IMac G5 Won't Sleep with USB Hard Drive Attached

I purchased an external USB powered hard drive, connected it, put the computer to sleep, and the computer immediately awoke saying the device was not put away properly.
I then unmounted the drive, put the computer to sleep, and got the same message.
Called Seagate support, and they said it's an OS issue.
Returned the drive.
Bought a Hitachi USB powered hard drive. Exact same thing happens.
Is it not possible to put this machine to sleep when attached to a USB powered hard drive? I had no problem with a powered USB drive.

Every external drive in an enclosure has an on/off switch, read the manual that came with the drive, or ask Hitachi. You seem to have it turned on permanently. If you don't turn it off before unplugging it, of course the computer will complain that it was improperly put away - you need to drag the image of the drive to the Trash to eject it before removing the USB cable or click on eject under File in the Menu bar.

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Won't boot up with external hard drive attached

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2Suntech,
Open up command prompt and run the following command SFC /scannow.
This will scan the system files and correct any errors that it can.
Here is a link to command prompt.
When you go to open command prompt, right click and run as administrator.
If it has not been to long since the problem started, you can run a system restore.
This will take the system back to when everything was working correctly without affecting your personal files.
Here is a link on how to do a restore.
Let me know how everything goes.

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So here are the details. My friend and I both have 13-inch Mid 2010 MacBook Pro's. Same processor and specs since they were purchased at the same time, but originally had 250 GB hard drives. His hard drive failed and needed a new one. Put a 500 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.6 in his computer, and tried using a flash drive with "Install OS X Mavericks" on it to install Mavericks on his new hard drive. No matter what, it wouldn't install. I finally was able to install OS X 10.9.4 on it by connecting the new hard drive to my computer with a USB hard drive enclosure. I put the hard drive back inside his computer and it wouldn't boot (stuck on the gray screen with apple logo and a spinning wheel). I then attached to the hard drive to his computer externally with the USB enclosure, and then it booted and worked perfectly.
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but my computer boots with: 1) new hard drive connected externally AND internally, and 2) my hard drive internally.
Both hard drives have OS X 10.9.4 installed
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So after switching the internal SATA cables from each computer, now we have
His computer, with my SATA cable:
1) Worked with every hard drive!
My computer, with his SATA cable:
1) Works with 1 TB Toshiba hard drive
2) Works with 500 GB Seagate hard drive
3) Works with my original hard drive
4) Flashing folder with question mark with his old hard drive
So it turns out you were right! Definitely had something to do with the SATA cables. But it's still strange that mine was able to boot with all the hard drives except the one that was originally in his. So it seems like it was some combination of his SATA cable and something else, since when his SATA cable was in his computer only 1 hard drive (my original) worked, and when it was in my computer, 3 hard drives worked. But at least its working, and I'm just gonna keep our SATA cables switched since that seems to work out fine

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Hi...I have an AirPort Extreme with a Maxtor OneTouch 250MB hard drive attached (via USB port). I have two computers which access the internet and the hard drive through the AirPort.
The first computer is a 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 (with 3GB of SDRAM). The second is a 2 GHz Intel Core2 Duo IMac (with 4GB of SDRAM).
Both computers have full signal strength via AirPort and both computers have no connection/speed issues with the internet. It's when trying to copy to/from the USB disk that there are problems. The older Mac, the G5, has no problems at all. Great copy speeds in both directions, I can even work off of files on the USB disk without a problem.
The iMac, though, has a problem writing to/from the external hard disk. It connects without a problem, but after that, things come to a standstill.
For example, I can copy a 25MB file from the AirDisk to the G5 in about 15 seconds. If I try to copy the same file to the iMac, it takes as long as 5 minutes. I've tried every setting I can in AirPort Utility, including trying each of the channels individually, and nothing helps. I've disconnected the G5 from the network and that didn't make a difference, either.
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I have a very similar problem. I have a 2.8 GHz iMac with 2GB RAM and am using OS X v10.5.4, and an Airport Extreme (v7.3.2), both updated to latest firmware. I have a 500 GB TrekStor external HD connected to the AEBS via USB. The TrekStor HD was pre-formatted in FAT32 and is visible on my iMac's desktop and in Finder but I cannot transfer files to it or see files on it. When I drag and drop a file on the TrekStor, it sometimes seems to go well but then the file is not visible via Finder, and sometimes I get an "insufficient privileges" message. I repair permissions on the iMac's internal HD without any change. I am logged in as the admin. All assistance is much appreciated!

Lion won't run from usb hard drive

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The new hard drive is a Hitachi Lifestudio and it has one of those annoying "disks" that pop up on the screen wanting you to install some "Lifestudio" app. Erasing the disk and reformatting does not stop that message, so it must be in hardware.
It is. Return it for a refund and get the below.
I ALWAYS build my own drive (takes 5 mins). More storage and less money.
Use FireWire not USB.
USB is packet oriented and data transfer is managed by the CPU, Firewire is a streaming protocol and data transfer is managed by the CPU only to initiate transfer, after that, Firewire handles the rest dropping CPU load to nearly 0%.
Put the drive below, in the enclosure at the bottom. Note how the enclosure has a cooling fan, and that the drive is mounted on vibration mounts. I know of no other hard drive enclosure with those features.
A hard drive has three enemies 1) Heat, 2) Vibration, 3) A Windows 7 installation.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD20EADS/dp/B001RB1TI S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1258862242&sr=8-1
http://www.cooldrives.com/ox93saiihadr.html

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RD2516:
That's exactly what I did last night to backup my wife's MacBook Pro home folder (about 45GB). I hooked up the USB drive directly to the laptop and used Backup to make a "full" backup. (This after trying it wirelessly and realizing it would've taken all night).
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jr
Xenon2.6 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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My quite new 24" iMAC won't boot if I have a USB card reader attached:
I get to the white screen with the apple logo, but it gets stuck there and the little spinning gear below the apple logo never appears (I've waited several minutes). (In all my test cases, there is no card in the card reader.)
I've tried two different card readers with the same results ("iDOTconnect" brand and a brand new Apacer unit, both are USB2.0 multi-format card readers).
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Regards,
Strathglass
Message was edited by: strathglass

Hello strathglass
The same thing can also happen with other connected devices such as external HD's and iPods, the Startup Manager is lost and searching for a boot volume.
1. You may be able to fix it by going to: *System Preference / Startup Disk* and select the *Mac OS X 10.5.5 on Macintosh HD* then *Click the lock to prevent further changes.*
2. Leave those devices that cause boot issues disconnected until the iMac is up and running!
3. Only sleep the iMac, and be sure to disconnect those devices be for shutting down or updates that require a restart!
As a habit, I have always ejected and disconnected all mounted USB devices (flash driver, iPods, cameras, card reader, etc.) from my hub be for sleeping, restarting or shutting down...
Dennis

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Airport extreme with USB hard drive permissions problem may be parallels

I cannot access my external hard drive because of some permission problem. I know because I can see this through the disk repair utility. I've attached my external hard drive to my airport extreme. It originally came up well and worked fine. Then it lost connection and now doesn't recognize my password. To confuse matters worse I have parallels installed. This might be where the password problem is as the mac wants to access as a guest and the parallels (windows MX) as my account name. It's all pretty complicated to explain. What I want to do now is just to forget the airport plan and reach my hard drive but it won't boot up even with airport off and a direct firewire connection. It does show up in disk repair utility but with permissions. How can I get to these permissions and drop them. What if they're windows permissions somehow? How can I get started.
Thanks

I have a very similar problem. I have a 2.8 GHz iMac with 2GB RAM and am using OS X v10.5.4, and an Airport Extreme (v7.3.2), both updated to latest firmware. I have a 500 GB TrekStor external HD connected to the AEBS via USB. The TrekStor HD was pre-formatted in FAT32 and is visible on my iMac's desktop and in Finder but I cannot transfer files to it or see files on it. When I drag and drop a file on the TrekStor, it sometimes seems to go well but then the file is not visible via Finder, and sometimes I get an "insufficient privileges" message. I repair permissions on the iMac's internal HD without any change. I am logged in as the admin. All assistance is much appreciated!

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Mary

Hello! There are many reports of sleep problems associated with devices including firewire drives and any usb device. I would suggest contacting the manf. web site for the various devices and seek info concerning the issue on their sites. Tom

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I have a late 2009 mac mini server running snow leopard server. I recently purchased 2 new hard drives as the I believe one of the hard drives was failing. I formatted the 2 drives and installed Mavericks OS X server on one.
When I put the 2 drives into the mac mini, the system won't boot. I just get the flashing folder. If I keep the old (snow leopard) drive in the system and connect the mavericks server disk as an external (USB connected) drive, it will boot and runs just fine.
Am I missing something??
Here are somethings additional facts:
When I have the snow leopard server drive in and it boots from that, it doesn't recognize either of the 2 new drives. Wants to either eject or initialize.
I realize that it can read the newer system.
I have to boot with the option key so that I can pick which drive to boot from.
Any thoughts would be helpful. I'm not sure why it works one way and not the other.
Thank you.

Did you set the Partition Map Scheme to GUID Partition Table before Formatting the Drives Mac OS Extended (Journaled)...?
You can check in a couple of places:
Apple > About This Mac > More Info > Hardware > Serial-ATA
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Howdy. I'm a new mini owner and I'm loving it. I'm having a problem with a FreeAgent USB drive though. Without the FreeAgent, my mini sleeps no problem. However, when the FreeAgent is attached the mini goes to sleep then wakes back up right away. This happens both with the FreeAgent plugged into a hub or plugged into the mini itself. I tried unmounting the FreeAgent before telling the mini to sleep - no change, the mini still wakes up. Any help?????

USB devices can cause unusual behavior in sleep patterns of the host systems, and this particular behavior as you have described it, is not entirely unusual.
If you are able to eject the drive to the icon disappears off the desktop, it shows that there are no active files or processes running on the system which relate to the drive. That's a common sleep-related problem, caused by something active on the device that keeps the system awake.
However, the fact there's nothing active on the drive doesn't mean the drive is not active in itself. In some drives, when the host system sleeps, and once the connection to the device is therefore dropped, the device issues a sleep command and in the case of a drive, will then spin down. Unfortunately, with many drives, when that spin-down occurs, the host system sees it as activity on the bus and wakes up again.
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Time Capsule won't recognize my USB hard drive.

I have a 160-gb Western Digital hard drive in an external enclosure that I use to use on my PC. I want to access the drive via Time Capsule through the USB port in the pack. Currently I have a USB hub with a printer and the hard drive plugged into the port in TC. I can print remotely from TC, but the hard drive is not visible as an assessable drive. The only way I can even see it is through a manual setup and review the disk setup of TC. How do I need to setup the TC to recognize the USB external harddrive? Just plugging it in doesn't work.
This is my first Macbook, as well as first Time Capsule. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If your drive only has NTFS on it, then I don't think Time Capsule is equiped to deal with that partition. Time Capsule will tell you that the drive needs to be checked. If the drive has another partition on it that Time Capsule can see (FAT32), it will set up a connection to that drive. You can tell Time capsule to ignore errors on that drive (eg the fact that it can't deal with NTFS) and the blinking amber light will go away and you'll get the green light.
The thing is Vista no longer has FAT32 even as a format option, you've got either NTFS or their new eFAT which is not backward compatible with FAT32. A third party program needs to be used to format your external drive. For example I use a program from Ridgecrop. Below are its available options for formatting.
C:\Users\voigtstr\Documents>fat32format.exe
Usage Fat32Format X:
Erase all data on disk X:, format it for FAT32
It is also possible to specify a cluster size for the disk, e.g
Fat32Format -c1 X: - use 1 sector per cluster ( max size 137GB for 512 bytes pe
r sect)
Fat32Format -c2 X: - use 2 sectors per cluster ( max size 274GB for 512 bytes p
er sect )
Fat32Format -c4 X: - use 4 sectors per cluster ( max size 549GB ... )
Fat32Format -c8 X: - use 8 sectors per cluster ( max size 1TB ... )
Fat32Format -c16 X: - use 16 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c32 X: - use 32 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c64 X: - use 64 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c128 X: - use 128 sectors per cluster (64K clusters)
Version 1.03, see http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm
This software is covered by the GPL
Use with care - Ridgecrop are not liable for data lost using this tool
Now is Apple equipped to deal with all these cluster sizes. Have Apple defined anywhere what FAT32 is for them?
I can copy a small file to the external drive when its connected to Time Capsule, but if I try to copy a 700Mb movie to Time Capsule, Time Capsule gets confused and drops the network. It not only drops the network but if you try copying a large file from Time Capsule's internal disk to the attached USB drive, even that is enough to hang the machine. So it stops its network, it stops it USB connection, however the wireless carrier is still strong (it just cant transmit any TCPIP)
So is this a firmware issue that they can correct? Or do I have a dud Time Capsule? To compare your situation to mine the discussion must focus around FAT32 I believe. I suspect that Apple's own journaled file system works flawlessly with large files (but as yet do not own a mac to test this). Furthermore the point of having a large external drive is to be able to take it places and share files (which will have to be less that 4gig if I use FAT32) with non mac owning friends. Either Apple needs to support NTFS, or they need to specify or even provide a FAT32 format utility that will work with both Windows and Mac
Cheers
The Voigtstr

Won't boot from USB hard drive?

Hi, all. My daughter has a brand-new Aluminum Macbook a week old, with all Apple software updates applied and everything running smoothly. She has a Seagate FreeAgent Go external USB 2.0 hard drive divided into two HFS+ Journaled partitions using the GUID partition scheme: a large partition on which to back up her internal drive, and a small partition for use as an emergency boot "disk." We've used the latest version of SuperDuper to make a bootable clone of her internal drive on the large backup partition, and I've just begun installing Leopard from her MacBook installer DVD onto the emergency boot partition as I write this (using my own computer). After 25 minutes, the installer DVD is still being "checked for consistency"; I hope things will finally begin to move along faster when the installation actually starts.
We'll see what happens when that installation is done, but before I began it, I checked to make sure the SuperDuper clone on the backup partition would boot the MacBook. To my dismay, it did not, although I held down the Option key during startup, selected the backup partition in Startup Manager, and clicked the arrow to proceed with booting from that partition. The MacBook booted from its internal drive anyway.
You'll note that I'm not a Leopard or Intel Mac user myself, so I'm not familiar with any issues that may be more familiar to regular users of that OS or of Intel Macs. Can anyone tell me whether SuperDuper has problems creating bootable USB clones that work in Leopard or on those machines? Is there something else I should be doing to boot from the clone we made, instead of using the Startup Manager? Any other thoughts on why this hasn't worked?

I have noticed that the start-up disk appears just about anywhere except in the upper right-hand corner. I too, was convinced once that I was booted from the wrong drive. However, I have implicit faith in SD and since it has never let me down, I searched and found the boot drive hiding amongst some files littering my desktop.

Satellite Pro 460 won't start with new hard drive in

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Any one got any ideas why this is and what can i do about it

It sounds like 80GB is too large for that model, I really doubt the BIOS and Chipset can support more than 8GB HDD. 8GB may not even work.
Here is some information regarding different HDD modes and limitations: http://www.adminxp.com/hardware/index.php?aid=129
504MB - limitation where the system is limited by the compatibility with the values of the BIOS system and the ATA interface by help of using the CHS mode. This limitation is valid for older computers 286/386/486. (1024 cyl 16 heads x 63sectors/track x 512 = 528,482,304bytes - 504 MB). In many cases special programs will help (Disk Ontrack Manager - Seagate, Disk Wizard - WD). Some operating systems can have problems with this software support and can have higher requirements on your knowledge of the OS and used programs.
2GB - Limitation of the maximal value of the FAT16 file system partition for DOS and Windows 9x. Some older computers cannot address more than 4095 cylinders (4,095 x 16 x 63x 512 - 2,113,413,120 bytes)
4GB Limitation of Windows NT - Partition with the FAT16 system cannot be higher than 4GB - Fdisk cannot be used for creating, but the Disk manager is used (Disk management in Windows 2000)
8GB - Limitation of the BIOS system. For the support of larger capacities you need extended functions of the BIOS system. Limitations valid for the x86 computers and some motherboards with Pentium and Pentium II processors. Some other operating systems must know how to use the extended BIOS functions (Extended Interrupt 13). We can use Windows NT 4.0 as an example where you need an updated disk driver or the Service Pack. (OS - DOS 6.xx and lower, Windows 3.x and lower and some other older OS do not have the support of the Ext. Int13).
8 GB - Limitation of the FDISK program in the DOS 6.22 OS.
?? GB - Possible problem with disks larger than 67GB under Windows 9x... See article WD800
32GB - (65535 x 16 x 63 x 512 - 33,822,351,360 bytes) other limitation of the BIOS system.
68GB - Possible problem with disks larger than 67GB under Windows 9x... See article WD800
137GB - Limit for the ATA specifications (28-bit addressing for particular sectors - 268435455 sectors - 137,438,952,960 bytes)
2,2 TBytes - 32-bit addressing used by new operating systems (in Windows 98 by help of the FAT32 file system).
144 PetaBytes - a limit for new ATA specification using 48-bit addressing, in peparation. Maxtor, Microsoft, VIA, Compaq and other companies under name Big Drives participate the development. The standard should be implemented and authorized by the ANSI NCITS T13 Technical Committee organization (www.t13.org) in the prepared ATA/ATAPI-6 standard (see www.maxtor.com/bigdrive)

IMac G5 Won't Sleep with USB Hard Drive Attached

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