External USB & Firewire drives causing system to stall

Hi there,
I have zapped the PRAM and reset the system controller.
I have two external hard drives, one USB and one Firewire, connected directly to the computer. I run into the frequent problem where either (or both) of the hard drives are keeping the computer from switching users, although they do seem to allow the computer to fully boot. However, if I try to change users, it will not allow me to get to the login screen without shutting the hard drive off. We also run into problems where the hard drives stall the system... just causes the whole computer to lock up. Any ideas?
Thanks!

With a brand new iMac, make use of the free 90 day Apple support. In the US (800) APL-CARE (800-275-2273)

Similar Messages

External USB Hard Drive causes menu problem - menu items flash

Greetings:
I have a external USB hard drive (250 GB) that is partitioned into 3 hard drives. Two hard drives are formatted in MacOS standard and one is formatted in MacOS extended. I had to reformat the last drive in MacOS extended because the Macbook would not let me edit files on the drive.
The problem is that when I connect to the drives, the menu malfunctions (I cannot see the date and time and the menu items flash). Dismounting the drives solves the problem.
Do I need to reformat the hard drives? Or do I need a new USB drive?
Thank you.
EA

Hmm, someone else had a similar problem. Note the ":: Loading root filesystem module...-e" line. That "-e" shouldn't be there. It should be, instead, the module for the filesystem.
As a workaround for right now, you can add your filesystem module to the MODULES array, and remove the "filesystems" hook.
In that case, you'll probably want rootdelay=* to allow the drive some time to settle, and rootfstype=* to speed up filesystem detection while in kinit.
By the way, what filesystem do you have on that machine? Can you tell me what
/usr/lib/klibc/bin/fstype < /dev/sda1
outputs on a running system (you may need to be root, or add yourself to the "disk" group or something similar) - /dev/sda1 should be replaced if the usb drive is not sda1

Please Help! - Cannot Access Or See External USB/Firewire Drive

Can anyone help or advise me as I’m really at a loss as how to fix a problem I have with my external hard drive and OX 10.4.6.
I had just completed a fresh install of OS X on my PowerPC iMac G5 using the “Erase & Install” feature.
Everything had gone extremely well, all my applications and settings had been re-set as I normally have them (I made backups) and was able to access my external hard disk, which is a Maxtor OneTouch USB/FireWire 250 GB model.
I then setup a second account for my brother, which I setup as a “Standard” account.
When I then went to access some of the files on my external disk and tried to copy them over to my Desktop, it refused me permission and said that I had to ask the permission of the “Owner’ which it said was Steve (my Brother) which was strange because as I said his account was only setup as a standard account whereas I had an administrator account (and am the main user of the computer).
I went into the Steve's account and looked at the Permissions information using the “Get Info” dialogue box. This showed that the owner was indeed Steve, so I changed it to my Name (Andrew) went back to my account, and found could no longer see the external disk at all.
Returning to Steve’s account I checked the permissions again, and asked it to ignore permissions.
But now I cannot see or access the disk at all in either account, it just does not show up on the desktop or in the Finder Sidebar.
The strange thing is I can see it in “Disk Utility” but when I ask it to either verify or Repair the Disk permissions, it reports that they are all or OK and “no repairs were necessary”.
I have tried connecting the disk with both types of connection - USB2 and the Firewire drive, and the results are exactly the same, the drive is not visible on the Desktop or the Finder Sidebar, but is visible to Disk Utility.
The disk is formatted as a ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive
Can anyone please tell me how I can get my external disk to show on my computer again, as ALL my backup documents and programs are on the disk, and most of the data cannot be replaced.
Would doing a complete fresh install of the OS X operating system fix this as a last resort?
I hope someone can advise, as I really am desperate.
Thanks
Drusus
20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)
20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Yes, I didn't think it was very good either!
You are correct in I should have said "Repair Disk" - Verify Permissions is not available on the maxtor drive ( it is dimmed) in Repair Disk.
Until now, the drive has worked perfectly, and I did not install any of Maxtors software when I originally connected the drive to this system, I just formatted it as a Mac Extended and it worked great. It was only after the fresh Erase & Install - even then it worked fine. It was only when I created a new account that the problem started.
What I have done is get hold of a demo version of a program called "Mac Drive 6" which allows you to read any Mac formatted disk or drive on a Windows system, - fortunately i still have my Windows XP Pro system which I have also connected to my home network.
So for the next four days (the length of the demo) I can access all of my files on the disk and copy them to my Windows system.
This is really great because I have all my data and images back which were my biggest concern.
I thought I might get another drive anyhow, and when I have everything backed up on a new drive and on the Windows system, I can then reformat the Maxtor drive and start afresh with it.
Thanks for all your help anyhow.

Sleeping firewire drive causes system crash

I have a 320 GB external firewire seagate drive connected to my Dual Ghz Quicksilver G4. At least twice a day, when I try to access that drive, I experience a system crash, what I believe to be a kernal panic. I get a message telling me I need to shut my computer down and restart it. I am thinking this is not so good for my computer.
So, either the hard drive is the problem or it's the third party firewire card i have installed in one of my PCI slots. But here's the thing, other drives are connected to that card.
Would keeping the Seagate drive awake stop this from happening? It goes to sleep all the time. Have others experienced problems with the seagate drives? Should I stop using it?

Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the Discussions.
If you are seeing this message, that indicates a kernel panic.
There could be a problem with the FireWire drive or the card. If disconnecting the drive for a few days results in no additional panics, then it is the drive. For that, I'd contact Seagate. If not, the card becomes suspect. An examination of the panic log might prove helpful.
You can also try running Step 1 of the process specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ against the Seagate FireWire drive.
Checking the FireWire cables, trying different cables or ports, checking that the card is installed correctly, checking that you assembled the Seagate drive and enclosure correctly (sounds like you built the FW drive) are some other troubleshooting steps to consider. The FireWire enclosure itself may be defective.
See also my "Resolving Kernel Panics" FAQ. This FAQ includes step-by-step instructions for identifying and resolving some of the most common causes of kernel panics, including tips like those above.
My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein.
You maybe unable to prevent the FireWire drive from sleeping. Secondary hard drives (second internal, as well as external drives) may not respect the "Put the hard drive(s) to sleep when possible" option if de-selected. I discuss this particular issue in my "Spinning Beach Ball Of Death (SBBOD)" FAQ, specifically in the section entitled "SBBOD spins for 30-35 seconds. You may hear your hard drives spinning up."
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Changing external USB hard drive into a FireWire Drive???

I have been reading in some of the other discussions about how it is possible to change a USB external hard drive into a FireWire external hard drive. Is this true ??? I recently pruchased an external USB hard drive only to now find out that I cannot use it to boot from. Apparently OSX will only boot from a FireWire drive ??? Is there some way to change my current external USB hard drive into a FireWire compatible drive or do I have to purchase a FireWire drive ??? Thanks.

All I can remember was an internal USB/firewire hub (for PCs, by the way), I haven't seen external adapters like cables; but you may simply ask in your local computer store about.
Yes, you can boot only from firewire drives. I was told that it is possible the new Intel Macs are able to boot from USB drives, but haven't had the time to verify this so far.
A possible solution may be to remove the harddisk from the USB enclosure and put it into a firewire case. This should work and you just need to buy the firewire case without the need for another harddisk. Just ensure that the case is able to take your harddrive (2.5" / 3.5" drives, connection interface).

Unable to eject external USB hard drive

I've been using a 500 gb WD Passport external USB hard drive for about six months now, and recently it's had trouble ejecting. I'm not sure if it's the drive itself or my OS; sometimes I can eject it, other times I get the "the disk __ wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it.".
There are NO programs using the drive, and no users connected to the drive from elsewhere. Is there some process in the activity monitor that may be preventing the disk from unmounting?
I've tried to log out, relaunch the finder, quite all programs, etc - but the only sure fire method is to restart the computer - which leads me to believe there is some underlying system process that is causing the eject sequence to hang...
Any ideas? Will I potentially harm my disk's contents by force ejecting every time (so long as I'm certain no programs are writing files)?
Thanks!

I'm aslo having problems with a USB drive. In this case it's my Time Machine drive. Similar symptom that the only way to eject it is to restart the computer. Otherwise I get the same message. I also tried the Terminal command with the drag/return. What showed was an empty command line:
+ip-109-43-193-109:~ user$+
Now, the reason why I've even tried to do this is because I'm having problems backing up withTime Machine. Upon boot up, the first backup always works, but typically any subsequent b/up will fail with the following error code:
+Starting standard backup+
+Backing up to: /Volumes/Jimz TM 2/Backups.backupdb+
+Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.ModelID path:/Volumes/Jimz TM 2/Backups.backupdb/user's MBP size:13+
+Error: (-50) Creating directory 2010-07-08-112436.inProgress+
+Failed to make snapshot container.+
+Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.ModelID path:/Volumes/Jimz TM 2/Backups.backupdb/user's MBP size:13+
+Backup failed with error: 2+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
+Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!+
Also, this is the first time that I've seen the error lines regarding ejection of the disc.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.

Can a la cie external USB hard drive be bootable on my G5?

Can a la cie external USB hard drive be bootable on my G5?

PPC Macs need a Firewire drive to boot from, IntelMacs can boot from USB, but Firewire drives with a one button touch feature won't work either, as examples...
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through USB:
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Premium ES Edition
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• WD My Book Premium Edition
• WD My Book Pro Edition
The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through USB/FireWire 1394(a/b):
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
• My Passport Elite
• My Passport Essential
• WD Passport
• WD Passport (Silver)
And I'm in no way suggesting a WD cased drive, there drives are good but the cases & chipsets leave much to be desired.

External USB hard drive not being recognized

Hello! I'm sure this has been posted before, but excuse my naivety with this sort of thing...
I have a mac mini 10.5.6 (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and I run the Time Machine function to an external usb hard drive. The hard drive worked fine (plugged into the usb port on an older keyboard), but I went out and bought a new aluminum apple keyboard (because they look so cool ^_^ ) - I plugged the external usb drive into the keyboard and it wasn't recognized, so I tried plugging the external drive directly into the mac mini, but it is still not recognized. It is not showing up in Disk Utility or in System Profiler
Help? I'd hate to have to give up this fancy keyboard...
Thank you!
Dr. E

I believe I had my external drive plugged into the (old) keyboard because with the old mac that I had didn't have a free usb port for it - so when I got the mini I just plugged things back in where they were. But I have always had the Time Machine back up to this drive (connected to the keyboard) though it has been slow (another reason I thought the new keyboard was a good idea).
I tried restarting the computer without the alu keyboard plugged in, but same problem of no drive showing up.
Here is what System Profiler has to say about my drive:
USB2.0 Storage Device:
Capacity: 93.16 GB
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x6830
Vendor ID: 0x04b4 (Cypress Semiconductor)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: DEF107920F07
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor
Location ID: 0x3d130000
Current Available (mA): 100
Current Required (mA): 0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
USB:
Capacity: 92.84 GB
Available: 53.14 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/USB
I don't know the brand or model as it has 'always' been in the case that in which it currently resides and I didn't physically buy the thing :\ I do know that no software was installed with the drive as I assumed that when I put all the old info from the original mac to the mini that it was the sort of thing that would carry over.
Sorry I'm not terribly helpful - Thank you!
Dr. E

External USB Hard Drive Can't Be Safely Removed After Boot Camp 3.1 Install

I just wanted to report that I've done multiple installs of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on my MacBook 4,1 and although I've had no problem using the cmd workaround ( http://www.zath.co.uk/how-to-install-windows-7-on-apple-mac-boot-camp/ ) to install the 64-bit Boot Camp drivers that come with the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard retail DVD, I have found that by installing the Boot Camp 3.1 drivers on the same system, under no circumstance can I click the the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray and not receive a message saying that ... "The device 'Generic Volume' cannot be safely ejected..." and that some program or service must be using it. However, a restart doesn't solve the problem any more than logging out does.
I read somewhere that part of the fix that Boot Camp 3.1 was intended to provide was to allow safe ejecting of the Macintosh HFS+ partition. Well, my external hard drive has three partitions: one NTFS, another NTFS, and a third HFS+ for Time Machine backups. I suspect, since I haven't seen anyone else reporting this issue, that it may simply be that the Boot Camp 3.1 drivers don't take into account the possibility of an HFS+ partition on external USB devices. Anyway, a System Restore to before Boot Camp 3.1 drivers were installed completely remedies the issue.
At this point, I'm not having any trackpad issues or anything else of note with respect to the original Boot Camp 3.0 drivers that came with the Snow Leopard retail disc, so I'm fine keeping those drivers installed and allowing Windows Update to update the Intel and Marvell drivers as it recommends. I just find it slightly amusing that the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers, which supposedly did not support Windows 7 (let alone the 64-bit version) work better than the 3.1 drivers which do supposedly support Windows 7. And the funny thing (or is it?) is that you have to install the original Boot Camp drivers with the cmd workaround before you're even able to update to the Boot Camp 3.1 drivers. Hilarious stuff there.
Proprietary gamesmanship is a big reason some of us prefer the Linux "share the ownership +for free+" model of computing. Just saying...
Anyone have any proper solutions (as in, other than "don't install the updates then!")?
bkadoctaj

I have a pair of external usb drives, one formatted for NTFS and the other for HFS+ connected through an external 7 port hub. I am running Windows 7 (64 bit) with bootcamp 3.1 on a late 2009 Mac BookPro. I share the same "safely remove hardware" issues you described. I always assumed it was because my external drives were connected through my external USB hub because of a similar issue I had running Vista (64 bit), but now I can confirm directly connecting the external USB HFS+ drive also yields the same "safely remove hardware" problem. Unfortunately for me, if I regress to the Bootcamp 3.0 drivers, my audio drivers, at times, fails to load. I would need to regress to Windows Vista (64 bit), the last environment where my iSight camera, internal speakers and all other hardware performed correctly. I would gladly, at this point, live with the "safely remove hardware" issue in exchange for a working iSight camera, the one and only hardware device lost to me in the move to Windows 7.

External USB Hard Drive not showing up on Time Capsule

Hi all,
I have a 500 Gb Time Capsule that used to be able to detect my external USB hard drives. I had to store my things for a while and have just started using the Time Capsule again. The TC works fine, however, the same USB external hard drives I used to connect to the TC are not showing up anymore :s They show up on the desktop when I connect them directly to my MacBook via USB. I have been through most of the file sharing options in Airport Utility and System Preferences but have not been able to solve this. I can't think of any settings that would have changed from when they were showing up in the past. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thx

yosemite won't work with ntfs drives for some reason, i've had the same issue with my toshiba. i thought ok lemme buy another one, and transfer it over maybe it's a driver issue which i've tried over and over, apple support can't figure it out.
here's a simple fix, but the problem is i have an external where all my photography and video files are stored, so i can't access them right now and it's making my life ****.
http://guides.macrumors.com/Formatting_an_External_Device
that does work and make the drive mountable now, but problem being i can't obviously reformat the old drive and lose everything. once the new drive is formatted for mac i can't plug it into a pc to transfer the files from. which is the only problem now. but formatting the drive for mac only DOES work. but you're just screwed and not able to use it ntfs. hope the link helps SOME people.

Installing from an external usb cdrom drive

I am able to boot an external usb cdrom drive but I cannot figure out how to mount that usb cdrom drive to complete the install.
My boot command is:
arch-scsi NEEDUSB=auto
I cannot run loaddisk, as it does not find the usb cdrom, so I cannot load the addon utilities (thus I cannot modprobe usb-storage).
I can run /arch/setup but when it gets to package selection, I am unable to select the CDROM source. This machine is not on the net, so I cannot do a ftp install.
Has anyone else installed ARCH using an external USB cdrom drive ?
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you Xentac for you help. I looked up the bug report and understand the problem. Now how do I proceed from here?
Any suggestions on a work around? Should I rebuild the 0.7 beta disk with additions to the initrd? Eventually, I will need to install Arch on about twenty standalone systems. They do not have cdrom's in them, and are not on a network. Sounds like I may have to open up the units and plug a cdrom in for the install
I was thinking of cloning the disk (i.e. open up unit, take hard drive out, put in another system and clone), but it has been pointed out that doing a basic install is a good way of testing the hardware. It doesn't take very long and we have to do testing of our software anyways.
I open to suggestions!

External USB hard drive won't reformat, won't appear in Finder, error: Unable to write to the last block of the device message

So I just got a new MacBook Air and since I had an external USB hard drive (TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 1TB) lying around, I decided to use it for back-up. Since I only have just the one hard drive, I decided to partition it into two - one for Time Machine backups, and one for general files (formatted FAT so I could use it with Windows). However, the partitioning failed and I ended up with a partition named disk1s2. Plus, it won't appear on Finder anymore, but it appears in Disk Utility.
I have tried to reformat it, but I always get the message "Unable to write to the last block of the device".
Here's the info about my drive:
Name: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Type: Disk
Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
Disk Identifier: disk1
Media Name: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Media Type: Generic
Connection Bus: USB
USB Serial Number: 1220069C
Device Tree: IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC@14
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: Yes
Location: External
Total Capacity: 1 TB
Disk Number: 1
Partition Number: 0
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported
And here's for disk1s2:
Name: disk1s2
Type: Partition
Disk Identifier: disk1s2
Mount Point: Not mounted
File System: Mac OS Extended
Connection Bus: USB
Device Tree: IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC@14
Writable: Yes
Capacity: 999.86 GB
Owners Enabled: No
Can Turn Owners Off: Yes
Can Be Formatted: Yes
Bootable: Yes
Supports Journaling: Yes
Journaled: No
Disk Number: 1
Partition Number: 2
Here's what it says when I run diskutil in Terminal:
Device Identifier:        disk1
Device Node:              /dev/disk1
Part of Whole:            disk1
Device / Media Name:      TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 Media
Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
File System:              None
Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
OS Can Be Installed:      No
Media Type:               Generic
Protocol:                 USB
SMART Status:             Not Supported
Total Size:               1.0 TB (1000204884480 Bytes) (exactly 1953525165 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
Read-Only Media:          No
Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable:                Yes
Whole:                    Yes
Internal:                 No
OS 9 Drivers:             No
Low Level Format:         Not supported
I didn't have any data in it prior to the failed partitioning attempt, so there aren't any worries of data recovery. But I'd really like to be able to use this drive again, and save some money (external hard drives are expensive where I live). Anyone with any ideas?

I'd also like to add that repairing the disk using Disk Utility does nothing but tell me to reformat the drive. So I'm stuck in a loop here.

Rescue and Recovery 4.3 on Win7 doesn't see a backup on external USB hard drive - Model W510

I've run the Rescue and Recovery utility within Windows 7 on two different external USB hard drives thinking that maybe it was a usb drive issue. When I open the R And R utility in expert mode I can see that both backups exist on their respective drives. I planned on updating my hard drive so I made a full hd backup and the R&R startup disc to boot the laptop from. The bios recognizes either external hard drive at boot with no problems. It shows the names and "+" sign next to drives. So I booted the drive at startup off the DVD drive with the R&R startup disc after I was sure that the bios recognized either external drives. Then when I choose a "Full" restore is of course asks me if I want to use hd, cd/dvd, or external usb drive which I choose the later. It then should show me the backup that I created earlier just as it did when I ran the utility from the Win7 environment so I can choose it to restore from. But I get a blank box showing no backups when I run the 4.3 R&R Startup disc. Again if I boot to Win7 and go into the R&R utility I can see the backup on the exact same USB external drive. Then boot off the CD startup recovery disc and it shows NO BACKUP! Help please! I want to shelf my old hard drive "as is" and create the Restore onto the new hard drive but the utility isn't working for me.
Thanks for any help.

Hmmm,
Seems like that _should_ work. Here's a way you might be able to finesse it: go to the advanced R&R menu in Win 7 and create rescue media on your USB drive. It's essentially the same process as creating the CD - it makes the USB drive bootable and puts a copy of R&R there.
There _should_ be an option to "preserve existing data" but be prepared to lose your existing backup and make it again.
Then just boot the external USB drive and see if R&R recognizes a backup image on the same drive from which you booted.
That's the way I usually migrate to new drives. Maybe it will get around your mysterious problem.
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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10.4 Installation on External Lacie Firewire Drive

Hi -
I have a number of Macs running 10.4 and each has an external Lacie firewire drive attached, with a partition for an external startup drive. I recently bought a new Lacie 250 GB Porsche firewire drive to rplace a smaller Porsche model, but I cannot install OSX 10.4 on it because the install disk does not recognize the external drive as an installation source. I have upgraded the firmware on the drive but that has made no difference. Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem might be and help me figure out how to install the operating software on the external drive? Thanks for your help.
Shelly

Thanks for your reply. The drive is actually being used on a G4 tower that's about 6 years old. I partitioned the drive into two sections: about 7GB for the operating system and the remainder of the 250GB for backup purposes. Neither volume shows up on the Tiger insdtall disk as a source for the installation (by the way, I also tried it on my G3 iBook, with the same results).

In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro

In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro?

To do what? Yes you can connect a USB flash drive to the system and if it has the Recovery HD files on it you can boot from it. If it has the OS X install files on it you can boot from it. If it is large enough to contain a Time Machine backup on it you can restore your system from it.
So what do you want to do with the USB thumb drive?
Roy02649 wrote:
In start disc mode can I use a external USB flash drive on MAC Book Pro?

External USB & Firewire drives causing system to stall

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