Mac Won't Automatically Sleep After External Hard Drive Connected

I use my Mac Mini as a media server that is set to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity. It worked pretty well, but I outgrew my hard drive and recently purchased a MyBook Studio drive to add extra storage.
Unfortunately, when connecting my drive, my Mac Mini never enters sleep. My external disk will enter sleep (a feature it has), and my monitor will turn off, but the computer just won't sleep anymore!
I can also manually sleep without issue, so I'm scratching my head a little over what could be happening.
It may or may not be relevant that the external disk installed a program when first connected, which I've since uninstalled.
Any ideas?

Colin,
No solution for you, but I just want to add that I installed a MyBook Studio II a few days ago and I have exactly the same problem. Didn't have time to investigate a lot yet.
Latest Snow Leopard on my Mini.

Similar Messages

Mac won't boot up if external hard drive is on

I just purchased an external hard drive to use for my Time Machine backups. The "installation" instructions said that with the computer off, to power up the e.h.d., then power up the computer. Well, the computer is evidently trying to boot up from the e.h.d. - the white screen/apple logo sits there for 5 minutes, then it restarts but cycles through the same thing over & over. Called Apple Care & we simply turned the e.h.d. off and booted up just fine. Then turned the e.h.d. back on & my first Time Machine backup went fine.
Shut down for the night. Turned the computer on this a.m. (external drive still on) and the same rigamarole - no successful start - happened again.
My question: should I just turn the external hard drive off when I turn the computer off (I use it only for Time Machine backups) or should I stress & sweat over finding a solution or, last resort, return it?

I would contact the manufacturer of the hard drive for a firmware update.
It is strange that this drive in particular should have a problem, as it was one of the ones demoed at the Stevenote, and shown on the Time Machine initial advertising. If a firmware update doesn't solve the problem, return the drive, and get a better rated drive that is known to be compatible with your version of the operating system.

My iMac won't recognize my external hard drive connected by FireWire 400

I have an external hard drive connected to my Intel-based iMac through a FireWire 400 cable. The drive doesn't come up on the desktop after turning on the hard drive power.
If I connect through the USB cable, it appears quickly on the desktop. Why isn't this working through FireWire? I had some trouble with this in Tiger as well, but was somehow able to get it to work.

The drive does not appear in Disk Utility.
And I don't think I'll be installing DiskWarrior until Leopards countless bugs are fixed, especially after reading THIS:
Alsoft: There are some DiskWarrior "compatibility issues" with Leopard
After previously stating "you can run the (current version of DiskWarrior under Leopard) knowing no harm will come to the hard drive or to your data," Alsoft has now posted a message to its Web site stating "there are some compatibility issues when running an installed copy of DiskWarrior 4.0 while started up from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Alsoft currently recommends that you do not run DiskWarrior 4.0 while the computer is started from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard."
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071026153956503

How do I boot Mac OS X Leopard from an external hard drive onto an eMac?

My eMac's internal hard drive died a while ago, and I was finally able to successfully able to install Mac OS X Leopard onto an external hard drive. However, my eMac still refuses to boot Leopard. I only keep being put on the OS Install/Upgrade screen. After install, I selected the Start-up Disk utility and chose my hard drive. Upon restart I find myself on the Install/Upgrade screen as I said earlier. I tried restarting again, but this time I pressed the option key to select a boot disk. However, only my Mac Install Disk shows up.

How is the external HD connected - USB or Firewire? Most Power PC Macs can't boot from a USB connected external HD.
 Cheers, Tom

Can I take my old mac and make it into an external hard drive

Can I take my old mac and make it into an external hard drive? It does not work anymore but I would like to make it into an external hard drive. I heard it is not to hard to do myself but I have important information I would like off of it and only really trust the apple store to do it. I know it is possible because I have had a friend that had it done after water went on her laptop. I would like to also know how much is this going to cost and if it is even worth getting done at the store or just do it myself.

Can it boot to Target Disk Mode
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
Otherwise just take the HD out and put it in an external enclosure.

HT1751 My iTunes won't drag to my external hard drive...any suggestions?

When I attempt to drag my iTunes library to my external hard drive, it will not transfer the folder. I am using a Mac osx and a free agent external hard drive. Any suggestions?

See this migrate iTunes library post. Depending on the layout of the library you may simply need to copy the entire iTunes folder using Windows Explorer without ever firing up iTunes.
tt2

Time Capsule also backup an external hard drive connected to Mac?

My internal hard drive on my iMac Intel 2.4 20" is filling up so I'm looking at getting an external Firewire 800 hard drive to connect directly to the iMac. Can my Time Capsule back up my internal hard drive as well as an external hard drive connected directly to the iMac? I've searched for the answer but can't find a clear yes or no or how to set this up.
Thanks...

Yes, it's pretty much automatic. You can also control what gets backed up, as follows:
o In Time Machine preferences, Choose Backup Disk, then click Options. A list of locations that are backed up appears.
o To add a new "do not back up" location to the listing, click the "+" button below the list, navigate to the location you want to exclude and click Exclude.
o Click Done to return to Time Machine preferences.

How to share external hard drive connected to mac with pc

I have and external hard drive connected to my mac-mini OSX 10.4.11
My iTunes music folder is in it. I want to share my music with my kids in my house so they can hear it in their windows xp computer with windows media player 11
I have the computers connected to a router and I can see the mac files from the pc but I cannot see the external hard drive that is mounted on the desktop of the mac.
The external drive is formatted as "Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Or.... If there is a way that I can duplicate my 80 gigs of music onto the pc that would be great.
I also tried to see the pc from the mac so that I can drag and drop some songs from the iTunes music folder right into the desktop of the pc and I can't get to the pc from the mac. I get an error that says the Alias is incorrect and the PC cannot be accessed.
Please Help my kids are driving me crazy for some music on their computer!
thanks in advance.

Apple has a 'bunch' of articles on sharing iTunes.
Or look at the networking. And then whether you want to put MacDrive on the PC, or use NTFS format and NTFS driver (commercial or free MacFUSE).
And probably want to ask or look in iTunes for Mac and Windows discussions, too.
Most of the things I have (bookmarked) deal with Leopard, not Tiger, so not sure but pretty sure networking is now slightly different.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

TS1717 I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC.

I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC. Anyone know how I do this? I cannot seem to find anything on Google, which is surprising.
iTunes helper launches OK, but not iTunes itself. Am I being dim?
Thanks

The iTunes application should be installed on the system drive. You may need to repair iTunes to fix that error regarding a missing .exe.
To organize your library properly see Make a split library portable.
If you don't have a working version of the library that can be transformed into a portable shape I have tools and techniques that can repair the broken links.
tt2

I have backed my Mac Book pro up to my external hard drive using time machine. My iPhoto now does not show any images, even when I upload from my iPhone

I have backed my Mac Book pro up to my external hard drive using time machine. My iPhoto now does not show any images, even when I upload from my iPhone

Mac 101: File Sharing
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Transfer files between two Mac computers
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Set up a Windows computer to share files with Mac users
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Use iDisk to share files
Mac OS X: Sharing your files with non-Apple computers
How to share a Mac's files with a PC and vice versa.

Time Machine does not start after external hard drive is connected

Time Machine does not start after external hard drive is connected

These are the iCloud storage options: http://www.apple.com/icloud/includes/lightbox-storage.html
Also bear in mind that:
1. restoring data over icloud takes time
2. iCloud is not designed as a replacement to Time Machine.

Time Capsule can't backup external hard drives connected to it. Got that.

Hello Apple Support Communities! This is my first post. Hope this finds you all well My first year as an Apple user. I bought a 2-Tb TC and am running my first backup to my MacBook as I write this.
Problem statement: TC can't backup external hard drives connected directly to it, but the ones connected to the Macs that are connected wirelessly to it. Duly noted. However, the Spotlight will reindex the hard drives connected to the Mac and that will take hours; the whole backup will take days. Thus, excluding the hard drives at "System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy tab" will probably help reduce the time of backup, or just ejecting them will do too. That itself has not proven effective coz it's still taking forever (50Gb in 2 days, still going).
Questions:
1) Do I wait until my first backup to my MacBook's internal hard drive is done before I connect my hard drives to my MacBook and attempt another backup? If yes, how do I go about the excessive time Spotlight reindexing takes if I intend to backup my hard drives connected to my MacBook?
2) Is there any other way of speeding up the first-time backup?
*Note: All versions of OS and firmwares are up-to-date. TC is connected to an external wireless router. TC is intended to be used as backup device and / or file server only.
P/S: Apologee if this has already been discussed before, thus, a link to previous discussion thread would highly be appreciated)
- Shook Hashem, Malaysia.

How do I backup the externel hard drives connected to my MB. I was under the impression that that has already been done, because I've read it somewhere in a discussion that said it's done automatically unless I exclude it from a backup, which I didn't. So it's supposed to backup the external hard drivestoo because I had them connected to my MB the entire time during the backups.
By default an external drive is excluded.. the list is odd.. if I plug a drive into the mac.. it immediately is listed as excluded.
This is not the list of included.. this is the list of excluded.. remove it from the excluded list to include it.
It is kind of reverse polish notation in backups.
If I want to enter the Time Machine, should I enter it with the TM turned on or off?
Not sure what the question means. If you use the star wars display and want to recover files then use TM off.. but read up pondini.. how to do restore etc.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
15A in particular on the how to use TM.
When do I uplug the ethernet and use the wireless connection instead?
Once you have finished the main backup you can go back to wireless. The incremental backups are mostly very small.

Backup an external hard drive connected to Airport -- is this possible?

Currently I have a hub connected to my airport extreme. There are 2 external hard drives connected to the hub. One has my iTunes library on it, and the other is being used for time machine backups.
I have no problem doing the backup wirelessly to the one hard drive. In time machine, I could pick either external drive to back up to. What I am trying to do is back up the external drive too. Time machine is only seeing the hard drive on my laptop. The exclude list is blank and when I try to add the itunes HD to the exclude list (to remove it), it won't let me select it-- it is greyed out.
If I connect the itunes HD directly into my laptop, I can run the backup, but that is not very convenient. Is what I am trying to do possible? Does anyone have any ideas? Are there any other posts discussing this (I could not find any with my specific problem).
Thanks!

nealmay wrote:
Currently I have a hub connected to my airport extreme. There are 2 external hard drives connected to the hub. One has my iTunes library on it, and the other is being used for time machine backups.
I have no problem doing the backup wirelessly to the one hard drive. In time machine, I could pick either external drive to back up to. What I am trying to do is back up the external drive too. Time machine is only seeing the hard drive on my laptop. The exclude list is blank and when I try to add the itunes HD to the exclude list (to remove it), it won't let me select it-- it is greyed out.
That's correct. Time Machine will not back up a network drive (see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
You're going to need a different app. Which one will depend on where you want the backups to go; some apps will not back-up from a network drive; others won't back up to a network drive. I don't know, offhand, of any that will do both. Perhaps Kappy, V.K., or others will.
For backups to a local disk, try either CarbonCopyCloner (which I use to make a full bootable "clone" in addition to Time Machine), and I think SuperDuper will do this as well. CCC is donationware, so you can try it for a while, then send them some $$ so they can keep it current. It can be scheduled to run automatically, and you have the choice of it keeping only current copies or to archive prior versions as well. SuperDuper has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do scheduling. I don't know if it will keep archive copies.
There are many other backup apps, some of which will handle network drives. Check Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.

HT201250 Time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme

How can I setup a time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme? Even better for time managment purposes I want to use the Eithernet Thunderbolt connection for the first back up and then through the wifi there after for daily routine Time Machine back ups.

You can attach a hard drive, but Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port at the AirPort Extreme are not supported by Apple, so it's not possible to say what your actual results might be.
If you decide to try this, it would be wise to have a secondary backup plan in place as well.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html

How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad

Hello,
How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad / windows laptop.
I donot have a Mac and I use windows laptop.

For your iPad, you will need an app, like FileBrowser, to access the external drive.
For your Windows laptop, you would access the drive like any other network share. The basic format is: \\<servername>\<sharename>, where, in this case, the servername is the base station name and the sharename is the name of the external drive.

Mac Won't Automatically Sleep After External Hard Drive Connected

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for