Recognising external hard drive problems

My new Macbook Pro won't recognise the external hard drive I'm trying to read. The external EIDE interface HDD is from my dead G4 Powerbook (OS X 10.4.2) and it is in a 'Mobile Disk' external data storage case that is allegedly compatible with Macs. The instruction booklet says that the necessary software is on my version of OS X (10.6.5) and that "all devices must select and jump to Master Mode".
I've plugged in but my macbook pro cannot see the external HDD, although it is ok with my usb flash drives. Can anyone help? How do I get my macbook to select and jump to Master Mode and then recognise the external HDD

The "select and jump to master" comment is an instruction for you to do with your hardware on your notebook EIDE drive. The drive has a 44 pin connector, of which 40 pins are used for data, and the other 4 are generally used for setting Master/Slave/Cable Select, just like with a desktop drive. You need to determine which pins to short together to force the drive into "master" mode. That is usually drive specific, so you would need to get that info from the support site of your drive's manufacturer.

Similar Messages

Won't recognise external hard drive.

Hi there I don't know If this is the right section, If not please forgive me.
Right I have a MacBook an I connected my external hard drive to it for time machine. I have windows installed on my laptop an I wanted to transfer a few files between the partitions so tryed connecting the hard drive, but it doesn't seem to sense that it's connected. It recognises mini USB sticks so it's not a USB problem.
Has anyone experianced anything else like this? An know how I can get windows to recognise my HD?
Thanks for any help u can give

Windows can't read Mac Extended formatted drives (which is the drive format that Time Machine requires). Two options are: either connect the drive back on the Mac, and use network sharing, or purchase MacDrive if you think you'll need regular drive sharing between the two machines.
Matt

External hard drive problem, please help!

I have a SEAGATE external hard drive which I had associated with Time machine so its file system was HFS+ journaled.
when i turn the hdd on a window pop up comes on the screen telling me to either initialize, ignore or eject.
if i go to disk utility the hard disk shows as disk1s2 and that its format is FAT32.
trying to repairing it/fixing through Disk utility gives me the following error
Verifying volume “disk1s2”
** /dev/disk1s2
Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
however if i go to terminal and type fsck -f -y /dev/disk1s2
after a few fixes the following output was given
Andrew:~ Andrew$ fsck_hfs -f -d -y /dev/disk1s2
** /dev/rdisk1s2
Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=1024 cacheSize=32768K.
Journal replayed successfully or journal was empty
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
privdir_valence=13289, calc_dirlinks=35218, calc_dirinode=13289
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Everything appears to be OK.
so here it recognises its name and everything.
what's wrong?
Thanks!

amarkitanis wrote:
when i turn the hdd on a window pop up comes on the screen telling me to either initialize, ignore or eject.
If you don't have any data on the drive, you may want to initialize the disk. Otherwise I would check out DiskWarrior.
Cole

Lastest Update 10.4.3 & External Hard Drive Problems?

My problems started 2 days ago when I could not copy new music to my ipod shuffle. I kept getting error "...could not be read from or written to..." I had run the new ipod update 1.1.3 so I restored to factory settings and used previous updater 1.1.2. Seemed to be fine for the time being. Later I tried to import music from a CD, wouldn't import, same message. Tried to download a song from the Music Store, same thing.
(For some additional info, I have 2 external hard drives. On hard drive One I keep my iTunes media, iPhoto media and a mirror backup of my Documents folder from my internal drive, and miscellaneous other big files I don't want to bog down my internal drive. My second external hard drive is just for digital media when running final cut pro. I dont' use this drive much. The first hard drive is not partitioned but the second one is and I noticed yesterday that only one partition was coming up.
I began to realize that my problem with iTunes was not with iTunes itself but a drive issue. I did a quick test and set the internal drive as the main drive to store iTunes music to and did a test download from the Music Store and it worked just fine. So now my problem is something related to perhaps the latest update to 10.4.3 and my external drives.
Just a couple things I tried this morning before I had to leave for work.
1)Tried to copy a file to the external drive one and it wouldn't copy. Got a message saying the file name was too long, which no matter how short I make the name, nothing will copy to the drive.
2) Tried to open a photo from the external drive in Photoshop and it wouldn't open.
3) Strangley, I can still just play music in iTunes even though coming off the same drive as the above issue #2.
4) General question. When I do updates is it wise to not have external drives turned on when updating. I remembered that I did have them turned on when I did lastest update.
Perhaps this is my error.
Anyone else having external hard drive issues, please send your ideas my way...
thanks

I did install the combo update 10.4.3 again and it helped one of my drives. Luckily it's the one I use everyday with my iTunes, and iPhoto libraries and all my other important stuff. The second drive that's partitioned into 3 parts still had problems. One more partition came back bur the third part I just couldn't retrieve and had to blank it. I also had an issue with a corrupt iphoto library and had to rebuild my library.
So I'm almost back up to having my problems resolved. I have also noticed speed issues. Things seem a bit slower since the update. I'll keep workin on it.

Time machine, finder save to external hard drive problems

I have a new 2.26 GHz mini and I wanted to get bootcamp going and install windows xp. The instructions suggested to backup the hard drive and I thought this is a great time to try the time machine. I plugged in a external hard drive, opened time machine (Time machine said it needed 29 GB for full backup and the drive had 32 GB free), selected the drive, and let the "backup count down(I think it was a minute and a half)" run down to zero. Time machine started backing up the my main drive to the external drive no problem. It was running good (100MB in 5-10 seconds) for a little while when I noticed that it had reached 2.3 GB and was not going any higher. I let it stay like that for about 5 minutes thinking that maybe it would start going again. No luck. I shut down time machine and saw a finder window with the progress bar behind it saying 2.3 GB. I push the stop button and it said stopping, but it would not stop and disappear like it should. I relaunch the finder and the icons on the desktop disappeared and would not come back. I relaunched repeatedly but they would not come back. Since the bar at the top of the screen would not come back I had to hold in the power button to shut down the computer.
Upon restart everything seemed to work fine until I tried time machine again and it would not work. So I tried to manually backup the files to the external drive. When I copied some files the little finder window popped up and said, zero KB of 290 MB, and would not change. I left it running while opened a browser and did a search for an answer to my problems. After about a half an hour I went back and saw that some files had been transferred. When I looked in the Activity monitor, I saw it was saving the files very slowly. I went to the finder progress bar and when I hit the stop button, it would say stopping but it wouldn't. I would have to relaunch the finder to make it stop. Then I tried to copy the files to a shared drive on my network and the same thing happens.
Before using the time machine both these drives worked no problems. I went to the shared drive computer and used that machine to copy the files from the mini. All files transferred no problems. So now I'm trying to find out what is wrong with my mini. It seems that it has to do with the finder since it effects both the usb and ethernet hard drives. All other functions work as they should. I don't know if anyone has had this problem after using time machine but any help would be appreciated.
Also I tried deleting my com.apple.finder.plist and relaunch the finder. No change.
Scott

Batlo wrote:
(Time machine said it needed 29 GB for full backup and the drive had 32 GB free)
That's much too small for your backups. Time Machine usually needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up (see #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum).
I noticed that it had reached 2.3 GB and was not going any higher. I let it stay like that for about 5 minutes thinking that maybe it would start going again. No luck. I shut down time machine and saw a finder window with the progress bar behind it saying 2.3 GB.
That sounds like the drive is not formatted properly. See #C1 in the Start with the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
The other problems may have the same cause.
Most likely, it's set up for Windoze and not suitable for Time Machine. With only 32 GB free, you must have other data on the drive, so you probably can't erase it and reformat it for Time Machine.
Report back with your findings for the *Partition Map Scheme* and Format of the drive (per #C1), and we can figure out what to do next.

IMovie HD projects on an external hard drive problems?

I've recently been making a highlight tape for my football team. Since i dont want to take up that much space on my computer, I've decided to use an external hard drive. Making this project means taking DVD's that arent in the correct format and ripping them into the right format. I then save this onto the external hard drive. Then i import them into IMovie, cut the clips i want, and save it. I save it to the external hard drive. A couple days later I'll open the project back up, to continue work on it, and it wont work. I can see the thumbnails of all the different clips, and when i click on them, the monitor goes black and nothing plays. But, the weird thing is that some of the clips worked. 4 out of about 30 of the 5 to 10 second clips worked. Im wondering if any one has had problems with this and any suggestions they might have to fix it. Thanks!

Hi jwgoldsmith - welcome to the forum!
Are you sure that the external drive is formatted for Mac computers? It must be MAC OS EXTENDED, not FAT 32 or such. If you need to re-format, make sure you have saved important files to some other drive as re-formatting erases everything.

MacBook hard drive transform into an external hard drive problem

My macbook pro early 2008 just died. The mother circuit fried and well its not usuable anymore and the repair for it are like 900$. Having alot of data in my macbook hard drive , i ask the guy that work at the genius bar to take out of macbook hard drive.
then i install the hard drive in a enclosure kit to transform it into a portable external hard drive. My problem is:
It only read the Window partition info and doesnt even give the choice to view my Mac partition.
i divided my Macbook HD with bootcamp and i divided the window partition to only have 30 G and the rest (280g) to leave it for my Mac exploitation.
The HD cant seen to find my Mac partition and only shows the data i got on my Window partition, i was wondering wat can i do to get my HD to see the data of my MAC partition
Thx in advance for the answers

There are third party programs for Windows to read HFS+, and I won't promise anything, but a Linux LiveCD may work as well. I don't have any names off the top of my head for those third party programs, but google something like "Windows HFS+" and you should be able to come up with a few leads.
But in general, yes, you'll need a Mac to read a Mac partition.

Final Cut Pro X and external hard drive problem

We are having trouble getting Final Cut Pro X to recoginse our external hard drive. It is works fine with i movie. We are very new to all of this and desperate for any help.
We have read a previous discussion that recommended we go to disk utilities and change format (currently saying windows ntfs) but worried if we either do "erase or partition 1 " we will erase everything off the external hard drive???
Thank you

We only have the one hard drive and originally formatted it thinking we would use it on a windows computer. Is it strange that it is recognised on I Movie but not FC? If we change the format to MacOS Extended (journaled) we are worried if we apply this it will erase what we have (as says something about this)? We are non tech people and don't know what we are doing!!!

ITunes on External Hard Drive Problem

I have moved my iTunes onto an external hard drive. Problem is I have to find original file every time I want to hear a track. Please help!!!!

Quit iTunes.
Move everything back where it was.
Open iTunes.
iTunes prefs -> Advanced. Make sure the iTunes musci folder location is set to where you want the music to be.
iTunes menu File -> Library -> Consolidate.
This will copy everything to the location you set in prefs and use that location for everything from now on.
The external must be on & connected before launching iTunes.

ITunes on Macbook Air doesn't recognise external hard drive once ejected

I just bought MacBook Air less than two weeks ago and I'm loving it and I successfully mapped my iTunes to my music library, which is stored on an external hard drive. Howeve, whenever I eject the external hard drive to use the MacBook Air in a mobile setting and then reconnect it, my iTunes doesnt remap to the library. This never happened on my PC so I was wondering if there was a work-around/solution and if this is a common problem?

Think ive just found the problem.
It seems as though I needed to "unlock" the hard drive by useing the unlock icon in the WD icon on the desktop.
I forgot I had made a password for it and also didnt realise I had to enter the WD software that comes with the hard drive which automatically appears on the desktop when you turn it on or plug it in.

External Hard Drive problems with iTunes and iPod

I recently purchased a 320 gig external hard drive for my computer, hoping in part to load my iTunes library onto it. Obviously I'd have much more room on disc than my actual iPod, so I was going to manually manage my music (an option I didn't have selected on my iPod before).
I followed all the online help topics which have all been helpful so far. I organized my music files, changed my directory, consolidated my library, and now everything is on the external hard drive and is working just fine.
The problem comes when I connect my iPod. iTunes barely even seems to recognize my iPod all of a sudden, saying that it has been corrupted and needs to be restored. When I try restoring it, nothing happens, and I can't seem to do a thing about it through iTunes. Of course, there's actually nothing wrong with the iPod at all, since it still works fine and plays music exactly the same as before. It simply won't update or do anything at all when hooked up to my computer.
I know this has something to do with the new hard drive, since everything was just fine a few hours ago, I just can't figure out why I can't get my iPod to sync all of a sudden. Like I said, my iPod is working fine otherwise, iTunes is playing music through the external hard drive without any issues, and I haven't touched any files other than music files (I haven't even deleted them off my original hard drive yet, so all the original fines remain unchanged, even though I switched the directory).
To the best of my knowledge, all my software is up to date, and the iPod is a 30 gig photo. Any ideas?
pc Windows XP

Yeah, I gave the new drive the letter Z, so there shouldn't have been any conflicts there. I also tried your other suggestion, and while the computer recognized my external hard drive, it didn't seem to make any difference once I plugged in the iPod again.
I've been wrestling with this for days now. I've tried changing the drive letters for both the external hard drive and my iPod several times (but no matter what, the iPod always seems to take F when it's unplugged and then plugged back in). I've tried restoring the iPod on multiple occasions. I've tried reinstalling all my USB drivers. I've consolidated my music library on several occasions (I now have two identical libraries on my external hard drive), yet annoyingly, iTunes seems to keep switching file paths away from the external hard drive and back to their original locations on the C drive. I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space, not house 30 gigs of media on it. That's what this new external hard drive is for.
Somehow, I was able to get them both to be recognized at the same time, but it never lasts long. I'll start iTunes with the external hard drive disconnected, plug in my iPod, wait for the iPod screen to come up in iTunes, then plug my external hard drive back in. Then, I can miraculously start to transfer music back onto my iPod, but iTunes doesn't seem to want this to happen for some reason, and will usually cut off the transfer. So far I've managed to put three whole songs on my iPod.
So now I'm trying to do two things. One, the same as before, get my computer and iTunes to recognize both my iPod and my external hard dive at the same time. And two, get iTunes to stop changing the file paths back to the C drive. These files are already on my external hard drive and don't need to change.
(As a side note, I should comment on how helpful people are on this discussion board. The Apple representitives I called on several occasions seemed totally unwilling to help, acting more like pushy salesmen than anything, while people here seem to be much more friendly and knowledgeable. Just thought it needed to be said.)
pc Windows XP

Aperture Export to External Hard Drive - Problem

I have a problem I'm hoping you can help me with. Bear with me here...I decided to backup my aperture library to an external hard drive, but I wanted to do so by exporting about 6 GIGS of RAW photos instead of using the vault.
So, I selected all the photos, clicked file/export masters and selected the external hard drive and the folder within that drive. An error occurred about 3/4 of the way thought the export, and aperture crashed. Now here's the problem: For some reason, my computer is telling me all the files that succeeded in exporting are taking up my HD memory, not the external drive's. When I look for the photos, they don't exist anywhere. They're not on the external drive nor are they on my hard drive. When I go back into Aperture and try to export a photo, it shows me the last export was to the external drive. It's baffling. It says the export was to:
mac/volume/externaldrive
Strangely, there is no such folder as "volume" on my mac.
So, now I've lost about 5 GB of space on my HD and I have no idea how to reclaim that memory. Does anyone know what could have happened? This is critical for me because I only have about 1 GB of space on my HD left.
Thanks for your help!

Oops...I meant to write that it's 60 GIGS.

Window 7 on macbook pro not recognising external hard drive

Hello
I have windows 7 installed on my macbook pro.My new external hard drive,western digital black caviah 2.5' 1tb with cradle is not recognised.I want to use it to back up my windows side of my macbook pro.Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks
John

canofsoup,
in Windows 7
press start, find computer > right click on computer and then in the drop down menu select manage
in the Computer Management window:
Select> Disk Management by click on it in the left menu
Right click on your External Drive > select mark partition as active
Format and enjoy
Cheers,
Sidonsoft

Partitioning external hard drive problem?

I bought a new Seagate 120GB ATA/100 internal hard drive which I put into an Apricorn Firewire enclosure to create an External Hard Drive. The Mac initialized the drive and I used Disk Utility to partition the disk into 2 partitions, one for 70GB and the second for 50GB. When I clicked on "Partition", the Mac changed the size from 70GB to 55.9GB, essetially dividing the partitions equally, which is not what I wanted.
How do I correct this to get a 70GB and a 50GB external hard drive?
Thanks
Herschel

Rod,
Finally solved the mystery. Obviously, it would not be in the Help section, even though I had followed the directions exactly. Once I typed in the Size: 70GB, I then had to click on the left hand grey, partition box. At that moment, the box enlarged and the 70GB did not change in the Size window. How is one supposed to know to do all of that????
Anyway, it worked.
By the way, the Apricon Enclosures came and the setup was extremely easy. Took about 5 minutes and it was a Firewire External Drive. I got very good support, getting answers by email and phone in hours, not days. They are even sending me a cable that was missing. No Problem.
Now, I will work through the SuperDuper program. In corresponding with them, they suggested strongly that I Clone, and not Image the drive.
Thanks
Herschel

Recognising external hard drive

I just got my laptop wiped at the mac store, because it was slowing right down, but now it won't recognise my external hard drive any more! is there anything I can do to get it recognised again? Just to clarify, before I wiped the laptop, the hard drive was recognised, and has all my document back up. Help!

Finder > Preferences > General
Make sure: External disks is selected.

Recognising external hard drive problems

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for