Help! Portable USB drive recognition problems...

Hi
I posted this as a reply to a similar thread also.
My friend put some files onto my portable USB drive from his PC, and now my mac ain't reading the USB - I need the files off it urgently. Anybody got any tips????

Hi
I have had problems getting a Mac to recognise a memory stick and I've found that rebooting OS X can sometimes help, as can plugging and unplugging it several times.
Most memory sticks are FAT 32 formatted by default and Windows can read/write these ok; in theory, so can OS X but it doesn't always work reliably for me. I have found that using Disk Utility to format the memory stick using an OS X format can make it more reliable, but of course that won't help you in this situation because Windows won't recognise a Mac formatted memory stick and formatting will clear off the files you want to get at.
Bob

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Western Digitial external USB drive recognition problem

Hi
I recently bought a Western Digital USB 250gb external drive. I connected it to my G4 Powerbook running OSX10.2.8 and it had no problem recognising it. I then dumped across a load of data successfully.
A few days later I upgraded to Tiger and now the G4 won't recognise the external drive at all. I have scoured the forums for an answer but have found nothing to fix a drive problem where the drive just doesn't appear at all in disk utility (or on the desktop)!
I didn't partition the drive when it was first recognised in 10.2.8 (which i now realise was a mistake). The data on the external drive is unimportant to me - I just want to be able to use the drive - maybe there's a way or reformatting and starting again? (The Western Digital site doesn't provide any drivers for Tiger - cos it's just meant to recognise it automatically..)
Any information appreciated.
Many thanks,
Mark

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Do you have any other USB devices connected to your Powerbook?
Is this a recognition problem right after the computer boots up? Or had the computer fallen to sleep prior to your connecting it? Sometimes I've seen USB ports fall into a low power mode causing problems recognizing USB devices until the machine is next rebooted.
If you have critical data on that drive, you may want to try Prosoft Data Rescue to see if it can see what is on that drive. You can also buy an external Firewire enclosure and try to move the drive to that, or find someone with a PowerMac G4 or G3 tower to see if it can be taken out of the case and put in the tower for recognition. If you do the latter, be sure that the jumper is set for the master/slave setting that matches the cable you are connecting in the drive.

How do I make a backup recovery using my portable usb drive?

I have an 8gb usb flash drive, and I tried to backup my system onto it, and couldn't. It said "Please insert a usb flash greater than 7.6gb". So I inserted another portable usb drive that had over 180gb of free space, and it still keeps repeating the same message even though the drive clearly has more than 7.6gb on it, it has 180gb. So how do I correct the problem so that I can backup my recovery system? My laptop is brand new, I just bought it a few days ago, I haven't even had it a week. Here is the computer stats
Toshiba Satellite L455D-S5976
OP: Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
AMD Sempron SI-42
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Duplicating your post on the same Category won't help you much and it makes it difficult by
keeping track.
The problem you are having is related to the fact that your USB Drive format is FAT or FAT 32.
This type of format doesn't allow for a single file to be greater than 2GB and 4GB respectively,
and the single backup file you are trying to copy is greater than that so it doesn't allow it.
What you can do is format your USB Drive to be NTFS, which has no limit on what size a file can be
except the size of capacity the USB can store, but I'm not sure that's a good idea because of
the disadvantages of the format.
Also you can burn it to DVD's, which is recommended, or buy an external Hard Drive.
When you insert the USB go to My Computer and left click on the USB icon and go to properties
and there you will see what format it is.

I have recently deleted several old backups from a portable usb drive (formated NTFS-3g(MacFUSE). The macmini can´t see it anymore but my imac does?

I have recently deleted several old backups from a portable usb drive (formated NTFS-3g(MacFUSE). The macmini can´t see it anymore but my imac does? The usb ports of the mac mini can still see my other drives formated with FAT32.

Thanks, it is working now, after I have installed NTFS3G.
I did not format the drive. I was using it as purchased to do backups for a while. After the corporate backup system was working correctly again I was using the disk at home for my homevideos. Since the corporate backup was running correctly for ten days in a row, I have decided to delete those backupfiles on the usb drive. Each backup was a folder consisting of almost 30GB data, mirroring the servers harddrive which is running on windows xp. After I have deleted those folders, only the video files remaind and I could not open the drive on the macmini anymore.

Regarding USB Driver (OMAP1710) Problem for Belkin...

Dear All,
I've been trying to update my Belkin Skype Phone (F1PP000GN-SK) from version: 1.1.0.10 R20 to version: 1.1.0.22R20 from the belkin support site.
But the problem is when i connect the USB cable to my Windows 7 (32-bit) laptop i get a pop-up saying "Missing OMAP1710 USB driver'
Kindly someone help me pls.

I believe the original drivers packaged with the Belkin installer/flasher may work on the 32-bit version of Windows 7, but will not work with the 64-bit version. Since I do own this phone, I decided to resolve this problem for myself as well. Even though they are not available from Belkin, I was able to track down and extract/modify the latest drivers/inf for this phone.
You will need to extract and browse to these files using device manager to get the device installed. You will get a warning about the files being unsigned, proceed anyway to finish installing the device. Before flashing you will either have to disconnect/reconnect the phone or press the "#" key to refresh it. Once it starts flashing DO NOT disconnect the device. I've reflashed my phone several times without issue.
If the reason behind upgrading it is to resolve a freeze, the upgrade may not fix it. You would want to downgrade to the original release. That will generally resolve the issue. After that, you can flash it to the latest release.
My version of the latest drivers for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 (32/64-bit unified inf) are available from the following location:
http://pcdust.com/Downloads/OMAP1710/OMAP1710.zip

Help with USB drive space

I have a Optima Attache USB drive with 5G that I am trying to back up school documents on with my Mac Book Pro 10.4.11 (Tiger).
Currently there are a few files on there, and going into information I can see it says 1.19 G are currently used.
However, if I just open the USB drive from my desktop, the folder says only 3.9MB are available and won't let me put anything else on.
I know there is more free space than that on the flash drive but how do I get it to allow me to load more?
Thank you for any help/advice, I really need to get this to work ASAP to back up important documents.

Connect the drive and then select Finder menu > Empty Trash. On external drives, the 'deleted' files are stored in an invisible folder (called .Trashes) at the root level of the drive. If you eject/unmount the drive, those files are not deleted. You must empty the trash _with the drive connected_.

Adding a Portable USB Drive to Air?

I have 64gb Flash Storage Air. Out of space. I opted to get a portable hard drive instead of adding OWC internal space (and it was cheaper). How do you best maximize a portable drive? Just as a Time Machine backup or is there more?

If you are running out of space on your computer you'll have to move something off the computer onto the external drive. If your computer sits on your desk all the time this isn't too inconvenient but if you move it around - especially if you travel around college or work, for example - lugging around an external drive isn't convenient. So I suggest that the things you move to the external drive are things you won't need all the time. Music, video, and photos immediately come to mind.
You might also consider a mini flash drive which has a very small profile - they stick out about as far as the mag safe power plug does. The largest capacity right now is 32GB.

External drive recognition problem

I am having issues with my iMac recognizing an external drive. I have:
iMac 5,1 10.4.11, Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, 1GB Memory, PIONEER DVR-112d in a BYTECC ME-525U2FW Aluminum External enclosure connected through Firewire.
The iMac initially recognized the drive, no problem. Trouble is, when I turn off the drive and then power it back up, the iMac can't recognize it. I was able to solve it initially by powering down the drive, unplugging it from the firewire, reconnecting to firewire, and the powering up the drive again.
System profiler states all software up to date.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
drayman86 is online now Report Post Edit/Delete Message

Thanks for the reply.
Has performed this way since install, which was about 72 hours ago.
When first connected through firewire and turned on, drive immediately recognized by iMac. Drive works, both ripping and burning. Turned drive off. Went to power up drive, and problem arose.

Samsung P3 Portable Hard Drive. Problems setting it up.

I am trying to find a Handbook for the "Samsung P3 Portable hard Drive". There is no documentation with product on how to set it up initialy.
Can anyone point me to a website where I might find this information.
Thanks.

Google, Samsung? If it is like a normal external hard drive there is nothing to set up, you just plug it into the computer and use it.

Upgrading from Leopard to SLeopard on Macbook, broken superdrive. Would like to install from USB drive, having problems - details inside.

Hi all,
I am (belatedly) attempting to upgrade my trusty mid-2008 aluminum macbook from Leopard to Mountain Lion. (I know the question says the product is Mac OS X (10.4.10), but it is not). I understand that Snow Leopard is required, so I ordered the installation disc from Apple and attempted installing it - but unfortunately the Superdrive seems to have taken a turn for the worse - it usually spits the disc out after about a minute of attempting to read, and sometimes makes it to the installation screen but then says the DVD is damaged (which it is not: Pretty much every CD/DVD is sputtering in my drive).
So, I did some researching and found that you could transfer Snow Leopard to a usb drive, boot from there and then proceed to install the OS. I went and borrowed my friend's pc running windows vista (there are no macs around), and attempted to put SL on the usb drive - but apparently the format(FAT) the drive was in only allows sizes of up to 4GB. So I formatted the usb drive to NTFS, got SL onto the drive successfully and attempted to boot from it - no dice. It seems you can only boot from the previous format the drive was in, FAT (I could be wrong on this).
So, I have two questions:
1: Is there a workaround for this NTFS/FAT issue so that I can get Snow Leopard onto my computer with only the usb drive, my computer and my friend's pc? SL is currently on the usb drive in NTFS format.
2: If not, is there a quick and dirty way to try to fix the superdrive without taking it for repairs? The computer is honestly on its last legs, and I am not willing to fix everything that is wrong with it. I have an external hard drive with everything backed up, but unfortunately I will not be able to get to it for at least a month so that is not an option.
Thanks in advance!

NTFS is a Widows only file system. Mac OS X can read it, but not write to it, and certainly not boot from it.
FAT32 is read/write on both platforms, but as far as I'm aware you can't boot from it.
To boot an OS X system you need to format on a Mac as GUID partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journalled) file system (aka HFS+ (J) ).
As to whether the optical drive is repairable, without hands-on no-one can say for sure. I assume you've done the basics of cleaning the laser heads and such.

FIXED my USB drive connectivity problems!

I wasn't able to get my USB drive working off of my AEBSn; doing so would cause the router to reboot.
I solved this by formatting my drive to FAT32 (in my case), which has a block size of 512 bytes. I used a program called fat32format on windows. I wasn't able to format it the way I needed it in OSX.
YAY!

It works but is flaky...
I have to turn the router off and back on again if I want to turn the drive back on.
HAS ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED THIS?

Hard drive recognition problem in BIOS...HELP

I have a Satellite A-135 S2256. A month or so ago it was in for the BIOS password error fix. Came back fine and worked well for about a week, then it went black screen on me. I had the video chip set/video chip reflowed and I now have the Toshiba start up screen and I can enter BIOS. BIOS shows Hard Disk: 1-ST9160310AS-(S1), Hard Disk: None. Brand new Hard disk. The old hard disk gets the same response. BIOS sees it but won't boot it. Boot menu shows the disk also. After exiting BIOS I am getting PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable. This repeats over and over.....any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I was told by one firm that my OEM hard drive was bad, so I bought a new one. Another place told me the hard drive was fine and the motherboard was junk. It's only 2 years old!!!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Is the item about the chips being reflowed something the shop did? If so, yike! That normally means applying heat so that the solder reflows and is not a procedure I'd want to undertake lightly. If the shop did all this and the system isn't working, I would insist the fix it at no additional charge. At least if I'm understanding what took place. Who transferred the drive data and what software did they use to do it? You might be best advised to call (800) 457-7777 and order recovery disks. They'll want the serial number of your machine and a credit card for the $19.95 shipping and handling. The recovery disks will restore the binary image of the original hard drive. Once you get the hard drive booting you can see about restoring data form the disks you have. The PXE-61 message says that there is no bootable device. The fact that the drive is seen by the BIOS would seem to indicate that the drive is good, it just doesn't have a boot sector.

RAID w/2 USB Drives Startup Problems

I have an internal 750GB HD and I have been backing up to an external 500GB using SuperDuper. I am getting close to 500GB on the internal and with money being tight I bought a 250GB External to RAID with the 500GB using Disk Utility using RAID type Concatenated Disk Set. This seemed to be what I wanted to do, gave me all the disk space, was able to use with SuperDuper and it even shows up under StartUp Disk. However, I can't get it to StartUp from the RAIDed external drives. Please Help me Obi-Wan..hehe sorry I couldn't resist. Any ideas please let me know. Thank you in advance.
Darrin

Actually, you can format and have multiple partitions and drag volume names into the RAID tab.
I've seen a couple people with problems with WD MyBook 500GB models, and they were using FW interface on Mac Pro, so I would guess it is the bridge that WD uses.
And, USB is not "ideal." You also want each drive in a mirror on its own channel, and there isn't a lot of bandwidth - which you must share with all other USB devices.
You should be able to mirror an internal drive and ext. FireWire.
Any errors on one drive get copied to 2nd. Useful for someone that doesn't know to backup but otherwise... also, SoftRAID 3.6 ($149) would probably do a better job but overkill. It also alerts you immediately if there is an I/O error of any kind.

MBPR usb drives "unmounting" problem

New MBPR 16GB 256GB 10.7.4
Periodially mounted volumes dissapear with the "you didn't eject the drive first" warning.
Has happened repeatably in front of me and have seen it upon returning to my computer after being left alone.
Could be a bug in sleep functions?
Anyone else?

I have a solution that I just verified.
My USB3 array kept unmounting while in Final Cut Pro X, and it was maddening. It did not suffer the unmounting bug while copying between drives…only when it was doing background tasks like transcoding it would run for about 15 min. then simply unmount and report "Disk improperly disconnected…" dialog. Of course it broke my mirror, corrupted files etc. as you might expect. I had to power cycle the array to get it to work again. My JBOD PM array has 5 drives…a 2 disk 2TB SoftRAID stripe, a single 1TB and a pair of 4TB mirrored in SoftRAID. Now I had configured this SansDigital esata/USB3 5 disk array before I got the new MBP that had USB3 on it, using an esata bus on an older machine and it was flawless for 2 months of work. All disks SoftRAID certified, no issues. I also got flawless (if much slower, as expected) operation connecting it to a USB 2 port on an old MBP.
I had a eureka moment today, and I think it may help a lot of others suffering similar issues.
I went on the internet and saw a bunch of folks on the Apple support forums having similar issues with USB3 unmounting drives. Then it hit me….15 minutes was the time set in Energy Saver to sleep the computer or try to spin down drives (the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" option is checked by default). From my Google search I read on a PC site that USB3 as a protocol hates to be slept in its current version, so...using the Mac equivalent of that PC sites Windows suggestion, I unchecked the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" option in Energy Saver, and set the MBP to never sleep with Power Adapter connected, and I am pleased to report I have been working in FCP without incident for the last 5 hours. Everything is cranking away much faster than before and without a problem.
I did not test sleeping the computer and having the drives eject (another issue reported as lot), but at least this looks like it is operating reliably. My assumption would be sleeping would kill the USB3 connection, so eject the drives when sleeping to be safe.
Hope this helps,
KJ Doyle

How can i export my iphone 5 backup on my laptop to a portable usb drive

Hi All
Does anyone know how to export the backup of a iphone 5 on my windows machine C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
to an external harddrive properly. The reason for my question is that my local disk on my laptop has started to fail and before it becomes unbootable i would like to move my latest successful backup to a portable drive. I did try and copy the the folder with my latest backup from C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup to my usb but for some reason it only copies (3.76GB) 13,000 items whereas in the actual location i can see 49,000 items present (12.6GB).
Do i need a specific tool or application to extract this backup or can you not do what im asking it to do.
Thanks :-)

No. You can not restore a backup made with a newer version of iOS to a device running an older version of iOS. Since the 3G won't run anything higher than iSO 4.2.1, it's not possible to restore your backup to it.

Help! Portable USB drive recognition problems...

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