Hard drive disconnects itself improperly-Hard disk sleep?
Hello,
I have recently bought a 2011 Macbook Pro and I am facing a problem with an external Verbatim LCD hard drive.
It seems like when the drive is inactive for 10 minutes or so, it gets disconnected improperly, I get an error message and the drive disappears from the system until I unplug it and plug it back in.
Also I have noticed that when the disk is in use , it does not disconnect. I tried leaving playing a movie to see what will happen and everything was ok. When I stopped the movie and left the Macbook Pro it disconnected itself after a while.
I know this may be bacause of the option in the Power Saver "Put hard disks to sleep if possible".
So, I have decided to untick this option and up to now everything seems fine again.
I just wonder, should I leave this option on or off? And if this option is there, why does it cause such a serious problem like disconnecting a hard drive?
This certainly should not be happening!
I would appreciate any information on that.
Thank you in advance!
Anyone?
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helloangela wrote:
i use a Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 Media external hard drive and it is connected by 2 usb ports. it's driving me insane, and when it does so happen to behave and connect longer than 5 minutes, it takes me up to an hour to transfer something on my laptop from that range from about 600-800 MB. help!
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Message was edited by: Flamingcreatures -
I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out.
I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out. I am trying to determine what is wrong with the drive.
I need the data on the drive and it won't show up in Disk Warrior. I have tried different Mac's and different USB cords only to find the same outcome. When selected in Disk Utility the information read as such...
Disk Description : WD Elements 1023 Media Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,105,740,288 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 575837314135304D36373132 Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
As the drive shows in Disk Utility there must be some life left in it surely. There is a possibilty that the physical connection between the USB cord and the external drive is damaged but since the drive shows up I believe it's unlikely... before I give it to the pro's is there anything else I can do to diagnose the issue?Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply! -
Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util
I have a bizarre problem with my hard drives now. I'm on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo Macbook Pro 15" with 10.5.4. I've switched the hard drive a couple of times before with no issues whatsoever. Now, with the exception of the brand new one that won't hold an install, my internal hard drives don't show up in the install disk's Disk Utility.
I got a new hard drive to try the other day, installed it, booted to my OSX install disk to use Disk Utility. I switched the new disk to GUID and formatted it as journaled like usual. It took 4 hours to do the install, then after the restart it tanked. It booted back to the install disk where I checked it out. It could not repair the file system, and the drive was not "mounted". I mounted it, repartitioned and formatted it, and installed again. This time it stopped halfway through the installation and said the drive might be corrupt.
I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
So now I'm running OSX from my original hard drive in a USB case until I can figure out why the old disk recognized inside my laptop is the new hard drive upgrade, but it cannot complete an installation on it.
I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
The new SSD SATAII does show up, but after a 4hr install the partition is unmounted and won't show up as a boot option. I can boot to the install disk and repartition it, reinstall, or remount it. But it will never be mounted to be booted from while connected to the computer. I've had 2 of the SSD's to try, one survived one restart, then went into a never-ending restart cycle after I installed the updates. The 2nd has never successfully been mounted after the install to boot from. Now nothing can be mounted to boot from within the computer. I have to boot off of any of these drives from the USB enclosure.
If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
Thanks for the instant reply, this is driving me nuts 'cuz it makes almost no sense. Thanks so much to everyone that contributes. I appreciate everything. -
I have a seagte back up plus. I pulled my hard drive out without ejecting it and now finder dosn't find it but I see it in disk utility (although I cant repair permissions) How do I get finder to recognize my hard drive after pulling my hard drive out without eject...? Is my hard drive dead? I see it in disk utility... Can I get my info back?
Thank you so much for any helpIn Disk Utility you need to see a volume or partition in addition to the drive.
If all you see is the drive, then when you ejected it you proably corrupted the volume or partition on the drive.
If that is true then your chances of getting anything back are slim at best.
About the only thing I know that might work not is to send the disk out to a service for recovery. This is going to cost like $$$$.
Is the data worth that much?
Allan -
Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility
My internal hard drive no longer mounts in Disk Utility. It is grayed out. I have extraordinarily frequent spinning beach ball/freezes, in Safari or Apple Mail. The most recent symptom: upon rebooting or just starting up, I see flashing black on the display. This has been occuring for more than six months. Of course, I have made total and frequent backup's. I bought new RAM, but have not yet installed it, and I susect this might help. I have done repeted troubleshooting many times each: Apple's Disk Doctor, Repaired Permissions, Reinstalled the Mac OS, safe boot, Alsoft's Disk Warrior, Apple's longer Harware Test, etc. I have worked as a new user, too. All tests done report that all is well. What od you thnk the problem is? Must I drive 1.5 hrs. each way to the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store? Might I try to erase the hard drive as a fix? I hate to do this, only as a last resort, as it is so time-consuming. Should I just update my Mac OS? Please advise, out there, if anyone can offer any advice, I would be greatly appreciative.
The list of issues you posted probably would not get shorter if you attempt to 'upgrade them' away, as usually that kind of effort is not effective yet may expose more of the same problems while not necessarily revealing the original weakness. Another OS X installed over a set of problems seldom helps.
How full is the hard disk drive? If it is too full, or has been very busy in use several years, it may be time to replace the HDD and perhaps put a larger capacity one in the computer. And if the main computer hardware checks out OK (tested under a variety of duration and stress tests) then also consider a RAM upgrade if the device is not already at the maximum capacity.
When was the last time the hard disk drive was devoid of content, maybe wiped -- erased and reformatted by a third party disk utility or have a utility overwrite the entire HDD with zeros? This used to be a common tech service in the course of a major effort to restore a Mac. Or Defragment?
If you can do the latter, this could help resolve bad sectors and remove old data or corruption on the hard drive. Or get a new HDD and before committing a new OS X install & apps to it (or a re-clone of a complete backup) test the drive and be sure it is ready for use. Not all new drives are perfectly ready; some need to get exercise first.
I'd bet on a new hard disk drive of larger capacity (also note spin RPM rate and data speeds) and a full RAM upgrade.
If you have a backup clone on an external hard disk drive (in a boot-capable enclosure) you could really go to town and before you erase the main/only hard drive, make a backup clone and test its ability to boot the Mac. Or put the old drive and content in a suitable boot capable enclosure of the kind with its own power supply, and deal with it later.
Then consider a later version OS X -- whatever most recent version that model can support... {edited}
Good luck & happy computing! -
i have a mac os x ver. 10.5.8 2x2.8 quad. my start up disk is almost full. can i change my start up disk from the original hard drive to an additional hard drive i added in Bay 4?
Always want to keep the boot drive with more free space than may seem necessary for performance and to function at its best, 30-40% free or even 50% is not excessive.
Ideal is to separate your system from your data.
You should always have bootable backup / clone of your system
Don't use a green drive for system or data though.
When you are done cloning system and/or data, remove the old original and keep as backup.
Then move the system drive to #1 - no matter what you want to reset the default boot volume to where the system is.
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1
http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html
How to clone your system:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html
How to relocate system and user data to another drive:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4337
By staying with 10.5.8 you are not going to receive security updates, might want to consider 10.6.8. -
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Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like screen curtain may be enabled. Screen curtain is a feature that allows display privacy. To disable screen curtain while VoiceOver is enabled, you can three finger triple tap the screen to disable this feature. You may need to press the home button once in order to process these steps. If you wish to disable VoiceOver, see the link in the article below.
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My hard drive keeps renaming itself for example this is what I had "Harddrive for mac" and now it's been renamed as "Harddrive for mac 1" .That wouldn't be so bad if the computer would let me change the name back. Every time I try to change the name back to "Harddrive for mac" the computer keeps renaming it as "Harddrive for mac "1". I go to the get info Side bar but every time I press enter it adds "1". Even if I don't press enter and I close the window for get info it's still named as "Harddrive for mac "1". I've tried other names and it doesn't add the extension "1" only on"Harddrive for mac" it that's the extension. And I have to keep the same name because there are programs that can't have their permissions changed(at least that's what they say). OH and the hard drive is an external hard drive via usb 3.0 and is from Western Digital (wd).So can someone please help me with this PLZ.
Man sometimes I feel like an idiot. I'd already tried clicking on it to see if I could rename it but it didn't work. When i tried ctrl-click, I saw that I could rename it and did. Duh.
As for how it could have happened, your post gave me a pretty good idea: kitten that sometimes crosses the keyboard.
However it required a password to finalize the change which the kitten couldn't possibly have known.
Thanks. -
Hard drive is running very hard and warm
I recently had a hard drive issue with my mac book pro and basically had to erase everything and then restore all my files from Carbonite. I have now restored all of my files and I think Carbonite is now rebacking those up, but in the mean time my hard drive is running very hard and causing my lap top to get very warm. Is this normal? Is it because of the back up/restore? Or is there something wrong with my fan or hard drive?
Install iStat pro (from the Internet) and open it. It will show you the internal temperatures of your MBP and the fan speeds. Also open Activity Monitor to compare the internal CPU activity with the iStat pro data. Post both for an evaluation.
Since you have suspicions regarding your HDD, make certain that you do have backups. You might open Disk Utility>First Aid and 'Verify Disk'.
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