Unable to access external USB drive on my windows machine

I have an XP SP2 box with several partitions. I Just purchased a MacMini (fisrt time apple user). I have joined the maac to the same workgroup as the XP box and can access all the partitions on the XP box with no problem. With the exception of the C: drive and the External USB drive.
I have the drive at Fat32 and can connect directly to the mac with no problems. Read, write all works fine. connect back to the XP box and I get an error -43. It ask for a user name and password and knows if I use the wrong password. I can even see a list of shares on the sub folders of the external drive but get the error when I try to access.
Thanks in advance
Mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.4)

This could be a smart design inside XP. FAT32 can't store file ownership so maybe it refuses to share a FAT format drve? From a security point of view this would be the right thing to do. On the other hand it could be a bug in XP that just by dumb lock looks like it is doing the right thing.
Either way it sounds like you have a good workaround: put the drive on the Mac and let the Mac share the drive. It's best if the drive is reformatted for the Mac so that user ownership and permissons can be used.
Don't worry one computer can't know how another's dive is formatted. The network hides this. All my shared files are on EXT3 formatted drives on a Linux server. All the clients see is "SBM".

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Can't access external USB Drive

I have a Seagate external USB drive that I'm trying to access. This drive has not been used in awhile, but as far as I know it ok.
When I plug it into my G4, and power it up, it never comes up on the desktop. Instead, I get a message saying "the disk you have inserted is not readable by this computer", and gives me the choice of "initialize", "ignore", or "eject".
This drive has worked in the near past. Why do I now not seem to be able to access the data on it?
I tried a "restart" with the external drive hooked up, but get the same message. I really don't think the drive is bad.
Is there any way I can force the computer to recognize an external drive?
Note: System Profiler sees the drive, but it just never mounts.

Hi Japamac, good to speak with you again. You have helped me in the past.
Sorry for the repeated posts in multiple forums. I've been desperately trying to figure this out, and was looking for maximum views of my problem.
A couple of days ago, I was able to get this drive to mount making me believe that is (was?) formatted for Mac. Nothing that I know of has changed since then except that now the drive will not mount.
Disk Utility sees the drive, but verify disk and all other choices are greyed out. Clicking on "mount disk" also has no affect.
Under disk utility, I clicked on the "info" tab for the external drive, and under "Partition type" it says "WindowsFat32" but I don't know what might account for that if the drive is Mac formatted.
My primary concern is if the data on this disk is still ok. If it can still be accessed on a PC, I can get together with a PC owner this weekend.

[Help Accessing External usb 1TB HD from windows 7 on Imac with Lion]

Hello to everyone, i would like some help and im not finding any solution on how to solve the problem. I upgraded from snow leopard to Lion, where i could share without any problem every file on mac hd or the external hd, no problems at all. Now using osx lion and its such a headache to share anything, i created a "sharing only" account and added it on the "file sharing" after enable "Share files and folders using SMB".
Now the problem is, i went to the "+" add button on the "Shared Folders" and added all folders there that i would like to use from my windows 7 PC, i can access everything that is on the macintosh HD, but i cant access anything that is on my external HD. I dont know if this information is relevant but im using paragon ntfs 9.0.5 to manage the use of the external ntfs HD. I tried "Apply permissions to enclosed items" on every user listed for the folders i want to access, but it didnt help either.
Thanks in advance.

Holding alt key does bring up the choices, but I never see the bootable USB or external DVD drive as options... I only see the 2 partitions - the main iMac and the partition created by Bootcamp to install windows.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro External Hard Drive - Share with Windows Machine?

Hi,
Others on this discussion have recommended the OWC Mercury Elite Pro External Hard Drive. Dumb question: my live-in girlfriend has a Dell XP laptop, and I have a MacBook. If we purchased an OWC hard drive with both firewire and USB, can we both use the external hard drive?
Thanks, David

You can certainly use their drives between a Mac and a PC. As mentioned, either format it FAT32 witht he 4GB file size restrictions or partition it.
You can also use a program called MacDrive. It give a Windows machine that ability to read and wtite to HFS+ partitions. I have used it and it works nicely.
There is a timed demo, so you can try it out and see if it meets your needs.

Unable to Access External Wireless Drive

I recently had to swap the harddisk on my macbook and re-install all my software. As a result, I can no longer access my Iomega Minimax Drive that I have connected to my Fritzbox Router. I can access the external drive via the desktop PC, but the Macbook cannot find or recognize the drive. The Macbook is connected, however, and I have Internet access.
Any suggestions or assistance would be much appreciated.

Ah, no. That certainly sounds like the problem though. A friend of mine set it up for me originally and I'm not too familiar with networking. How do I go about adding permission? On the router directly?
Thanks.

Trouble accessing files on external USB drive after 10.6.8 update

Upgraded to Mac 10.6.8 on my MacBook Pro (I'm not a techie, but the "About This Mac" thingy says 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 - I assume that means something to somebody). Since the upgrade, I've been having problems accessing data on an external HD connected via USB - there were no issues before the upgrade, but now it's impossible to even navigate to a particular file or subfolder half the time, as the process freezes 95% of the time (every so often I am able to get through, for no obvious reason) - usually I just get what looks like an empty folder and a little spinning thing in the bottom right-hand corner. Sometimes when I do get to a file - say it's a ZIP file - I'll try to unZIP it and the process will hang; if I try to drag it to the desktop and unZIP it there, I can't get it to copy to the desktop, I just get the "copying files" box and a bar that never shows any progress, it just hangs at zero bytes out of whatever it might be.
Also having intermittent issues with another external USB drive, which is the one I use for Time Machine - about one in every five backup attempts is successful, the rest of the time I get a message saying the backup couldn't be performed.
I have two external FireWire drives as well, and I'm having no trouble with either of those - so I'm assuming the problem is USB-related (and 10.6.8 related, since none of this was happening before the upgrade).
So - I'm wondering if anybody else is having the same issues, and f there's a solution that a non-techie like me could handle that won't make blood come out of my ears.
Cheers!

Thanks baltwo - the PRAM tip was helpful. For some reason I still have trouble accessing a few files, I'm putting that down to them being somehow corrupted. Eric, thanks, but I tried using Disk Utility and the communication problems I was having with the drive meant that the repair couldn't be performed. I may try again now that that side of things seems to be running a little more smoothly. Anyway, thank you both!

Access external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme USB via Windows & Mac

I have an Airport Extreme and I would like to connect an external hard drive to it via USB so that I can backup pictures, music, documents etc. I need to be able to see the external hard drive from my windows PC. I eventually will be buying a Mac so I would like to be able to also get to my pictures and documents via the MAC as well.
I currenlty have an iPhone, iPad and Apple TV so getting to the external drive from these devices would be a huge bonus also if that is possible.
I recently bought an ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive and I had to return it because it was only formatted for the PC. When I plugged it into my Airport Extreme, I could see the drive via the Airport Disk Utility but I could not see it from my PC and I could not map a drive to it. When I contacted ioSafe support, they said that what I was trying to do was not possible since I did not have a MAC available to me to reformat the drive.
I hope that I am not trying to accomplish the impossible because I will always need to live in a MAC/PC world.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

You must know people with Macs.. it is 2min work to plug a USB drive into a Mac Laptop and format it Mac OS extended with a quick format.. And that is better IMHO than buying a utility or buying a pre-formatted drive which are often more expensive for no very good or obvious reason.
Another option is a Linux boot disk.. Linux distributions have very similar command line tools to the Mac OS. (some are identical) and HFS+ has been available for ages in Linux.

Single-user mode: How to mount and access an external USB drive?

My MacBook Pro HD is acting up. Cannot boot normally or into "safe mode". Cannot reinstall OS without wiping out the HD. Need to recover some critical files but DiskUtil First Aid and Restore options cannot successfully complete. Problem traced down to "invalid node structure" which means I either have a hardware problem or my filesystem partition directory structure is corrupted. I need to recover some files that are not backed up (timin issue with my regular backup process).
I can boot into single-user mode, mount the root file system (/sbin/mount -uw /) and can see/navigate the rot filesystem structure via good UNIX command line. Here's what I would like to do (in single-user mode):
1. Mount an external USB drive (250 GB already formatted as Mac OS X Extended)
2. Copy various files and/or directories from my HD to the external USB drive (UNIX cp command)
I realize I could go spend $$ for the Disk Warrior or Data Rescue products (or something similar) that SHOULD help me recover my HD or files, but it seems silly to do this when I can see, touch and taste them from within single-user mode....
Comments? Suggestions?
TIA --
Trent
P.S. Once I've recovered my files, I'll try to reformat the HD and then reinstall the OS. And THEN go have Apple look at my machine (thank goodness for AppleCare coverage)!

Resolution:
1) Boot system in single-user mode (SUM) with external HD attached.
2) Execute the following UNIX CLI commands once SUM boot process is completed:
# fsck -fy
# mount -uw /
# mkdir /Volumes/target_directory
# mount -t hfs -w /dev/diskXXX /Volumes/target_directory
# cp -RXv /source_directory /Volumes/target_directory
Where XXX is the device-level name for your external HD's data partition. In my case this was /dev/disk1s2. It may take some experimentation to identify this device name if your system has multiple HD's.
3) Verify contents were successfully copied onto the /Volumes/target_directory.
Comments and observations:
- Do NOT use "/" as your source directory - cp will make a second (redundant) copy of /volumes/target_directory
- I was able to successfully copy ALL files off my HD despite the fsck command's "invalid node structure" error message with this simple procedure. YMMV, depending on the state of your HD.
- The repeated disk0s2: I/O error warnings displayed during the SUM boot process did not seem to have a negative effect on this procedure. I also received this same error warning intermittently as I navigated the mounted filesystem did not seem to be a problem, either. Again, YMMV.
Commercial software:
I downloaded ProSoft Engineering's Data Rescue 3 product (trial version) before spending $99 to attempt to recover my "bad" HD's data via mounting to a good system with FW target mode. It could not successfully complete its "QuickScan" process and immediately hung on block 0 of 390M during its "Deep Scan" process. The product did seem to function properly on an operational system. ProSoft's technical support was responsive and helpful but had no answer for my "Deep Scan" error.
I did not attempt to use Alsoft's Disk Warrior 4 product. I could not find any trial software available and was reluctant to spend $100 based upon the mixed reviews and comments on this discussion forum as well as other reviews. Alsoft does claim to address the "invalid node structure" error in their marketing materials. Hindsight being 20/20 - I saved $100 by using this simple procedure.
Final note:
Neither Leopard nor Snow Leopard's installation DVD could recognize the bad internal HD when trying to do a reinstall. While DiskUtil was able to "see" the bad internal drive it immediately failed when I tried to do an "erase and format". Took the system to my local Apple store and the Genius ran a tool called "SMART Utility" from Volitans Software (www.volitans-software.com). SMART utility confirmed that my HD was bad so it was replaced. AppleCare pays for itself (once again!).

External USB drive goes to sleep, iPhoto complains when it try's to access it and exits

I moved my iPhoto to an external USB Harddrive and everything at first worked fine. Now I get these errors sometimes "Your iPhoto Library is missing". iPhoto will exit and when you start it again everything is fine. What I think is happening is the external USB drive has gone to sleep due to inactivity. Is there a setting in OS X that I can control this with ? I ugly hack would be to set up a cron job to do a ls of the root external USB drive every 15min. Is there a special feature that you should look for when buying an external USB drive ? It is very iratating to get these messages from iPhoto and iTunes.
Thanks

Check your System/Energy Saver preference pane and and make sure this checkbox is unchecked.
OT

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.

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

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

Time Capsule external USB drive won't reconnect remotely over Back To My Mac

I'm running a Mac Mini at work, connected via ethernet to an enterprise network (I have no idea what routers they are using, or how they are set up).
At home, I have a MBP laptop and a Time Capsule (hardwired to cable modem) with an external USB drive attached.
All 3 machines (Mac Mini, MBP, TC via Airport Utility) have Back To My Mac switched on.
I can access the external USB drive on my home TC from my work Mac Mini....until the Mini falls asleep. When I wake it back up, the connection back to the TC fails. However....after restarting the Mini, the connection works again.
My first thought was that the corporate network / firewall / etc was causing the problem - not leaving correct ports open, or someting to that effect. However, I realised that if that were the case, restarting the Mini shouldn't help, but it does.
Does anyone have any idea how sleeping breaks being able to access a TC's external drive remotely over BTMM?
The Mac Mini is a 2.3GHz Core i5 with 8GB RAM and plenty of HD space.
The MBP is a 15" late 2013 retina, 2.6 GHz Core i7, 16 GB RAM, also plenty of HD space.
The TC is a 2 TB 4th generation model.
Thanks!
J

Sorry that did not work. This works well for me using Lacie drives, but I haven't tried Iomega.
Have you checked Iomega's site to see if any software/firmware updates available?
Also noticed during a quick search that a number of users are reporting mounting problems with Iomega. Not sure if this applies to you or not.
http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?search=Go&q=iomegadrive+won%27tmount

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Hi,
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Windows will not run from an external drive.

FSCK and reboot issues with external USB drive

I'm having an issue with an external USB hard drive I'm using. I've always had issues with this drive cause my reboot to "freeze" when it's mounted. Basically the system message with be sent out, but it doesn't actually proceed with the reboot. No switch to init 6 or anything, but the shutdown process is still active. I can continue to use the computer as usual, but I can't cancel the existing shutdown or try to enter init level 6 by hand. So I just got around this by unmounting the drive before I shutdown. However, lately when I try to unmount the drive I get an error saying that the drive is in use and I should check to see what processes are using it by runing lsof or fuser.
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David
[email protected]

Press the reset button on the device. It is located between the USB and power ports. Make sure to take-out the external USB drive before you reset the device. Or you can also restore the defaults by accessing the Administration tab > Factory Defaults sub-tab in the router’s web-based setup page. Check out this link for the set up; http://www6.nohold.net/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&docid=32cffead811249aea7e9fc6730bf59ad_KB25681_EN_v1.xml...

Unable to access external USB drive on my windows machine

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