Portable hard drive problems

my mac running lion will not recognize portable hard drive, but, my tower running leopard will? why is that?p

have you recently changed any permissions for the disk?
its just that once i had a very reliable FW HD, then i decided to wipe it for use as a bootable startup/backup/archive drive.....software i got to do archiving said that i had to set permissions for the backup partition of the disk - (like it was to be the 'owner's' partition).
anyway, as a result - it suddenly wouldnt mount or show up on the mac i was using it with.
until i realized why, by having it mount ok on my other older G4 - in OS9, as the permissions didn't seem to cause any confusion. so i reset its 'owner' permission status, and presto - all sorted.

Similar Messages

USB & Portable Hard Drive problems

HI!
two questions....
1) i have a portable hard drive where i have stored books / photos etc - it shows up on my macbook pro but if i connect up to my old toshiba laptop it does not even register it is there, and i have another portable hard drive which i used on my old laptop which actually shows on the mac but i can only acces the files (pics) to view it does not actaully let me copy or delete anything - why is this and can i get them to read/change on both?
2) similar to the above portable hard drives i have a flash drive that now wont register on my old laptop, but another usb which i had ebooks on i wanted to transfer them onto the mac.I would have to unzip some files (sometime on the mac and sometimes on the tosh laptop) and then copy over to the mac. this was working fine but i noticed that as i deleted the copied files off the usb to make way for more unzipped files the amount of space wasnt adjusting accordingly. i now find that out of a 16G usb i only have approx 300MB of space left. Yet when i check what is ont he drive there is nothing on it - how can this be?

It appears that you are trying to use external drives/USB flash drives that are formatted for a specific operating system with another operating system. For example you have a drive formatted for OSx and you are trying to use it with a Windows computer.
If you format all your external drives and USB sticks to FAT32 or ExFat then both OSx and Windows will be able to read/write to these drives.
If you select ExFAT, then use your Windows computer to format the drives/USB drives. There is an issue with drives formatted to ExFat using OSx.
Make sure you make a back up of your data before you do any formatting. Formatting the drives will remove all the data on them.

Iomega portable hard drive problems with mounting

I have a Iomega portable hard drive (firewire) which is not being seen by my
g4. When I go into system profiler it says unknow device, and it is not showing up in disk utility.
Can anyone suggest anything please.
Bearing in mind I'm a total idiot when it comes to anything more than plugging everything in and making sure the light comes on!
I've been on the Iomega site which wasn't any help
Thanks

have you recently changed any permissions for the disk?
its just that once i had a very reliable FW HD, then i decided to wipe it for use as a bootable startup/backup/archive drive.....software i got to do archiving said that i had to set permissions for the backup partition of the disk - (like it was to be the 'owner's' partition).
anyway, as a result - it suddenly wouldnt mount or show up on the mac i was using it with.
until i realized why, by having it mount ok on my other older G4 - in OS9, as the permissions didn't seem to cause any confusion. so i reset its 'owner' permission status, and presto - all sorted.

New Imac, has problem using previous portable hard drive

Been using a Seagate portable hard drive on various apple computers for 3 years. had a new one for school this year, and went to use it on our new computer. it does not recognize the hard drive, when you plug it in. did I forget something here?
Scott

Illaass, yes I have used this drive on MANY apple compuers from Imac, to mac pro's and my laptop at home. it has worked flawlessly on all of them. It is formatted to Mac. appears to be in working order, and works fine when I transfer it back to my laptop. "problem" laptop does not hold Photoshop, and I have work to do.
It appears to be spinning, and cable apears functional.
noyt sure about the last question though? I do not find the drive ANYWHERE on the new computer.

Portable hard drive clicking but it isn't a hardware problem

Here's what I have so far:
A portable hard drive bought via ebay
A desktop that only runs arch (main computer)
A desktop that only runs ubuntu (guest computer)
The hard drive clicks (about 4 times per second) when plugged into the arch desktop regardless of which usb port/hub it's plugged into.
The hard drive works perfectly when plugged into the ubuntu desktop's usb ports.
The hard drive does not show up on lsusb on the arch desktop.
The hard drive is apple branded but the enclosure/adapter definitely isn't. I don't think this makes a difference.
My main question is: What now?
edit: sifted through some logs for a while and didn't find anything.
I'm thinking that because nothing shows up in lsusb there is a problem recognizing the sata-usb adapter.
Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2011-05-18 03:02:30)

Is the drive self powered, or is it powered from the USB bus ?
Is the drive drawing excess current ?? A USB device is not supposed to draw in excess of 100mA unless it negotiates with the host for more. Not all USB controllers respond well to devices that violate this.

Problems Downloading iTunes Library From Portable Hard Drive

Why does it take so long to transfer iTunes songs from a portable hard drive?
Here are my stats:
Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: PowerMac4,2
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 800 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.4.1f1
I'm downloading a 9,000 song library from the portable hard drive to an empty iTunes program. I highlighted all of the song files (Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.) It took at least an hour for all of the songs to "process". Then my computer told me there is not enough room to store them all. I understand this because the list of songs I want to import is 34 gig. What I don't understand is why it has taken since midnight last night (it is now 14 1/2 hours later) and song no.6,450 of 6,800 is loading. Does it normally take this long for such a large amount of songs to transfer. Will there be any way that I can transfer the other 2,200 songs after this is done?
I also want to know if anyone knows if it makes sense for me partition the iTunes library somehow so it won't slow the computer down by being such a large file.
iMAC 1500 Mac OS X (10.4.10)
iMAC 1500 Mac OS X (10.4)
iMAC 1500 Mac OS X (10.4)
iMAC 1500 Mac OS X (10.4)

I would think you could access them directly from that drive, but I am not sure if the USB 1.1 bus speed will cause problems or not like stuttering, long pauses, aborts in the middle of songs, etc. You can certain give it a try and let us know if it works ok that way.
Also keep in mind that USB is a shared bus so it may work if the USB bus is doing nothing more than accessing the drive and your keyboard and mouse. If you start scanning in something from a USB scanner, printing to a USB printer, accessing a USB to Wifi device, etc. then you might see more issues with playback as iTunes has to share the USB connection with other things.
Patrick

How to use a iomega prestige portable hard drive (mac edition) to resolve a start up space problem i.e. have 1.07gb need 4.85gb to upgrade tp itunes 7

How to use an iomega prestige portable hard drive (mac edition) to resolve a startup space problem. I need 4.85gb to up grade to itunes 7. I have 1.07gb free

com.apple.NVDAResman appears to be the culprit, indicating a problem with the graphics card. Run the Apple Hardware Test program, extended tests.
See
What is a kernel panic,
Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics,
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ,
Resolving Kernel Panics, and
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics for more details.

Problems uploading photos from portable hard drive

Is it essential to store photos in "My pictures" in order to upload them to my Ipod? I have a large number of photos, so I store them on a separate (portable) hard drive, attached to the main computer. When attempting to sync my photography, I have directed itunes to the correct folder. But I get an error message saying syncing is not possible. I have read many similar complaints on the Internet, but have not yet read a solution. Any feedback would be appreciated.

if these photos are stored on iPhoto, try to select all your photos > file menu > export > choose destination disk.
If they are already in a specific folder, just select it and choose burn to disk.

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.

WD Portable Hard Drive Won't Mount

This is the second time I have had a portable hard drive that suddenly quits mounting on the mac. First, a Lacie, and now a WD. After working with apple support and trying everything I could never get the problem fixed with the Lacie. Luckly, when I plugged it into a dell PC it came up and I was able to recover all data.
I then purchased the new drive, the WD, and copied the information over. Today, the WD quit working. It will not mount on either of my Macs, IMAC G5 and a powerbook G4. It also unfortunately will not show up on a PC either. It is a combo, firewire/usb drive. It does show up in Disk Utility but will not let you select "mount" only "info" and "eject".
Long story short....anyone have any ideas. I read some posts about data recovery with "data rescue" and other products. If I can't get it to mount, can I still get the data off?
Help!!

If software won't do it - you'll try it all if it's important enough - there's the costly way; disk recovery specialists.
It's a cruel lesson, but I'm sure you'll have a better back up system / procedure in the future. Ideally save to two disks and keep a third set of (important) back ups off site.

Can I back-up files to a portable hard drive and not use Time Machine?

I have a portable hard drive that I use for all of my Time Machine back-ups. I back-up the entire system every two or three weeks. I use the Time Machine software and it works quite well. I'm interested in backing up specific files (photos, documents, etc.) to a second portable drive every six months but I don't want to use the Time Machine software. Is there a simple way to hook up the portable drive (brand new Lacie 500 gb drive), open up the file on my desktop and drag the files to the new drive? Are there special steps I need to perform to avoid formatting the drive for Time Machine? Any tips will be greatly appreciated.

MacConvert54 wrote:
Is there a simple way to hook up the portable drive (brand new Lacie 500 gb drive), open up the file on my desktop and drag the files to the new drive?
You can do that, but you'll have to erase the drive, or delete the previous versions, each time. You might want to look at CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. They're most often used to make full bootable "clones" of your internal HD, but can be set to back up specific files and folders as well. CCC is donationware, so you can try it for a while before sending them some $$ so they can keep it up to date. SD has a free version, but I think you'll need the paid one (about $30, I think) to do this.
Are there special steps I need to perform to avoid formatting the drive for Time Machine?
It would be best to format it for Macs, which is the same as Time Machine. What is the problem with that?

Photos on my Mac show the wrong date when imported from a portable Hard Drive

I’ve got loads of photos that I had imported from my old PC.Last night I decided to start going through them and trying to get them sorted
prior to importing into iphoto. I discovered that some of the pictures (in particular ones I have taken from my old Iphone) all had the same date and time
assigned to them. When I checked the Exif details, it listed the correct camera etc, but the date created seems to have changed to the date I copied them to my portable hard drive.
I thought this was strange as when they were on my PC I thought they were correct. I booted my PC up and checked the portable hard drive on Windows. When viewed on my PC the pictures all have the correct time and date assigned to them. However when I plug the same portable hard drive into my Mac the same files show up as being created on a more recent date (say 20th Jan 2013).
I’ve done a lot of research last night, although I can find no forum with this exact problem, I feel it must have something to do with compatibility. The portable hard drive is FAT32, and I am assuming that in order to ensure all of the photos information is transferred correctly in needs to be NTFS.
The problem I have is how do I transfer my files again from my PC to an NTFS drive, whilst keeping all of the correct date and time information assigned to the photos. My understanding is that the 2 aren’t compatible.
Has anyone ever had this problem? It mainly seems to be with photos I have extracted from my Iphone or edited in some form by rotating them.
I have a 13" Macbook Pro Retina with OSX Mavericks installed.

What you may want to do is archive as a Zipfile the photos and then transfer them to the Mac.     It is possible some of the metadata is being lost on the FAT32 formatting.    USB Flashdrive might work better than a FAT32 formatted hard drive, as I do know that most USB Flashdrives are formatted about the same as SD media cards, which manage to preserve the data when copied from camera to Mac.    My big question is, do you still have the photos on media cards? You might just want to get a media card reader on your Mac, if the photos are not on SD cards, and transfer them over with the media card reader.
I do believe Retina MacBook Pros all have SD card readers built-in.
Note: I've asked this be moved to the MacBook Pro forum. MacBook without the secondary name refers to the consumer notebook Apple stopped making in 2011.

How can I reformat my portable hard drive?

I have a Seagate 1TB portable hard drive, connected by USB to my MacBook Pro.
I use it as my Time Machine.
I have been getting error messages saying the drive is not working.
I have tried to repair it via Disk Utility but get this message:
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
1. How can I repair it and protect the files I have on it?
2. Alternatively, how can I wipe it and start again as a new Time Machine?
Thank you

In Disk Utility select that external drive then click the Partition tab. Then select One partition from the Partition Layout drop down and make sure it is set to a GUID partition table, that is under the Options button, and the format is set to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Then Click the Apply Button. If the drive is still good it will be partitions and formatted and then can be used for a TM backup drive.
But I suspect either the drive is failing or the electronics in the drive enclosure are failing. In the first case there isn't much you can do about a failing hard drive except replace it. On the second part if the enclosure electronics are failing then you can take the physical hard drive out that enclosure and connect it to your mac with a SATA to USB adapter or put it in another enclosure.
Then you have the simple fact the Apple Mac notebook computers always seem to have a problem with these USB Bus powered external hard drives. It seems the USB port on Mac notebook don't put out enough power on the USB port to fully power up these type of drives. They do some times but not always. One work around for that is to use a Y USB cable that connect to 2 USB ports at the same time to supply more power to the drive.

Portable Hard Drive will not show up in Disk Utility

I purchased a Toshiba Canvio Slim 500 GB hard drive a few months ago before I updated my computer to Mac OSX Version 10.6.8. I was running out of Hard Drive Space since I bought my computer in 2009 and decided to use a portable hard drive to store some of my personal information. I was able to read and successfully transfer data to the hard drive, but then I updated my computer to 10.6.8 and now I can't access it at all. It won't even show up in Disk Utility. I read on a few forums that some people were having the same problem as I was and they bought a y-cable adapter to power the hard drive through two usb cables. I bought one and tried it out and I'm still not having any luck. I tried using my girlfriend's computer to see if I can access it from her computer and it shows up in disk utility, but I can't access it. The lights turn on and I can hear it working like it worked the first day I used it, but nothing is happening. Please help me fix the problem.

Evidence, as scant as it is from Disk Utility, suggests the Toshiba external
HDD is indeed without Partion Map Scheme, has no files on it, unformatted.
So I wonder if there isn't a wire or defective circuit inside the box (enclosure)
that may be hiding access to the actual HDD unit inside there. Those kinds
of enclosures generally use a laptop 2.5" HDD since they can run on USB
power from the port. Matching up the internal HDD from that case, with an
other one with correct life support (connections) is a way to test it.
However if the Toshiba HD is a 3.5" standard drive, a larger enclosure, or
an adapter that simply plugs into the connections of the bare hard drive,
would be a way to access that external drive. These 'drive adapters' can
work with both SATA and IDE hard drives; or just one of the two. They
run in the range of $40 or so, and essentially are a wire kit with a power
adapter to spin the drive, but some do not even have the adapter, so as
to still use USB power for smaller drives of slower disc RPM speed.
Most competent computer stores with a skilled staff would know of these.
However some of the smaller HDD enclosures may be hard to open up.
And if there were a Toshiba warranty, this action could void the same.
Adapters would be to 'test the idea of recovering any data,' if enclosure
the drive shipped in has somehow developed a defect. Though it may
be if there is a defect, it may have existed at a point in time to affect
the actual save-to-disk process. Or later. A wire could be not allowing
information to be received, if broken or circuit damages, by the Mac.
But by the look of the Disk Utility's partition map, along with the other
earlier image that shows the same info in the bottom of the image of
the status, in Disk Description, this does not bode well for recovery.
I'm not sure what else to suggest. When the dust settles, Toshiba may
have a residual warranty that could only replace that one with another.
Some older mailorder catalogs show these kinds of adapters, some use
USB port power, others also include an AC adapter so standard faster
HDDs can be used without an enclosure. This also helps if one wants
temporary access to a hard disk drive, but does not want to install it.
•USB drive cable adapter kit SATA and IDE HDD - google results:
https://www.google.com/#q=USB+drive+cable+adapter+kit+SATA+and+IDE+HDD
Companies also make hot-swap docks to allow fast swapping of HDDs
of either or both 2.5" and 3.5" size, these have their own adapter and
one simply puts drives inside from the top, like a bread toaster.
Hopefully you can take the Toshiba along to a computer store and ask
a somewhat skilled person there about getting the cable adapter kit or
another enclosure. The cable adapter would cost less & be quicker, yet
that would still involve opening up the failed HDD's enclosure for access.
Good luck & happy computing!

Playing Music off of Portable Hard Drive

I have all my music on a portable hard drive which I use as a main storage location. I hook it up to my computer through USB. I've not had trouble playing until I downloaded the latest version of iTunes. All my drivers are current.
The problem is that I've been playing through a list of songs, and part way through the songs, music stops coming out of the speakers. iTunes still is playing something, but the music isn't coming out. The music will pick back up when it gets to the next song. It always picks back up on the next song.
Anyone having similar issues?
Thanks,
Jon

Actually, what I've realized is when I have a VPN connection open, it has the problem. I tried disabling searching for shared music and sharing my music, and I still had the same issue with my VPN connection open. When I close the connection, everything is just dandy, but if I open it, music stops playing. Anyone know of a way to get around this? The VPN client I am using is Cisco Systems VPN.

Portable hard drive problems

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