of the file/folder. When I go to open any one of them, I get this message:
"The alias “X” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found."
I don't know what to do. Is this because of the way I dragged and dropped the files? I'm guessing so. Or is it because I still have the items in my Trash? (I'm obviously petrified of emptying the Trash now though) Is it because of my OS?
Apologies, I'm a novice to this (hence why my 4 year old mbp is running so slowly; it's got 4 year's worth of work on it, and now I obviously don't even know how to transfer files properly to an external HD) but I'd really be ever so grateful for your help. I just want to successfully back up my files to this HD so my mpb runs faster. I'm now terrified I've corrupted my files. I don't even understand what an Alias is.
Would love to hear from you! I'm totally new to these forums so hope I've posted right! Thanks!

sibby22 wrote:
...Now, when I plug in my hard drive, and open it up, all my files and folders are there, but with little arrows on the bottom left of the file/folder. When I go to open any one of them, I get this message:
"The alias “X” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found."
It sounds like what got created on your external is a collection of aliases which point to the original files and folders but aren't actually copies of the files and folders themselves. The original items have been moved to the trash so even if they could be found, they couldn't be opened. As a test, pick a file (not a folder) on the external that should be large and see what size it actually is (Get Info). Aliases are smaller so you can tell the difference apart from that little arrow (the Get Info box will also identify the file as an alias). Dragging the files to the external should have automatically created copies rather than aliases unless you held down the Command and Option keys while dragging.
In any case, you were wise not to empty the trash; to be safe get those important files back out of the Trash so you can start over. But this time, try moving a few at a time and let us know what happens.

LR is not able to pull up my photos. I have checked and the external hard drive is working but none of the thousands of photos are showing up. What can I do to get LR to recognize and pull up my photos.

LR is not abel to pull up my photos. There is the explanation mark on all the photos meaning that LR can not find them. The external hard drive is working. I have even changed the usb cord to see if that was the problem. I have been able to pull up the photos individually off of the external hard drive so that is working.

Yes, yes, yes! I do recall that I changed the drive letter but it did not register on the Finder so I had forgotten about it. Now it works and LR is now able to read the drive. Thank you sooooooo much. BTW, dealing with Adobe on this product is exceptionally frustrating since you can't talk to a human being on the phone. Rick, Can't thank you enough for pointing me in the right direction.

Problems getting an external hard drive to work on the new Airport Extreme

I have spent hours trying to get my 320GB external hard drive to work with the new airport extreme 802.11N. I have spent hours pouring over all of the posts here discussing possible solutions, all of which have not worked. This morning, however, I gave it another try and FINALLY, I have it working. I tried something simple. Here it is:
Using the Apple Disk Utility Program, I formated my drive using the MS-DOS mode, called my Hard drive "ItunesHD". It took about 20 minutes to complete (i'm assuming because of the size of the drive). I then unplugged the router and hard drive, turned on the hard drive, then the router. After my macbook pro reconnected, I clicked on the iDisk utility icon in my menu bar, provided my password and FINALLY saw the network drive icon on my desktop!!! It seems that formatting my drive using MS-DOS compatibility mode finally worked for me. I'm not saying this will work for anyone else who is having this problem, but you can at least try it. I tried all of the MAC formatting options and have had no luck.
What I would like to know now is (..if anyone has these answers, please let me know):
1. What is the maximum SINGLE drive capacity that this router will understand...500GB, 1TB, 2TB? I would like to get the biggest bang for my buck.
2. Keeping #1 one in mind, I purchased an Apple TV (still waiting on it to arrive) and I would like to know if it will read multiple hard drives connected to the Airport Extreme router (...say (2) 500GB hard drives). I know you can have multiple libraries in iTunes (which to me is a cheesy solutions, there should be an option in the preferences that would allow you to save your music in one place and your movies in another). Anybody have any idea on this one?
I basically want to rip all of my dvd movies on a big hard drive connected to my airport extreme to use with my AppleTV , so I just need to find out about the maximum size and hooking up more than one hard drive and getting the AppleTV to recognize them all.
thnks
MacBook Pro Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Sorry you had so much trouble hooking up a hard drive to the base station. I've done some experimenting with the feature and this is what I've found out.
You can use either the native Mac format, Mac OS Extended, or the Microsoft format known as FAT. Apple calls FAT, MS-DOS File System in Disk Utility.
If you use Mac OS Extended, the Macs on the network will be able to connect to the drive using the native AFP (Apple File Protocol) or the Microsoft native SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. PCs will only use the SMB protocol of course.
If you use MS-DOS File System both the Macs and the PCs will only use SMB to connect to the drive over the network.
Basically I've found everything works as expected with regard to volumes connected to a network.
One thing I don't have installed is the iDisk Utility. I'm wondering if it may be the cause of the problems you were having. But reading through your post it may also be the difference between expected behaviour and the proper procedure for discovering and mounting network volumes. Let me explain.
You only mention having trouble getting the drive to show up on your Desktop, you didn't describe how you went about discovering the network drive. It isn't just suppose to show up on your desktop when you plug it in to the Extreme base station. It doesn't work like the iDisk or disks connected directly to your computer using USB/Firewire.
Normally with network drives you're suppose to either browse for them using the Network icon in the Finder or using the Connect to Server command in the Finder's Go menu, you would type the address in directly for the network volume you want to mount. Try it and see what happens.
Now to answer your other questions.
I don't have a volume large enough to hit any limits the base station may have but I did read a post about someone who said they had a 1.5 TB volume connected and could only see 1 TB of it. They were forced to partition the drive to see all available space and of course the volumes showed up as two separate drives. One thing wasn't made clear though. They didn't say what volume format they were using to format the drive, Mac OS Extended or MS-DOS.
Everything having to do with the AppleTV is just speculation at this point since no one has one yet but from what has been demonstrated so far, AppleTV relies on iTunes. In other words, it won't pull data from network volumes on its own, a computer running iTunes needs to feed it.

I perviously transfered all my iTunes music to an external hard drive. But now when I connect the external hard drive and try to play a song, I get an error message saying that I need to "locate" my music. I don't how to find it on my external hard drive.

I perviously transfered all my iTunes music to an external hard drive. But now when I connect the external hard drive and try to play a song, I get an error message saying that I need to "locate" my music. I don't how to find it on my external hard drive. Please help for I am not that computer savy and don't want to mess anything up.
Thanks!

I called Apple Support and they walked me through it. They told me to basically copy and paste my music to the external hard drive. (I think.) Or maybe it was they had me transfer a folder to the EHD. I don't exactally remember it was a few years back. But I tried to plug in the EHD before starting and...nothing. Still says same thing, "locate file."

After upgrading to osx 10.9.3, my external hard drive was not able to mount, but it can be mounted without issue in osx 10.6, how do I solve it? it was formatted by disk utility.

Hi
After upgrading to osx 10.9.3, my external hard drive was not able to mount, but it can be mounted without issue in osx 10.6, how do I solve it? it was formatted by disk utility.
Thanks
PT

From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter
and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.
If the drive has more than one interface (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, eSATA), try one of the other interfaces.
Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Start up in Recovery mode and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
Start up in Safe Mode and test.
Reset the NVRAM.
Reset the System Management Controller.
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

I have a Seagate Slim Portable 500 GB USB 3.0 external hard drive that worked great with my Macbook Pro 13" Retina but gets ejected and won't show files on any iMac.

I have a Seagate Slim Portable 500 GB USB 3.0 external hard drive that worked great with my Macbook Pro 13" Retina but gets ejected and won't show files on any iMac. My Macbook Pro and the two different iMacs I tried it on were all using Mountain Lion, so the only difference was the iMac versus Macbook Pro.

I just tried this, no luck...
I connected a different USB cable, still the same problem. Tried both cables with the problematic hard drive on two different computers, still the same problem.
At this point I assume I'll probably need professional help in saving the files, thanks for the assistance.

Thunderbolt 2 external hard drive not working with Macbook Pro (early 2011)

Hi,
I'm new to this forum and I hope you guys can help me with this:
I've recently bought an external hard drive that works on Thunderbolt 2 (LaCie d2 3TB). When I connect the new drive to my Macbook Pro through the thunderbolt port, the drive isn't recognized. However, the drive works fine through a USB connection.
I thought that Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 are compatible, however this doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it's because the OS X / driver / firmware version that I'm working on that is not updated? I work on an early 2011 Macbook Pro: OS X Version 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).
Thank you very much for your help!
Daniel

Hi danielsh6,
I recently bought the new Lacie Thunderbolt 2 D2 3TB and I had the same problem as you, i have a macbook pro early 2011, those support thunderbolt but many times there is a bug that doesn't let you connect any thunderbolt drives to your computer. The solution I found was installing this update:
Thunderbolt Firmware Update v1.0
Before doing this I would recommend you updating to mountain lion (not yosemite yet as there is still some glitches and more on preview's macbook pro's).
Hope this helped!
Forest

WD External Hard drive not working with new Macbook Pro

I have recently upgraded to a new Macbook Pro and when connecting a WD 1 TB Passport external hard drive, it doesn't appear on the MBP, but when I connect it to my old Macbook running 10.5.8, it appears normally. Is this a problem with formatting or an issue because it is USB 2.0...
Any help appreciated as I have a lot of data on the hard drive and would like to be able to use it with my new MBP.

I'm on Lion, with similar issues with two WD external HD. But what I found fixed the problem was to:
1. go to the manufacturer's website (in this case Western Digital),
2. locate my external HD, download the download.
For instance, I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities for Mac (for My Passport for Mac USB 3.0):
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=219&sid=157&lang=en
Install the downloaded app.
3. Plug in external (this part, I think is important) directly into your tower or laptop (as opposed to through a USB multi-plug extender). Possibly this is because you access more power?
[I'm trying to remember in which order everything happened. But I think at this point the external hard drive mounted]
4. Install the software that is found on the external HD (in my case, it was a brand new device, so that had never been installed).
5. Run "WD Drive Utilities" and run diagnostics.
6. Test to see if it holds. Unmount the External HD. Unplug. Replug in and see if it mounts.
Note: I have not yet tested to see if plugging in the external somewhere other than directly into the tower also works. But I think the main problem is getting it to mount the first time and installing the software. That's what I think.

When I'm travelling I import photos onto my laptop's external hard drive and work on the images using virtual copies to develop them. When I get home, I want to import all the photos together with the developed virtual copies fromt the laptop's external H

When I'm travelling I import photos onto my laptop's external hard drive and work on the images using virtual copies to develop them. When I get home, I want to import all the photos together with the developed virtual copies fromt the laptop's external HD into LR5 on my PC desktop. But if I use the import button in LR I only get the original photo, not the developed copies. What am I doing wrong?

Since your current editing workflow is based around Virtual Copies there are no actual files containing the edit data. Therefore, you'll need to use the 'Import from another catalog' option ( see File menu).

HT1386 I have a new computer. I have copied Itunes library from an external hard drive. Itunes now tells me I cannot sync with my Ipod as it thinks the 20gb on the computer are different to the 20gb on my Ipod touch! What have I done wrong? How can I fix

I have a new computer. I have copied Itunes library from an external hard drive. Itunes now tells me I cannot sync with my Ipod as it thinks the 20gb on the computer are different to the 20gb on my Ipod touch! What have I done wrong? How can I fix it? Alan

See:
Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities
Sync Your iOS Device with a New Computer Without Losing Data - How-To Geek

In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?

In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?
Thank you!

When you erased the disk did you select Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format option?

I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine) Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what?

I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine) Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what? I need to know what to highligh, what to click on.

hirogliffix,
take a look at this Apple page — in particular, the “Restoring data from Time Machine backups” section and its “Restoring your entire system from a backup” subsection.

External Hard drive was working, now "Original Item..Can't be found"

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