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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2.5" external USB hard drive not recognized by my iMac

I have a small 2.5" external USB hard drive that my intel iMac will not mount or see. My 12" G4 Powerbook sees it fine and it is formatted in Mac OS Extended. My iMac is bootcamped and XP on my iMac sees the drive but not OS X Tiger on the iMac, (wierd) I have Tiger on both my Macs too.
Why does the intel based OS X refuse to see this external 2.5 HD. It sees a 3.5" USB one I have but not the small one. I know it is software.

Hey coby,
Well thanks for the star. Not sure I deserve it.
i then tried connecting the drive to each USB port again, and voila! i have found one it works in. I guess my computer's ports must be a little worn.
Hmm well try looking inside and see if there's some smutz in there, if the contacts are dirty or bent or worn.
i was starting to think i would have to go out and get a USB hub to give it some more power.
Is it powered off the USB? If so that actually might be a good idea since that puts a lot of strain on the connectors. Even if it's self powered it might be a good idea since it would take the strain off an obviously flakey USB.
richard

Slow transfer speed to external USB hard drive

I'm not sure if this forum is the right fit, but here goes. I'm trying to transfer files from a firewire external hard drive (partitioned as os x) to a usd external hard drive (partitioned as fat 32) but the transfer rate is very slow. I can watch the file count during the transfer and it only transfers one file about every two seconds (files are 1 meg each). Since I'm tranferring over 13,000 files it takes forever. Any ideas why transferring to a usb hard drive is so slow?

USB drives are slow to start with. If you have a USB 2.0 compatible drive (and the computer has USB 2.0 supported ports) you can expect average transfer rates that are about 60 percent those of FW400. To aggravate the matter your USB drive is formatted FAT32. That slows it down even more.
You could speed things up by putting the FAT32 drive in a Firewire enclosure in order to transfer files to it. Then return it to the USB enclosure in order to transfer the files to the PC. Or replace the USB enclosure with one that supports both FW800 and USB 2.0.
At the rate you observed (1 MB every 2 seconds) it should only take around 8 hours (which is considerably shorter than "forever"). Not much consolation, I know.
If you have no better alternatives and if both computers support 100BT or Gigabit Ethernet, then you might consider networking them and doing the transfer over Ethernet. You might actually achieve faster transfer rates than using the USB drive. 100BT Ethernet should be able to move the data around 3-4 MBs/second which is about 6 times faster than what you're now observing.

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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I put my macbook to sleep and unplugged my external USB hard drive, now It

does not show up on the desktop and can not be verified in Disk Utility. This is my first mac but have been running linux for a while now. Any help would be appreciated.

rustytiger wrote:
I put my macbook to sleep and unplugged my external USB hard drive, now it
does not show up on the desktop and can not be verified in Disk Utility. This is my first mac but have been running linux for a while now. Any help would be appreciated.
Well I hate to ask the silly question here but... did you plug the external hard drive back in?

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

Imaging from external DVD player or an external usb hard drive

Hey,
At the High School i work at we are running Netware 6.0 SP5 and Zenworks
4.01 ir6. We have Zen Partitions installed on most computers to store a
local image in case the the computer needs to be re-imaged.
However, we have a dilemma. Every now and then a hard drive will go in a
computer.
When we replace the hard drive with a new one, we install the Zen
Partition, do the config and then our last step is to bring down an image.
Unfortunately our only means of dropping down an image is from the network
either through normal imaging or through multicast sessions.
When we drop an image down from the network which takes up network
bandwidth, it causes slow downs on the users computers and they start
complaining. Our network is running at 100mb.
Is there any way possible to image from an external DVD player or an
external usb hard drive when dropping down an image to a new hard drive in
the computer? Currently I have all my Zen Images on the external USB
Maxtor 160gb hard drive and I also have Zen Images burnt to DVD's.
If so, how do I go about doing this and is there documents on doing this?
Thanks!!!

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External USB hard drive doesn't mount until reboot

Hey there. I bought an external USB hard drive (a 250 GB drive by ComStar) last week, and I'm having trouble getting it to mount. The first time I plug it in, it works fine and shows up on the desktop. When I remove it (having properly ejected it first) and plug it in again later, it doesn't show up. It's not on the desktop, it's not in Disk Utility, and it's not in /Volumes (via the Terminal). If I reboot my Mac, it's there again.
Has anyone else had this problem with external drives? Are there any solutions or workarounds?

The first time I plug it in after a boot up. It doesn't matter if my Mac has been up for three weeks -- if it's the first time I've plugged in the hard drive since the last reboot, it always works perfectly.
It's very strange and annoying. It's almost like it's not getting ejected properly.
That being said, I just ejected and unplugged it, waited five minutes, and plugged it back in. The stupid thing worked this time. It's driving me nuts! I don't mind things that don't work, but things that work sometimes are really frustrating. If no one else is having this issue, it's probably something unique to this particular drive.

How to use iPad (4th gen) to edit with iMovie - but using an external source such as a USB stick or external USB hard drive

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 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.

[SOLVED] Kernel panic when using external USB hard drive

I have a desktop PC with a 64 bit arch install, on a Core2 Duo 6320 CPU. I have been using (and continue using right now) a 500 GB "Iomega Desktop Hard Drive" external USB hard disk without problems. But I have just bought a 3 TB "Seagate Expansion" external USB hard drive and I'm unable to use it from my Arch install. Each time I try to format it or to copy data from the PC, Arch freezes with a kernel panic. Sometimes it freezes faster and I cannot see anything, but others I am able to see the following kernel messages, repeating several times:
[11701.205071] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13380 tag 29, inflight: CMD
[11701.221297] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.221313] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.221323] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13500 tag 30, inflight: CMD
[11701.237550] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.237567] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.237576] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] uas_eh_abort_handler ffff880014e13680 tag 31, inflight: CMD
[11701.253922] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdf] abort completed
[11701.253936] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: ABORT TASK failed (wrong tag 0/256)
[11701.253956] sd 3:0:0:0: uas_eh_device_reset_handler
[11704.252182] scsi host3: uas_eh_task_mgmt: LOGICAL UNIT RESET timed out
[11704.252196] scsi host3: uas_eh_bus_reset_handler start
[11704.252443] usb 5-6: stat urb: killed, stream 0
[11704.358882] usb 5-6: reset high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
[11704.483206] scsi host3: uas_eh_bus_reset_handler success
Strange enough, the drive is listed by lsusb command as a 2TB but I don't think this is related to the problem (as the OS sees the 3 TB). This is the lsusb output:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bc2:3312 Seagate RSS LLC SRD00F2 [Expansion Desktop Drive 2TB]
I have tried the drive on other PCs and it works flawlessly. Also tried booting Windows 8 on the same PC I have Arch installed in, and in Windows it also works perfect. I have tried using ext2 and NTFS filesystems. Tried also changing the USB cable without success. And right now I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?
Last edited by doragasu (2014-07-03 11:06:25)

looks like it could be the UAS module , check https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=183190

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.

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.

External USB hard drives working very slow and/or not recognized. Help!

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