G5 Spontaneously Un-mounting Hard Drives

I have a number of hard drives connected to my G5 powermac. Spontaneously and for no obvious reason the G5 will put up a red Device Removal warning and the drive will disappear from the desktop.
This used to happen to the second drive that was mounted inside the G5 once every day or two, but the disc remounted if I re-started the computer - irritating but manageable.
After a disastrous upgrade to 10.5.6 and an archive and install and 10.5.4 bundle download I now find that the internal drives are stable but the external drives - I have a box of six connected to the G5 on firewire 800 will spontaneously unmount. This happened yesterday and several re-starts failed to get them to re-mount.
Staring up this morning the drives all mounted fine, but just now the FW 800 drives have all unmounted.
What can be the cause and how do I fix it?
Any suggestions gratefully received,
Mike

Similar Messages

Auto mounting hard drive across a small home network

Hi,
How do you setup a Power Mac 6500 running Mac OS 9.1 to automatically mount it's hard drive at startup onto a PowerMac G4 running Mac OSX 10.2.8? I have a small network at home that I'd like to cross-mount hard drives across.
I can mount the volume just fine manually from either machine. I just don't know the GUI or command on 9.1 to do the mounting automatically at startup.
Any ideas, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Ed

Here's the (partial) answer I was looking for.
To go from a remote machine --> 6500, do the following:
1) Open "Chooser".
2) Select "Apple Share".
3) Type in the DNS name of the computer you want to mount onto the 6500 in the box labeled "Server IP Address". If TCP/IP isn't active, then type in the numerical IP address.
4) When prompted, type in the password for your keychain, and then the account name and password on the remote machine that you want to automount.
5) Then select the drive (share), or shares, you wish to mount.
6) To automount at startup, check the box "Allow at Startup".
To get the share on the remote machine to automount at Startup, your keychain must be readable by the AppleShare application at Startup (ie. the "Allow access without warning" box on the keychain should be checked).
To go in the other direction, ie. 6500 --> Remote machine:
To automount the 6500's hard drive onto a G4, one needs to do that configuration on the G4, via NetInfo or launchd, depending upon the version of Mac OSX. These get into UNIX networking commands, which is probably outside the main scope of this forum. I'm working on getting the UNIX boxes configured now. If anyone would like to know the commands, just post back here.
I found out how to use the "Chooser" on Mac OS9.x platforms from p. 68 of the Apple manual "Mac OSX Server: File Services Administration for 10.4 or later".
The Apple Technical Note 1111 on programmatic mounting of shares under AppleShare is also useful.
Ed

External Mounted Hard Drive Icon Not Showing on Desktop nor on Sidebar

Bonjour,
I have a portable drive that does NOT show up in the Sidebar nor on the Desktop. The only way I can see and navigate through it is by clicking in Disk Utility > Mount Point: <hyper-link>
Then hard drive icon and its content show up fine. But the HD icon is slightly dimmed (it is paler than the all other - HD, computer, etc - icons).
I verified the external HD and it is just fine. I have another eDrive (TechTool Pro 4) partition and it shows up like any normal HDs normally does.
How can I get the icon to show up back into the Sidebar and the Desktop?
Is there a "Preference" file I need to throw out?
Is there a UNIX command I could execute to make it show up again?
Thanks for your assistance.

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and run the following:
tell application "System Events"
set visible of (choose folder with invisibles) to false
end tell
When prompted, select your hard disk in the dialog box. Next, log out and back in.
(24685)

Mount Hard Drive on Airport Extreme-my experience

Hi-hopefully this will help fellow strugglers:
I have setup and been using a Apple wireless network in my home for several years - Airport Extreme 2.4 Ghz/5Ghz ver. 7.6.1 - (newest model), Airport Express. It is working fine. I am describing how I mounted a USB hard drive to the Airport extreme USB Port:
Disk Description :
Maxtor OneTouch III Media
Total Capacity :
120.03 GB (120,034,123,776 Bytes)
Connection Bus :
USB
Write Status :
Read/Write
Connection Type :
External
S.M.A.R.T. Status :
Not Supported
USB Serial Number :
2CASC4FY
Partition Map Scheme :
Apple Partition Map
OSX 10.8.2
I believe this is USB 2.0 connection(USB 2.0 A to Mini-B cable)
My MacPro is
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz)
MacBookPro3,1
I opened the Airport Utility (ver 6.1-610.31) and select the Airport Extreme (green light on) and click edit. Then am presented with the following tabs at the top (Base Station, Internet, Wireless, Network, Disks). I check the 'Disks' on the dialog box, I did not enable file sharing and share disks over WAN. My hard drive showed up in the window of the dialog box. Now when I open a Finder window my hard drive can be found under "Charles' Airport"). I hope this helps anyone else trying to do same. Good luck. Now, I wonder if I can do my backups through time machine? Later CB

Now, I wonder if I can do my backups through time machine?
Although Apple says that you cannot do this, other users have been able to do this with varying results.
it does seem to work for some users, while other users.....like me....find that backups work OK for a few weeks to even a month or more and then find that the backups have become corrupted.
There is nothing wrong with trying things out to see how they work for you, but I would never do this unless I had a secondary backup plan in place.

Circle with a Slash Through it and Non-Mounting Hard Drive

Hello,
So I have a Macbook Pro (Early 2011) and the other day it was installing some update. It turned off, so I went upstairs to plug it in but once I powered it on and logged in it just shows a circle with a slash on it. The guest user account works fine. After researching on Google, I found out that the circle with slash means its missing boot files and I should try reinstalling the os with an archive and install. It wouldn't show up as a valid partition to recover from. In disk utility, the main hard drive shows up, the Macintosh HD shows up as well but is greyed out and will not mount. I just need to copy the files off it, and then I can do a clean install of the OS.
This is what I get when I try to repair the main hard drive from disk utility:
Verifying and repairing partition map for “Seagate FreeAgent Media”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Checking storage system
Checking volume.
disk3s2: Scan for Volume Headers
disk3s2: Scan for Disk Labels
Logical Volume Group C948DC54-AFC3-4E89-81C5-518FEBD8E2AB spans 1 device
Logical Volume Group has a 16 MB Metadata Volume with double redundancy
Start scanning metadata for a valid checkpoint
Load and verify Segment Headers
Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Incorporate 1 newer non-checkpoint transactions
Load and verify Virtual Address Table
Load and verify Segment Usage Table
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 3803: inconsistent crosscheck
Continue scanning metadata for an older checkpoint
Load and verify Segment Headers
Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Incorporate 0 newer non-checkpoint transactions
Load and verify Virtual Address Table
Load and verify Segment Usage Table
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 3802: inconsistent crosscheck
Continue scanning metadata for an older checkpoint
Load and verify Segment Headers
Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Incorporate 0 newer non-checkpoint transactions
Load and verify Virtual Address Table
Load and verify Segment Usage Table
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 3801: inconsistent crosscheck
Continue scanning metadata for an older checkpoint
Load and verify Segment Headers
Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Incorporate 0 newer non-checkpoint transactions
Load and verify Virtual Address Table
Load and verify Segment Usage Table
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 3800: inconsistent crosscheck
No valid commit checkpoint found
The volume C948DC54-AFC3-4E89-81C5-518FEBD8E2AB was found corrupt and can not be repaired.
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
Also, I tried disk warrior but it doesn't show up as one of the drives available to repair. I'm running Lion on my machine.
Any ideas?? Thanks in advance.

SokrMan wrote:
The volume C948DC54-AFC3-4E89-81C5-518FEBD8E2AB was found corrupt and can not be repaired.
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
First off, thanks for being so detailed it saves a lot of trouble.
What has occured is your GUID partition map has become corrupted, this small hidden section on the drive is responsible for telling the hardware what and sizes of the partitions are on that drive. (OS X Lion, Lion Recovery and EFI)
The only way to rebuild the partition map is to erase and reformat the ENTIRE drive, including the hidden Lion Recovery Partition (which you booted into (Command R) to use Disk Utility to try to repair the drive.) Obviously this can't be done from the same drive booted from.
Unfortunatly with OS X 10.7 Apple didn't provide OS X install disks to install OS X onto a external drive or to boot from to perform the complete erase and reformat of the entire drive.
However if you have a blank powered external drive and a fast, reliable Internet connection (AppleID and password), you can Command R boot into Lion Recovery, format the external drive (Disk Utility: Partition: Options: GUID, Format: OS X Ext. J) and then install Lion from Apple's servers onto the external drive.
Once you have that, reboot holding the Option key down (wired keyboard) and select the external drive to boot from. Once you go through setup, try to grab your files off the internal drive.
(DataRescue can be used to recover deleted or corrupt file structure files directly from the 1's and 0's on the drive itself, it's $99, but a option if for some reason you can't do it manually via drag and drop)
Once you have all your files off the machine (make another copy to another drive and disconnect that drive), use Disk Utility (booted on the external drive, it's in the Utilities folder) to select the entire internal drive (drive makers name and size) and perform a Erase with Security Option Zero All Data. This will take a few hours so wait it out. What this will do is force 0's to every bit on the drive, if the hardware detects a bad sector it will map that bad sector off. (I suspect you have a failed sector in your GUID parititon map.)
Once that's complete, check the Partition tab: that Options is GUID and Format is OS X Extended (j)
Now if you have a newer Mac, if you reboot normally (no external drive connected) the Mac itself should install either the Lion Recovery Partition or combined with OS X all by itself over the Internet, I haven't seen or done this yet, so you'll be poineering this aspect. If you get Lion Recovery, then simply boot into it (Command R) and install Lion onto the Lion Partition.
Then go about installing all your apps first, then create a same named user as the old one (different password is fine) if you didn't use the same name as before, and then connect the external drive and transfer your contents of your User file folders (Music, Pictures, Movies etc) into their same name folders on the new setup, don't change anything, just select all and drag and drop, replace. By using the same user name, it preserves your itunes playlists and other data that depends upon correct user pathnames to the secondary files. If you start moving things around you'll lose the pathnames to your secondary files (songs). If your permissions are off, Finder: Get Info to set all (including down inside folders) to your new username.
If Internet Recovery doesn't work, option boot from the external drive and download Carbon Copy Cloner (free to use, donations accepted) and learn how to clone both your Lion Recovery Partition and OS X Lion Partition back onto your internal drive.
http://www.bombich.com/
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
If by some chance you don't have a fast, relaible Internet connection your going to have ot take your machine to someplace that does, or have Apple fix the mess they caused by not supplying boot disks.
You can opt to buy the $69 Lion USB thumb drive, you can option boot off of that and perform the same functions above onto a external drive to boot from and recover your files.

Can't access/mount hard drive, Permission denied message in Disk Utility.

Hello,
Need some help here. I was upgrading from 10.4 to 10.5. I got an error message when I tried to upgrade from the DVD. My hard drive had an exclamation mark by it and I was told I would need to erase it in order to install. When I tried quitting the installer, I had to go through startup disk to pick my Hard drive, which showed it had 10.4 installed. When I tried restarting, it would only boot off of the DVD. I checked startup disk again, but my hard drive was now not visible. I have a tower with a back-up system on it. When I picked it, it started up fine. I went under disk utility and the hard drive is listed, but is ghosted/grayed out. Repair & Verify Disk permissions are ghosted back as well.When I try to repair or verify disk, it says it can't it gives me the disk number and sector number and Permission Denied. I poked around on disk utility for info, and it looks like it doesn't have a mount point anymore and under permissions, it says that they are not enabled. So, apparently the access privileges have been erased & I don't know how to mount my disk again. I'm assuming I need some sort of commmand line in Terminal to restore my priveleges or get it to auto-mount. I do not want to erase my drive to upgrade. All my applications are on that drive. Please help!
Message was edited by: koobiak

See if Niel's User Tip can help you: I accidentally set a disk's permissions to No Access .

Mac mini won't mount hard drive on start up

My mac mini was shut dow for a week while on vacation. Upon return I tried to start up and hard drive won't mount. I can hear it make repeated attempts but it won't engage.

Actually I think there may have been a power outage while I was gone, but the computer was shut down. Could this be a factor?
I do not get any boot choices it just keeps cycling the initial disk start-up prior to the chime. I'll try starting with the Option or alt key down.

How do u mount hard drives

Im booting arch linux on my USB hard drive everything works fine, but just wondering if i can access to my harddrive and transfer files and stuffs.
Is there any way i can access to my main hard drive?
thank you,

At the command prompt, type fdisk -l which will list all the hard drives, and the partitions on each, in your system.
Once you find the drive you want, you need to make somewhere to mount it, then mount it:
mkdir /media/harddisk1
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/harddisk1
(Is it bad if I hit {tab} to try and get bash to auto-complete /media when I was typing it above? )
The above assumes that the partition you want to mount is /dev/sda1 and it is formatted as NTFS.
Let us know what format your hard drive is, or look at 'man mount' to find other types.
Oh, and you'll need to be root for some of those commands

Race condition with Startup scripts and 2nd locally mounted hard drive?

Hello,
My main hard drive is a solid state drive that I have OS 10.6.6 installed on. I also have a secondary local drive that I have installed some applications to.
When my system boots I have some scripts in /Library/StartupItems that run before any users log in. Some of the scripts attempt to launch applications that are stored on my second disk. I have discovered that when my StartupItems run, the second disk has not yet had the opportunity to mount! As a result, my scripts fail of course.
I discovered this by adding the command "mount > /info.txt" to my startup scripts that were not working as expected.
If I insert sleep statements in my scripts that buys them enough time to allow my second drive to mount before they actually perform their useful tasks.
All of this being said can anyone advise what a more appropriate solution would be? Is there a way to arrange the OS mechanisms in a way that would cause all disks to mount before aany StartUp scripts are run?

There are a couple of ways you can do this. The "right" approach is to use DiskArbitration, but that's not easy to do from a shell script. I'd suggest converting your job to launchd (StartupItems are deprecated). Check out Technical Note 2083 (http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html) for more information than you ever wanted on daemons and agents on Mac OS X.
launchd can be a bit daunting if you've never used it before, but it offers a lot of flexibility -- in particular the StartOnMount key. Your job can be triggered whenever a new disk is mounted. From there you can check for the presence of your expected volume, and exit if it's not present. (There is a small race condition here: if the disk mounts after your check but before you exit, you could miss it and fail to run. Also, you may not be able to predict the mountpoint of your disk in certain cases. You might instead want to check that its UUID matches what you expect. You can process the output of diskutil(8) to get the volume UUID.)
Check out the example property list at the bottom of launchd.plist(5). Give it a custom label, specify the path to your script in ProgramArguments, and replace the KeepAlive key with StartOnMount. Set permissions to something like 644 with ownership root:wheel, drop into /Library/LaunchDaemons, and you should be good to go on your next boot. (By convention, the file's name should be the same as your label followed by ".plist".)

Why does firefox want to use different fonts on mounted hard drives

On Mac OS 10.6.5 using Firefox 3.6.12 upon opening Firefox, I get a dialog box that says "Firefox want to use the font "TremorlTC TT" on the volume "USB BU".
This happens for both of my external hard drives. It gives me the options: Show in Finder Don't Allow or Allow. I have tried all 3 and neither solves the problem.

Move all User fonts in Font Book to Computer fonts:
# Launch Font Book (/Applications/Utilities/)
# Open Font Book > Preferences
# Deselect: "Automatic Font Activation"
# Set the "Default Install Location" for fonts to Computer
# Select all User fonts.
# Move the selected User fonts to Computer fonts
# Remove all duplicate fonts in Computer fonts

Mounting Hard Drives In Gnome

Hi All
I'm currently setting up a 64bit Arch Linux box for a friend of mine. He was using Ubuntu, but was not happy in them not updating Gnome when the point releases come out, so I talked him in to Arch Linux.
Anyway, I have set up Arch and Gnome and now I am faced with an issue I don't know how to resolve. He uses 2 SATA HDD's. SATA1 houses Arch (/boot, /, swap & /home), SATA 2 houses quite a few partitions. I have mounted both his music and photo's at startup with fstab, but the issue I am facing is that his other partitions I can't mount on the fly in Gnome.
For example, under Places > Removable Media are all the partitions on his SATA2 drive. I double click on the drive called Kansas (because its big ) and it asks me for my password to mount, but does nothing. Every time I select a drive after that to mount, nothing happens. I thought it was FAM, but I can plug in USB thumb drives and they mount and also it mounts DVD's & CD's.
Edit: - I can manually mount them to /media/device_name but this is not an ideal workaround
Now, I have asked if he want's them mounted all the time (by putting them in fstab) but he prefers to mount and unmount on the fly.
Any ideas?
Cheers
EmyrB
Last edited by EmyrB (2009-08-02 12:24:05)

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL
The wiki normally has everything you'd need.

Can't mount hard drive icons on desktop

Hello,
Just partitioned a friend's new iMac running Snow leopard. Noticed before starting that the 1Tb drive wasn't showing on the desktop, but nor are the two new partitions, even though Disk Utility seems to be showing them as mounted. I've never seen that before, so how do I get the two partition icons to appear on the desktop permanently?
One small unrelated question - just checking whether a headphones/mike (2x 3.5mm jack plugs) I recently bought is dud. Have tried it on both Line in and Internal microphone options in Sound preferences, with input volume turned right up - but still nothing coming through from the headphones mike. Is there another option I should be choosing, or is it just a dud as I feared all along? (the headphones part does work OK).
Thanks....BC

Thank you Roger and Evan for your help.
I would have thought that PC World, where I bought it as recommended for use with Macs, would have known that it was incompatible - after all they do sell the latest Macs. Oh well...
Thanks again...BC

TC Mounting hard drive and mounting /seeing attached external drive

Hi All
Recently bought a TC and I am not sure if it is not set up correctly or if it just is not meant to do what I think it should.
I can set up the TC via wireless and cable and that works fine, well sort of. Backups happen etc.
My problems are:
-when I connect an external harddrive via the USB of the TC I cant see it anywhere. Should I be able to see it somehow?
-I am unable to connect to the TC harddrive in the usual way same as when you connect a external drive or other computer etc. I can see the harddrive contents via the Time Machine app. Should I be able to see this drive easliy?
Thanks

Connect your USB drive to your TC.
Start the airport utility, click on your TC, and click manual setup.
Then, click on disks: it should appear here.
To confirm that you can see it, start finder. Your TC should appear on the left
Click on the TC, and in the right, it should show both the TC disk and your USB disk also.
Hope that helps

Hard drives not mounting properly

Lately my MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.4 GHz, OS X 10.5.8 is having trouble mounting hard drives. If I start from my external drive the internal drive may not mount on the desktop or mounting may take a minute or two. Disk Utility will see it but the Mount option is grayed out and I shouldn't have to use that anyway. Similarly, if I start off the iternal drive the external drive may not mount, or mounting may be delayed by a minute or two.
Also, drives appear inconsistently in Startup Disk Prefs or the Finder Window Sidebar. They may not show at all or be delayed in showing up.
First Aid reports no problems with the drives, I have a fresh install of 10.5.8 on my internal drive, permissions have been repaired, directory rebuilt with Disk Warrior 4.1 and the drive optimized with Tech Tool Pro 6.
This and the fact that Boot Camp will not launch are making things difficult for me.
Any suggestions? Thanks.

I have that when using an iMac at work - my external is an old FW400 Formac drive.
Tracked it down to when VMWare Fusion is running - it seems to arbitrarily 'seize' new devices, and then doesn't know what to make of them because they're HFS.
If I connect it either pre-startup, or before VMWare starts there's no problem.
Do you have something running which is grabbing/affecting your Firewire bus - check the logs in Console.

Internal Hard Drive will not mount -- need help!

My Mac Dual 450 has been a constant problem since I installed Tiger several weeks ago. There have been crashes every day. Disk First Aid did not help. Then I discovered I had TechTool Deluxe which I had gotten from Apple a few months ago. It has diagnostics for just about everything you can think of. I tried it. Big mistake.
Everything came out OK except it said there were some bad blocks, and an invalid BTree node size 8.0 (whatever that is). I tried to get it to repair the HD and it said it could not, that the HD was not mounted (I had booted from TechTool disk). Then I tried to reboot from the internal HD and I got a big bad black box saying that I had to restart. I tried that many times and kept getting the message. I booted from the Apple Tiger install disk and tried to run Disk First Aid on my HD but it said there were problems and Disk First Aid could not correct them because the HD was not mounted. I tried this and the TechTools Disk many times. Same result.
I then booted from an external system 9.2.2 HD and tried to use the Disk First Aid on that. Same result: it said the Macintosh HD (my internal) was not mounted so Disk First Aid could not repair it.
I have tried everything I could think of (option-boot, C-boot, etc) and nothing will let me boot from the internal HD or even mount it. I spent quite a bit of time with AppleCare rep and he could not succeed in getting the HD to mount.
He suggested either trying Disc Warrior which I do not have, or possibly resetting the PMU on the logic board and he sent me instructions for that, which seem ominous to say the least. And I doubt that it would solve my problem since the computer sees the HD, it just can't mount it. Resetting the PMU seems to be for computers that can't see the HD and won't start. But mine does just fine with other start-up disks.
Are there any suggestions on what else I can try? Is there a program that can be downloaded that mounts hard drives?
My Mac Dual 450 has 1.25 gb of RAM.
Thanks for any help. I need it fast.

Thank you for your suggestions and your continuing interest in trying to solve my problem. I rebooted with CMD + S and got the black screen with white text. Unfortunately I could not type anything on it. I typed /sbin/fsck -y and hit return. Nothing showed on the screen. I waited awhile in case this was one of those situations where it is hidden. But nothing happened. I tried the whole sequence a couple more times and same thing: I was unable to type anything that would show up on the screen.
Am I missing something here? I tried typing holding down various keys and could not get anything to register.
For what it is worth, the last line that showed on the screen is "panic. We are hanging here..."
I do not think that is related to what I typed since it was there when the screen first appeared, but could it nonetheless have somethng to do with my computer or hard drive?
I am right now installing system X.4 onto an external HD. If I can get that to boot and work OK, I can just use that for awhile until I get the internal either replaced or repaired.
If you see my previous posts, I had a devil of a time installing system X.4 to begin with. Maybe my HD was troubled all this time??? Or could there be some other underlying problem with my Dual 450? I suppose I will find out when I try to boot from the external.
Incidentally, I have an external HD with 9.2.2 on it and have had no trouble booting from it or using it.
Thanks again for your help.
Power Mac Dual 450 Mac OS X (10.4)
Power Mac Dual 450 Mac OS X (10.4)

G5 Spontaneously Un-mounting Hard Drives

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for