External USB Hard Drive disconnects during large file transfers.
I have a Western Digital 2TB USB Hard Drive that Ive been using perfectly for a couple of years on my MacBook Pro. A couple of months ago I bought a 27inch iMac and started using it as my main computer. So I had that hard drive connected to my iMac.
I started to notice that during large transfers (be it many files or 1 big one), usually into the Gigs, I suddenly got a warning message saying that the Hard Drive was inappropriately disconnected. It doesnt appear in Disk Utility so I have to manually connect and disconnect the drive in order for it to show up again on the iMac. I tested it again on my MacBook and the same thing happened.
Another problem:
Sometimes it will dissappear from the iMac without a warning message, it just doesnt show up. (Usually after long periods of inactivity). I then have to manually disconnect and connect for it to show up.
So what do you think? Is my Hard Drive Dying?
I've been having similar problems with Lion on both external USB2 drive docks and more recently a Mediasonic 4 bay Firewire RAID drive. It was suggested that powersaving mode shut these down but changing that didn't completely solve the problem. I'm returning the Mediasonic for a replacement but suspect that it is something in the OS that is causing it.
If the replaced drive still causes the problem, I'll do a rebuilt of the system, eliminating apps that were migrated over, even though the system is only 5 months old. If anyone has solved similar issues, please let me know as well. Thanks.
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Transfering iTunes files to new computer using external USB hard drive
Thought this could be useful:
If you want to transfer your complete iTunes library to a new computer preserving all your playlists and library information, but without using your iPod as a hard dive, or without burning a CD or DVD, you can do it by using an USB external hard drive following these easy steps:
1) Quit iTunes
2) Connect your USB external hard drive to your computer and acccess it thru My PC or Windows Explorer.
3) Create two new folders in your external hard drive (you can name them LIBRARY Backup and PLAYLISTS Backup).
4) Open the LIBRARY Backup folder.
5) Open another Windows Explorer or My PC window; open the iTunes Music folder (usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My documents\My music\iTunes).
6) Copy all of its contents (only the contents, not the whole folder) to the LIBRARY Backup folder you created in your external USB Hard Drive.
7) Close both the LIBRARY Backup folder from your USB external hard drive and the iTunes Music folder.
8) Open the PLAYLISTS Backup folder from your USB external hard drive
9) From your iTunes folder, copy the iTunes Music Library.xml to the PLAYLISTS Backup folder.
10) Close all the windows and extract your USB external hard drive from your PC ()
11) Install iTunes in your new computer.
12) Using Windows Explorer open the iTunes Music folder (usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My documents\My music\iTunes).
13) Connect the USB hard drive to your new computer and open it using another Windows Explorer window.
14) Open the LIBRARY Backup folder and copy all of its contents (only the contents, not the whole folder) to the iTunes Music folder in your new computer. After the copying is complete, close this folder.
15) Copy the PLAYLISTS Backup folder to you new computer’s desktop.
16) Close Windows Explorer and extract USB hard drive.
17) Open iTunes
18) From the File menu, choose Import. Navigate to the iTunes Music Library.xml file on the Desktop and click Choose. The imported playlist will show only songs located on the computer's hard disk or external media.
19) You can now delete the xml. file from your new computer’s desktop if you wish.
PC Windows XP Owner of 5th Generation iPodType "move itunes library" into the Google search bar.
Type "ipod touch not recognized by itunes" into the search bar at the top of this page by "Support" -
Want to use my iPad (4th gen) to edit a movie using iMovie - easy enough if the movie file is on the iPad - but what if it's too large - can I keep the source file on a USB stick or external USB hard drive and edit from there? How can you do this?
You can't export any type of file using the camera connection kit, so a USB flash drive or SD card won't work.
There are some wireless external hard drives that can be used with the iPad.
The Kingston Wi-Drive, which costs $50 for the 16 Gigabyte, and then $30 more for every 16 gigs more. It works by you turning it on and then accessing the files on it from an app that you download on your iDevice. You can access music, movies, and other stuff. No connections or anything, it works like a WiFi connection, you connect to it from the setting on the iPad under wireless networks.
Then there is the Seagate GoFlex, which some would recommend over the Wi-Drive. But this one costs $199 and had 500 Gigabytes of storage. It works the sameway as the Kingston: no wires, runs over its wireless connection. You can actually fit up to 300 HD movies on it.
Another option:
Expand your iPad's storage capacity with HyperDrive
http://www.macworld.com/article/1153935/hyperdrive.html
On the road with a camera, an iPad, and a Hyperdrive
http://www.macworld.com/article/1160231/ipadhyperdrive.html
Cheers, Tom -
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. EI 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 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. Thxyosemite 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. -
The finder window for an external USB hard disk suddenly started separating files by time (today, yesterday, etc.) and stopped allowing me to change column width, order, etc. Also the header bar shifted to flat white from gray.
All was normal until the icon for the disk stopped showing up on the desktop when I would plug it in. I rebooted the computer, and the disk icon now shows up but this new look to the finder window started as a result. The hard disk does not have this problem when I use it on another Mac running Snow leopard. Also, two other external hard disks that I use on this computer running lion 7.4 still have the normal header bars with columns that can be reordered, etc.
I have tried looking in preferences and other places but have not seen this discussed.Well duh - I finally figured out that somehow in the View options for the hard drive, the "arrange by" option had been changed to "by date" from "none". Not sure how that happened, I had never used the "view options" menu tem before. Changing "arrange by" back to "none" gets the gray column headers and the collapsible folder icons back.
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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.
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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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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. -
Moving entire iTunes library to external USB hard drive
My internal hard drive is nearly full. I need to move the entire current 10 GB iTunes library of songs, podcasts, album art, etc. to a 300 GB external USB hard drive with plenty of space. Within a few weeks I'll get a new replacement computer with a much larger internal hard drive and will want to relocate the iTunes library again onto the new machine. The iTunes Help Forum had some tips but explained "From now on, new songs & other items are stored in the new location. Songs you've already imported stay in their current location." That doesn't help. I won't be importing anything new until I've gotten my new computer and am running iTunes on it. Any help is very much appreciated.
Copy /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external.
To use this folder, hold Shift and launch iTunes.
Select *Choose library*.
Select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
Make sure the external is connected and ready before launching iTunes.
When you get your new computer, copy the entire iTunes folder from the external to /Music/ on the new computer. -
C30: Booting from external USB hard drive
I carry my OS on an external portable USB drive, and then make use of whatever hardware is available where I visit.
I recently attempted to boot a Lenovo C30 Thinkstation with this external drive, and was unable to do so. In looking at the BIOS settings, there is no option to boot from USB (other than floppy(?!?) or memory stick).
Is it possible to boot from an external USB hard drive, and if not, why?
jerryThe boot sequence section of our setup menus has been troublesome to say the least (at least through the development phase). There are various reasons why it is the way it is now....from spec requirements to customer requirements. So long story short it really needs to be this way, even though situations like the one you encoutered is inconvenient.
The USB issue is actually done for security reasons. For example, many large customers don't want users to have the ability to just walk up and plug in a USB device and allow the system to detect that and attempt to boot to it right away as it is a risk to their image/security. For this reason, USB devices don't automatically get added to the boot order, and must be added throught he setup menu if needed. -
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.
EAHmm, 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 -
Is 250GB External USB Hard Drive compatible with Mac OSX on an iBook G4?
Hello,
I just bought a Toshiba 250GB External Usb Hard Drive because the seller recommended it to telling me that it works in my computer iBook G4 Mac OSX.
I prepared it and I see it on my desktop with a folder named System Volume Information and 2.32 GB available.
I tried to copy a file and I received a message telling that the disc can't be modified.
Where can I find the instructions to initialize it if it is compatible?
Thanks in advance,
Joan
Message was edited by: jinglada
Message was edited by: jingladaI have a feeling this is a similar problem to my 400GB Usb2 drive. I reformatted it to the default Mac format in Disk Utility and it mounted!! Try this
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Lose connection to external USB hard drive after waking up from sleep
My Mac lost connection to the external USB hard drive after waking up from sleep. I can still see the folders in the hard drive in Finders, but when I double clip a folder no file within the folder is displayed. I have to reconnect the hard drive with iMac to read its contents.
May I ask how this happens and is there a solution?
I'm using Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X to read from and write to NTFS format of USB external hard drive.
Thanks!... I un-ticked the "put hard disks to sleep when possible" option in the Energy Saver panel in the System Preferences, and it seems the problem is solved. will have to sleep and wake up my iMac to further verify if this is the solution ...
Alternative advices are always greatly appreciated! -
External USB hard drives working very slow and/or not recognized. Help!
This probably started after my Yosemite upgrade, but my external usb hard drives either aren't working well or not being recognized. It's taking forever to write files to my external Seagate Free Agent USB 2.0 through front ports and my thumb drives aren't mounting (they have shown up for a second or two, then nothing). Is there a fix? I'm on an early 2008 mac pro with Yosemite 10.10.2.
Thanks!Do an SMC reset using this slightly-modified procedure:
Resetting the SMC for Mac Pro, Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini, or Intel-based Xserve
1.Shut down the computer.
2. Unplug the computer's power cord.
[2a. Press the power-on button to discharge the power capacitors.]
3. Wait fifteen seconds.
4. Attach the computer's power cord.
5. Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.
in all cases, the stated times are recommended minimums, and there are no maximums.
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) - Apple Support
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