Keep losing DWC130 external USB drive

I keep losing the connection to the DWC130 External USB drive on Windows 8.1. If I leave a Windows Explorer window open, after 10 minutes or so when I go to the external Toshiba drive its like it has lost its connection. The drive dissappears from the list of connected drives, and after a few seconds a new window opens with a refreshed connection to the drive. Why do I keep losing this live connection to the drive? How can I stablize this?

I read something about some of these external drives needing more power, even when plugged into the USB 3 port. The article suggested a "Y" connector to allow the one drive to plug into two USB 3 ports simultaneously. I guess that's possible, but before doing so I'm going to call my local computer center today where I purchased the hard drive to see if they know of this problem and how to resolve it.
Actually, that is NOT possible. The DWC130 external drive has a power adaptor and plugs into an outlet for its power source. So, something else is at play here.

Similar Messages

How can I do backups on internal disc while sharing an external USB drive?

Hi,
On my Airport Utility there are two lines: "Time Capsule Disc", and below (indented) "Data".
(When I plug an external USB drive I can see it in this window as well)
Clicking (selecting) the first line, on the right hand side I can see the disc details (name, capacity and SMART Status (Verified)), and two buttons: Compress and Erase (I don't know if these are the words used on the english version mine is spanish).
Clicking on the second line (Data) I can see the Name "Data", capacity, used and available sizes and number of users connected.
First question:
Why Time Machine can't see the "Data" volume if I untick the "Share files" checkbox?
Second question:
Moreover, I've got a USB External Drive attached to my Time Capsule, so I have to have the "Share Files" checkbox ON, this makes my USB disc (fat32) available to my Windows computers but ALSO the "Data" volume can be seen from Windows. If there is any attempt to assign a Windows drive letter to the "Data" volume, next time Time machine wants to do a backup I'm getting a "disc wrong or missing, check credentials (or something similar)".
In summary, what I'm trying to do is Time Machine backups to the internal Time Capsule disc (making that disc unavailable/invisible to any other computer in my network) while sharing a USB external drive attached to Time Capsule.
Advice, please!

Yes you can go to > Music > iTunes folder and copy the whole iTunes folder and drag the folder to your external and then on the new Mac click and highlight the iTunes folder and then in iTunes click on the button at the top (add folder to library) and you should see all your songs transfer from the external to the Mac and all songs start filling up in your iTunes library on the Mac.
This is the easiest method all songs and other media such as songs, movies, apps will be transferred over however you may not be able to keep ratings & last played counts using this method.
To keep all metadata including ratings & play count use the Apple method exclusively for this if you have to have your metadata, play counts and ratings saved.
I used scenario one above because it one of the simplest methods and I was just satisfied enough just to transfer all media over.

What is the best way to backup a 1 Terabyte external USB drive?

In order to keep my MacBook Air running speedily along and to free up space, I use this strategy to store my iTunes Library on an external USB drive.
I'm trying to think of the best way to backup a 1 Terabyte external USB drive. I'm told the hardware has a product life of about five years and some say to burn DVD-R discs of it as a backup, but that would require many discs.
Has anyone explored the viability of using FTP in conjunction with AWS (Amazon Web Services) to backup the iTunes Library to the cloud? Their file storage is quite cheap.
Any thoughts on the most effective way to backup an external USB drive?
Thanks!
AB

For a simple clone use Disk Utility's Restore option:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Others will suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

R&R Backup (Image) on two external USB drives

Hi Forum,
in the early BIOS state of my T500 and working with Vista I had to rebuild my system several times due to OS failures. For that reason I periodically run R&R and make images on an external USB drive.
Since I'm traveling very much I always have the USB drive with the image with me. The drive contains one basic backup and some incremental backups up to level 25 (at the time being).
Now my goal: in case of a theft or a failure of that USB drive, I want to keep a second image on another USB drive at home.
Now my questions:
1: Is it possible to make backups with R&R (basic and incremental) of one computer on several USB drives?
In that case R&R must detect which incremental level is present on the USB drive and create the appropriate backup (management of the levels on the USB drive, not on the computer).
Example: USB drive A contains one basic backup and some incremental backups to level 12 (consistent) - USB drive B contains one basic backup and some incremental backups to level 17 (consistent as well).
2: If the answer to question 1 is "yes" - does R&R manage this automatically in the windows interface or is it necessary to use the DOS level (rrcmd.exe). Which switches are to be set?
Many thanks for help
Axel

It is a difficult question: the help file isn't entirely clear.
Here is my recent experience: using R&R 4.21 I had backed up my machine to the internal drive + 1 external USB drive several times, so that there was the base back-up and several incrementals on both drives. I also had copied the base backup + earlier incrementals to DVDs using the advanced menu entry for that task, just to be on the safe side. And, using another program (the free version of Syncback by 2BrightSparks), I regularly duplicate documents + pictures to the USB drive, so I'm covered in 3 different ways on 2 types of external hardware.
On one or two occasions I did an incremental backup on the internal drive only--but the next time I did an incremental with the external USB drive attached, the missed incrementals were synchronized onto the external drive.
Now, 2 weeeks ago I decided to zap the main disk and rebuilt the OS + programs to have a "clean slate" for 2010. When I had finished reinstalling everything minus personal files, I made a base backup (the only choice offered) on the internal drive with the external drive attached. This effectively erased the existing earlier backups on the external drive and copied over the new base backup.
So this synchronization only operates in one direction: the external USB drive's store of R&R backups is a replica of what is on the main internal drive.
I strongly suggest trying this all out (i.e. missing an incremental backup on the external drive, then making sure it has catched up after the next incremental backup) after making an external copy on DVD of the R&R backups. In fact, if you have the nerve, the patience and the time (and the DVD backups!), you should also try a bare metal restore of the DVD backup (I did last year when I bought this machine and hadn't too many personal files on it-- R&R 4.21 does actually work!)
sorry i can't be more specific, but my advice is to practice the "disaster recovery" at least once, early on, in order to be sure how it works if disaster does strike.

Disk Utility Not Formatting External USB Drive

Hello,
I recently upgraded to Leopard.  Around this same time, my company purchased two, 1 Terabyte USB External drives for my coworker and I in the graphics/web development department.  They arrived this morning and we were very excited.
My problem is that I cannot get Disk Utility to erase/format the new, external USB TB drive for use with my MBP.  Disk Utility fails almost immediately with the following message:
"*Disk Erase Failed*
Disk Erase failed with the error:
File system formatter failed."
The options I'm choosing for the Erase are:
Volume Format: MAC OS EXTENDED  (i've even tried the 'journaled' version too)
Name: TB
As soon as I hit 'Erase' I get the error message I listed above.  The volume never mounts on my desktop and does not exist.  I can see the drive itself in the System Profiler, so my Mac sees it, it just can't format it!  I've also made sure all my permissions were repaired, so I'm just a little confused as to why this simple task keeps failing?
Is there some additional, esoteric step that I'm missing?
My coworker was able to get his disk to work because he did NOT have Time Machine turned on yet.  When he connected his new TB drive, Time Machine asked him to format/initialize the disk and he of course said "ok."  I had Time Machine set to use my OLD external USB drive and it's been working great. As of this writing, my coworker is a happy camper. I, however, am not.  I'm not blaming Time Machine, just noting the differences between my coworker's experience and my own. Since the volume is not currently mounted on my machine, I can't format my disk the same way as my coworker has done using Time Machine, since Time Machine doesn't see the volume.
My fear is that the manufacturer (whom I've also contacted and am awaiting their response) will throw this back to a software problem....and the folks on the forum here will point their fingers and say 'hardware problem.'  Ah, the eternal struggle.....who to blame?
Any help or additional troubleshooting tips are greatly appreciated.

This is the best, and only, way to format an external hard drive, which is courtesy of Kappy.
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Additional HDD - external USB drive helps?

Hi
I have iMac which has everything built in, so I cannot get inside to add additional hdd through PCI express slot. At the moment my iMac has one internal HDD 7200 rpm.
I know that to ensure better sustainability/efficiency it is preferred to have at least 2 hdds to keep system and audio files separately.
Would it make any sense to use external USB HDD to have SF2 samples library there and save my project folders with audiotakes? The reason of question is USB related limitations of data transfer speed. So if I use external USB drive - will it improve effeciency/sustainability or it becomes narrow place of the whole setup?
Thanks

10 audio tracks should work via USB, about the Samplers.... that's harder, it really depends on the size of the instruments, but in very general you should be able to read them from the Startup disk. If you have two disks, it is advised to use the external to store Logic Project folders (and therefore to record Audio to and playback audio from), but you should not put your Sample libs on it though, just put those on the startup disk (provided it is big enough of course, keeping in mind that you always need to keep around 20 % or more (with a minimum of 25 GB) of its capacity free.
btw, another disadvantage of external USB harddisks is that the USB protocol uses CPU power, you can loose 20-40% compared to FireWire, which has hardly any CPU-overhead.

Make Time Machine use a specific amount of space on an external usb drive

I have 1tb external usb drive which i use for backup with TM. I want to set TM to use only 200GB space so I can always have 800GB available on the drive. This way I can prevent TM to keep backups that are too old and exanding backup data to all of the disk because when there is only 200GB available old backups are removed automatically. How can I do that?

Find good info here.

Trying to hook up a third external USB drive

I have been trying with no luck to connect a third external usb drive to my ibook so I can keep music, photo and movie content on separate drives only to find that the 3rd usb drive will not stay connected. Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong. My ibook is a g4 running 1.5 gb of ram @ 1.33.

First thing to do is connect this 3rd device directly to a port on the computer. If that works OK, then what you need to do is get a powered USB hub to replace the non-powered one you're using.
Do all the drives have their own power supplies?
~Lyssa

Performance Issues with 10.6.7 and External USB Drives

I've had a few performance issues come up with the latest 10.6.7 that seem to be related to external USB drives. I have a 2TB USB drive tha I have my iMovie content on this drive and after 10.6.7 update, iMovie is almost unusable. Finder even seems slow when browsing files on this drive as well. It seems like any access to the drive is delayed in all applications. Before the update, the performance was acceptable, but now it almost unusable. Most of the files on this drive are large dv files.
Anyone else experience this?

Matt,
If you want help, please start your own thread here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1339&start=0
And if your previous thread you aren't getting sufficient help for your iPhone, post a new topic here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1139
You'll get a wider audience, and won't confuse the original poster. Performance issues can be caused by numerous issues as outlined in my FAQ*
http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html
If every person who had a performance issue posted to this thread, we'd never find a solution for the initial poster. Let's isolate each case one by one. It is NOT necessarily the same issue, even if the symptoms are the same. There are numerous contributing factors at work with computers, and if we don't isolate them, we'll never get to the root cause.

How can i create a Trash for external USB Drives ?

Hello,
how can i create a Trash for external USB Drives or my TimeCapsule ?
Thanks.

You do not need to create trash cans for individual drives. The trash can on the desktop holds deleted files from all mounted drives.
TimeCapsule manages its own space. If it fills up it will delete older backps to make space for newer ones.

I would like to recover my bookmarks from my old hard drive that I now have as an external USB drive. The old OS was Vista; the new is Windows 7.

I recently had a new hard drive installed on my laptop; this hard drive has the Windows 7 OS on it.
At the same time, I had my old hard drive mounted in an SATB enclosure so that I could use it as an external USB drive. [I stupidly did not export my bookmarks before doing all of this]
Everything seems to work fine [I can see all of the files], but I cannot find out where my bookmarks are stored on the old hard drive.
Is it possible to find them and get them transferred over to the new hard drive??
Thanks!!

Bookmarks are stored in a file called places.sqlite inside the profile folder. You can copy that file from the old profile folder into your current profile folder. For details of how to find the profile folder see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles or http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
You can recover more than just the bookmarks - https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile

My external USB drive is not recognized by Win XP

Hi!
I have an external USB drive that is HTF+ formatted. It is not recognized by Windows XP. If I start the windows disk manager it gives me the option to initialize the drive. Do I dare to do this? Will it not erase the information on the drive?
Thanks for any help!
/ Anders

Hi Anders and welcome to Discussions,
I have an external USB drive that is HTF+ formatted. It is not recognized by Windows XP. If I start the windows disk manager it gives me the option to initialize the drive. Do I dare to do this? Will it not erase the information on the drive?
Yes it will !!
Although with the BootCamp 3.0 Drivers (from the OSX Snow Leopard DVD) and the 3.1 Driver update (downloadable) Apple has introduced read-access to HFS+ partitions from Windows this feature seems to have some serious problems for some people.
Personally I see this feature as "experimental" at the moment.
XP itself knows nothing and therefor can not use/see HFS+ partitions and GPT (GUID partition table) harddisks.
You might wanna have a look (or buy) at MacDrive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ which right now is the better solution.
Thanks for any help!
/ Anders
Hope it helps
Stefan

Mini doesn't always connect bluetooth and external (USB) drives on boot

I have had a new Intel mini for 4 months now (we also have a PPC G5, which we love). In the last few weeks the mini started to not connect my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, nor recognize some of my USB peripherals when booting up. When this happens, it also makes a repeated "startup sound - bong!" echo when the start button is pressed. I have two external USB drives, one 500GB Phantom and one 500GB WD MyBook. When the Apple logo appears at boot, I can see the activity lights flashing on the drives as the BIOS interrogates the USB connections, but after the Leopard start up desktop appears, the only drive shown is Macintosh HD, the mouse pointer is at the top left of the display and will not move, nor will the keyboard do anything. I have read every post on this subject and tried all of the resets suggested. Sometimes this works after a few attempts, sometimes it takes 6 or more tries - disconnecting all cables, and turning the computer on again and again. Occasionally the WD MyBook drive appears on the desktop, yet still the Bluetooth is unresponsive and the other drive absent. I am getting frustrated having to disconnect everything and trying to boot this thing up, sometimes for one hour or longer before I can use it properly (all of my work is on the external drives).
There MUST be a firmware update for this by now, because I see that I am not the only one experiencing these problems, and this is obviously some problem with how the BIOS is communicating with the bus.

Hi amyta pdx-
I'd be careful jumping to conclusions or the troubleshooting process may get clouded. For one thing those WD drives are junk and most people using them eventually have problems.
What happens with everything disconnected from the Mac except a mouse connected to a USB port on the Mac and the monitor connected to the video port only?
Luck-
-DP

Can a time machine usb drive backup the data from an external usb drive connected to and airport extreme*

can a time machine usb drive conected to my mac book backup the data from an external usb drive connected to and airport extreme ?

Hi Adam, if you think yoiur HD may be failing you could do a TM restore onto the new disk. I would rather see you do a clone either SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner.Of your internal drive. That way you have a bootable backup in case it does fail.
btw - what are the symptoms of your failing drive?
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack

Errors on external USB drive

I'm trying to track down the cause of failed backups to a brand-new 300Gb Seagate drive in a external USB <-> SATA enclosure.
I observe these errors in Retrospects verification phase.
These errors could
- be 10.4.6 not playing well with external USB drives - that the new drive is essentially DOA
- that the enclosure is a dud.
- reflect an inability on Retrospect's part (e.g. unable to work properly with USB drives on 10.4.6)
I've asked on the EMC Retrospect forum for their take on this, buts that's a very slow forum...
Any pointers are welcome. I strongly prefer not to have to buy commercial solutions; after all, the "fix" may be to ask the supplier to take his drive back and refund me and I wouldn't want to spend if that's the case. Command-line solutions are fine.
The data can be correctly backed up to another external drive (via Firewire) so its not the source data. Its not the specific USB port: tried other ports, etc. At one point there were some errors reported by Disk Utility, but I've repaired these and it now claims all is well.
Dual G5/2Ghz/4GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6) ExternalUSB enclosure; 300Gb Seagate SATA drive

I see my question is so popular, I'm left composing a soliloquy... :-/
Anyway, an upgrade to OS X 10.4.7 (from 10.4.6) seems to have put this right, after a lot of different testing exercises and reading. At least for the first time in many attempts I've been able to run a sizeable backup using Retrospect without the verification pass yielding hundreds of errors.
It would seem, at least for Retropsect users, that OS X 10.4.6 needs to be avoided if you intend backing up to an external USB drive--?
Dual G5/2.0Ghz/4GB RAM

Keep losing DWC130 external USB drive

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