Recognizing external drives on network

I just set up my new MacBook and it does not recognize external drives on my network. Any suggestions?

Hi Mark,
There are a couple of rudimentary things you can do. Firstly, check to make sure your HD is set at 'OSX extended (journaled)' in the disc utility. The next thing would be to run the disc utility on your HD and your externals, iE, permissions repair and verification. Also check your Finder preferences to see what is checked to be displayed in the side bar. External drives and CDs may be unchecked.

Similar Messages

  • Not recognizing external drive - WD in an Enclosure...

    I hate to post this given all the other posts wrt external drive not working - wish I'd read those before making a purchase....
    I bought an internal WD 1TB drive, put it in an enclosure (Vantec NexStar 3) with a firewire 800 conection. Connected and formatted beutifully. Copied files to and deleted from without a problem...
    then started moving some iMovie files over - left the room for a while, came back (about 1/2 hour) and the WD drive was no longer recognized. Couldn't figure out how to get it back. I've managed to get it back a couple of times over the past 3 days, but hard to figure out the sequences that make it work.
    I also have a WD Network drive and it looks like there may be a conflict between the two as it is hard to get both on at the same time - though that has been successful a couple of times.
    2 questions:
    1) is there a way to set WD drives to not sleep? or to sleep in accordance with the Mac? (from all the reading of similar issues, it sounds like that could be an issue.)
    2) any idea how to check for drive conflicts on a Mac?
    any other ideas about what it is would be great!!
    I'm right now trying to get it connected so I can get the files off it, format it, and take it back - then purchase a Mac-specific drive from one of the known vendors I've been hearing about on this forum. (any recommendations about which would be better/best? 1TB or greater, firewire 800, for working on iMovie movies prediminently)
    Thanks in advance!

    WD drive mechanisms work very well. Most of my drives are currently WD, including the one that came installed inside my iMac. I like them because they seem to run quiet and cool. It's the Western Digital branded external drive enclosures that I've seen negative commentary about in various forums.
    is there a way to set WD drives to not sleep? or to sleep in accordance with the Mac?
    When the drive is in an external enclosure, I believe that is a function of the enclosure, not the drive mechanism. The enclosures I currently own are from Mac-oriented vendors (like OWC - www.macsales.com) and they can sense and follow the wake/sleep/off status of the Mac it is connected to automatically. I tend to buy such products from companies that specialize in supporting Mac users, because they have fully tested their products with Macs. In addition to OWC, others include LaCie, Macally, and G-Drive.
    any idea how to check for drive conflicts on a Mac?
    So the new drive (Vantec) is FireWire 800. Is the "WD network drive" connect via USB? I don't think there would be any conflict if it was connected over a network.
    Mac OS X does not have things like Windows drive letters, so the usual conflict is a hardware conflict, or a case of exceeding the power available on the bus (whether it's USB or FireWire). Disconnect all other peripherals except a standard keyboard/mouse. Make sure each drive works by itself. Then connect the two at the same time. Then add any other peripherals one at a time. And make note of when, and if, there is a failure.
    Also, it is easy to not consider how many devices you have connected to one power strip that is connected to one power outlet. There is a limit to how much power can go through a single power outlet, so if it looks even remotely crowded, be sure to spread the power cords for the iMac, external drives, second display, cell phone charger, USB hub, printer, your desk lamp, etc. to two or even three power strips connected to separate power outlets.

  • Can't See All Folders of External Drive on Network

    I recently got my first Mac - a beautiful MacBook, which I love. I switched from a WinXP system. I have loads of photos and iPod videos on an external drive (fairly new), and music on a separate external drive (both are USB). Both are connected to a desktop G5 system in one room of my house, and we're using a wireless network to see everything.
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    Gail Burt wrote:
    that grey, glass-tv-screen-looking icon
    Do you mean like this?
    I'm not an expert on this but I get these files now and again with my job where clients upload fonts to our FTP from a PC. These are files that OS X doesn't recognize or doesn't have the software to open it. It's probably because your drive was formatted for PC. Do the iPod video files have a file extension at the end of the filenames such as .mp4 or .mpeg (or whatever the correct extension is for iPod video, mp4 I think)? If not and in my experience, adding the correct extension to the file usually enables OS X to recognise and open the file. Try it with one of your files and see if it opens.

  • Finder is not recognizing external drive

    Yesterday, (Mar 28,2012) Finder was listing my external drive but when I went to eject the drive, it no longer showed in Finder. I cannot eject the drive properly. It is showing on my Desktop. I've done a disk utility verfy disk and it is recognized and no problem was found. I tried a new USB cable and the old Fire Wire (which doesn't work??). I used a different USB port but nothing seems to work. I've also tried restarting. I am running a MacBook Pro with 10.6.8. Any ideas?? 
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    Just a thought, if your external hdd shows up on the desktop and disk utility I would start simple and check Finder preferences.  Once Finder preferences is open click on the tab sidebar and see if External Disks is checked under Devices.  Also, you can properly eject the external hdd icon that shows up on the desktop by dragging and dropping it to the trashcan.
    If this didn't work, and what necronym didn't work, I would suggest deleting this file found at  /library/preferences/com.apple.finder.plist , then restart the computer.  Then test the external hdd with Finder again.

  • Share external drive with network PCs?

    Hi all-
    Figured I'd ask here as there are probably more people with an interest in sharing external drives...
    Anyway: I'm on a network, but need to set up a dedicated hard drive to share with 1 other person with a PC. The drive will hold all kinds of working files, and we need to be able to open and edit documents from this drive.
    Been reading around, but for some reason this task seems harder than I thought it would be...
    What's the best way to do this? If necessary, we can set up  a drive on his computer.
    Thanks!!
    Andrew

    Hi Linc-
    thanks for the help.
    Unfortunately, I'm not really following - and still have questions -
    1) Does the external drive need to be formatted NTSF?
    2) Can the drive be connected to either computer?
    3) What do you mean by the "credentials of a user on the server" ?  This sounds like I need to give my credentials to the other guy I want to share the folder with... that's not going to happen. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
    Not sure if I'm on the right track here..
    cheers
    Andrew

  • Usb port not recognizing external drive

    When I plug my external backup drive, Lacie, into either USB ports on my MacBook Pro, it is not recognizing the drive. Not sure if I powered down incorrectly. It use to recognize it. Help.

    Start by looking for the drive in the Apple System Profiler (from the Apple menu's far left Apple logo>About This Mac>More Info>Hardware (in left column) >USB.) If the drive is correctly powered and connected, it will show up here.
    If it doesn't show up, the problem is with the drive. With the drive plugged in, put your ear to the drive and listen for the whirring sound the drive makes when it is powered up. If it isn't making any sound, ot's either a bad drive or a bad power supply.
    If the drive is making sound , then the problem is probably the USB cable or your USB port. Try a different USB cable. This should fix the problem; if all the above tests were good and the drive still doesn't mount, it may be the USB controller in the Mac. That's a serious problem that requires repair or installation of an aftermarket USB controller.
    Hope this helps

  • Cannot mount external drive on network when no user logged in

    We have a few workstations on our network that have multiple accounts for users in order to preserve preferences, etc. An external hard drive attached to the each workstation, holds work done on that station by the different users. When all users are logged out, the external drive does not appear as a mountable device when trying to log into the workstation from another computer; only the internal drives are seen and mountable.
    Is there a way to make the external drive visible and available for mounting over the network when no user is logged in? The external drive is set to ignore permissions for that drive in the get info window.
    Additionally, when a user is logged in to the workstation and someone tries to log in over the network to access the external drive, the drive is sometimes available over the network and other times not. What causes this inconsistency?
    thx, j

    You really want to format it HFS+ wiyh GUID Partition scheme to ensure your data transfers correctly...
    How to format your disks...
    http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
    (On IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
    Not sure if that'll make it see it or not, but your data will be better. Besides, you should be able to install to that then & maybe boot from it to ease matters.

  • Trouble sharing external drive on network

    I have an 8 TB external drive connected to an old G5 on my network. There are 5 MacPros connected to the network -- all OS10.8. I want to be able to drop files onto the external drive for sharing/storage. File Sharing is on, but I cannot write to the disk, even from the G5 it is connected to. The "owner" of the external disk is logged in on the G5. What to do?? Thank you.

    I tried that but still can't see the external drive. All I can see are the G5's public folder and shared folder.
    Another thing - the owner of the drive is on a standard account (not Admin). Does that make a difference? Thanks.

  • Can't See External Drive on Network

    I want to share an external hard drive between two or more computers. My old hard drive (LaCie) just showed up on the network; however, the new (My Book) does not automatically appear. Several people have mentioned Sharepoints as the solution. When I open the Sharepoints, I don't have any idea what I am looking at or what I should be looking for. Can someone please provide me detailed, step-by-step instructions about how to use Sharepoints to share a hard drive among Macs?

    Please contact the developer of Sharepoints or visit their website for assistance with their product. You may need to also contact the manufacturer of your external drive for tech support. These discussions only provide user-to-user support for Apple products.
    Also you need to provide more extensive information on your network configuration.

  • External Drive On Network

    What i want is for the library on one computer's external drive to show up when the "music" tab under "library" is selected on another computer on my wireless network.
    I have two computers on a wireless network. I want to have the second computer just use the music folder which is on an external drive attached to the first. I have network shareing enabled. I have also set the "itunes music folder location", on the second computer, to the path, to that external drive, over the network by using edit/preferences/advanced/itunes music folder/ change/ and then selecting that path, and that didn't seem to work.
    Am i missing something?
    Any suggestions would be greatly apreciated.
    TIA

    If you set your library folder to the external harddrive you may still have to add all the songs allready in the folder.
    Make sure you uncheck "Copy songs to my itunes folder" before you do it and recheck if you want to do so afterwards (its in the advanced settings)
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  • Permissions locked on external drive when networked. But now when local.

    Here's my problem. Running the iTunes library from an external drive, and it's been running fine for months and months on the home network. Just bought a new aluminum iMac and suddenly permissions on the disk are screwed up. When the ext. disk is plugged into the new iMac permissions are fine, read and write. When plugged into AEBS there are only two entries under permissions: (unknown) which has read and write permissions, and 'everyone' which shows 'no access'.
    Can someone suggest a way to change the permissions that a networked drive has as opposed to a non networked drive, and why is there a difference:
    Thanks.

    why is there a difference:
    Leopard uses ACLs which which replaced posix permissions. ACL's are extendable.
    POSIX permissions if they were applied to an external drive they are ignored when disconnected from the computer that set them when plugged into another device.
    ACL's extendable so they are not lost when the drive is plugged into another device.
    If you want more detailed information on this google for ACLs vs POSIX.
    So your drive was plugged into your new iMac, the iMac applied ACL permission to it. So it messed with its original permissions.
    Try plugging the drive back into the new imac give everybody in the permission read/write access, Then plug the drive back into your AEBS.

  • Sharing external drive over network - problem

    Hey guys,
    I searched the forum, but nothing posted to other threads helped.
    I want to share a LaCie external USB drive over my network. It consists of two macs: a mac mini and a macbook running OSX 10.4.9.
    The external drive is formated in FAT32. I enabled sharing in the system pref. but I don't see it when trying to connect. I installed SharePoints and shared it from there, still nothing. I tried connecting using the "afp://..:" stuff, but I get an error message, saying I cannot connect.
    Got some ideas?

    Thanks for your reply
    Did you use the little "Show File System Attributes" yet?
    Yep, it's r&w
    Did you use the enable Windows(smb)Sharing to Shared?
    Yes
    Did you add Users yet?
    Yes, my username which i use to connect is added.

  • Greetings.  I need to know what to do if a formerly recognized external drive is no longer recognized by my iMac.

    Greetings.  I could use some advice here.
    I bought a WD external hard drive to back-up some files on my old iMac, but I reformatted it & set it up on my new iMac.
    After I backed up the files I wanted, I hooked the external drive to the new iMac, but now the new iMac doesn't recognize that external drive. 
    What should I do?
    I also have a flash drive that neither iMac will recognize.  Similar issue or no?
    Would appreciate any adice I can get on these situations.
    Thanks for you time and attention.

    You need to deal with your vendor or AppleCare Customer Relations. We can't tell you what to do nor what is possible.
    It's unfortunate you have had these problems, but we really cannot resolve them for you. We do not represent Apple nor can we tell you what to do other than attempt to resolve the issue either with your vendor or through Customer Relations.

  • Need help with Mac & PC not recognizing external drive (disk not readable)

    I am having trouble getting my computer(s) to recognize my Seagate External Drive.
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    Disk Identifier : disk4
    Media Name : ST316002 3A Media
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    USB Serial Number : 3LJ07T540000
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    Removable Media: Yes
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    Bus Power (mA): 500
    Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
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    Can Be Formatted : No
    Bootable : No
    Supports Journaling : No
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  • Restore from Time Machine not recognizing External Drive

    Hi all,
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    I just want my system back to what it looked like prior to my crash. Shouldnt Time Machine have this capability?
    Thank you for any help.

    Robin Ryan wrote:
    Hi all,
    I woke up the other day to a black screen and a frozen macbook pro (4 months old). It wouldn't boot up past the gray screen, so I tried to repair the drive with the install disc. It said that there are no errors (liar!), so I wiped it and tried to restore from my latest Time Machine backup (should be the day prior).
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    Migration assistant in OSX doesn't see my external drive, even though I can access it through finder.
    I just want my system back to what it looked like prior to my crash. Shouldnt Time Machine have this capability?
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    You should take your question to the Time Machine forum. More experts there on TM than you can ever imagine.
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342

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