USB Drive causes Boot Freeze

I added a new 3T external USB drive and my Mac freezes on bootup if the drive is on. Anyone know how to fix this?

Check: Apple / System Preferences / Startup Disk to verify that your Mac OS X disk is selected to startup from.
Try ejecting and turning off the External HD before shutting down the iMac. Then in reverse, startup the iMac and then turn on the External HD.
Alternatly: if there is bootable volume on the External HD that you want to boot from, turn on the External HD and then Startup the iMac in Startup Manager.
see > Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume

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I replaced the battery on my RAID card, when I booted my mac pro up, I get the folder with the question mark. I used a boot USB drive to boot and when I looked in the RAID utility, my RAID 5 volumes were no longer showing, advise.

I replaced the battery on my RAID card, when I booted my mac pro up, I get the folder with the question mark. I used a boot USB drive to boot and when I looked in the RAID utility, my RAID 5 volumes were no longer showing, advise.
Ernest

Not sure if I'm following you. I have 4 hard drives installed on my Mac Pro. I had a RAID 5 configured and functional for about 5 months. My battery died on the RAID card. I replaced the battery, seated the RAID card back in the slot I removed it from. When I booted to the USB drive to look in the RAID utility, I could see the battery is charged but my volumes are not showing.
The drives don't show in disk Utility. I built the RAID with the RAID Utility and they did show there. I have a early 2008 Mac Pro, Mavricks OS running Mac Server

[SOLVED] CD Drive causing boot problems

I'm trying to install Arch, but booting the install disk causes these errors to come up:
Loading /arch/x86_64/vmlinuz.....
Loading /arch/x86_64/archiso.img.............ready.
Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done.
Booting the kernel.
: : Starting udevd...
done.
: : Running Hook [udev]
: : Triggering uevents...[ 19.934456] usb 5-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[ 35.098044] usb 5-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[ 36.869505] ata8.00: exception Emask 0x52 SAct 0x0 SErr 0xffffffff action 0xe frozen
[ 36.869549] ata8: SError: { RecovData RecovComm UnrecovData Persist Proto HostInt PHYRdyChg PHYInt CommWake 10B8B Dispar BadCRC Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns UnrecFIS DevExch }
[ 36.869598] ata8.0: failed command: IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
[ 36.869639] ata8.0: cmd a1/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
[ 36.869640] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00 Emask 0x56 (ATA bus error)
[ 36.869721] ata 8.0: status: { DRDY }
It just stops there and won't continue to boot. Disconnecting the SATA cable from my CD drive and using a flash drive to boot fixes these issues, but I didn't continue with the install because I wasn't sure if I would be unable to boot with the drive plugged in later. This is my CD drive. It's connected to a SATA 6GB/s port on my motherboard. The drive works perfectly in Windows.
Also, if anyone knows anything about the USB error, help would be appreciated. That was the only error that did not go away after disconnecting my CD drive. I only have a keyboard, mouse, and WiFi dongle plugged in.
Last edited by nigh (2012-05-29 09:28:01)

Your issue with the SATA disc drive is a problem with Udev. Namely that some SATA disc drives do not support 16-byte pass-through commands coming from Udev. See this post for a longer explanation and the correct workaround:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=895404
Other guides online will say to comment out parts of Udev's 60-persistent-storage.rules file, but I have found that to not only not work, but mess up detection of the SATA hard drives.
So, after, or during, Arch installation using your USB stick:
Add
options libata atapi_passthru16=0
to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
Add
FILES="/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf"
to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
Rebuild kernel image with:
mkinitcpio -p linux
reboot
To narrow down your USB issue, maybe you could try booting with only one plugged in at a time to identify which one has the issue. Do they all three work even though one gives this message?

Problem with USB drive not writing/freezing on unmount.

I have a sandisk cruzer blade USB drive, which I have used for the past hours extensively. At one point, I couldn't manage to write data to it. It acted like it had, but it didn't, as it silently remounted as readonly. I solved this by remounting as rw and retried.
Now, when using the same drive, after writing around 2 GiB worth of data to it (creating files), and attempting to unmount, the unmount command freezes for a long period of time. I check dmesg and it says its frozen. So I open up another tab to try and rescue the writes I made by typing sync. This also freezes and generates dmesg messages.
As I'm typing this the commands seemed to have succeeded, but I'm wondering, what causes these problems? Is the problem known?
dmesg output:
[ 1440.339510] INFO: task umount:1540 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
[ 1440.339518] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
[ 1440.339523] umount D ffff88021da81950 0 1540 1539 0x00000004
[ 1440.339531] ffff8801d9ad7c70 0000000000000082 0000000000014500 ffff8801d9ad7fd8
[ 1440.339538] ffff8801d9ad7fd8 0000000000014500 ffff88021da81950 ffff88022ec94500
[ 1440.339545] ffff8801d9ad7bc0 ffffffff81091995 ffff88022211c380 0000000000000002
[ 1440.339551] Call Trace:
[ 1440.339565] [<ffffffff81091995>] ? check_preempt_curr+0x85/0xa0
[ 1440.339571] [<ffffffff8108ecfa>] ? ttwu_stat+0x9a/0x110
[ 1440.339579] [<ffffffff81093a0c>] ? try_to_wake_up+0x1fc/0x2c0
[ 1440.339586] [<ffffffff814e1029>] schedule+0x29/0x70
[ 1440.339593] [<ffffffff814dd909>] schedule_timeout+0x219/0x290
[ 1440.339599] [<ffffffff8107b746>] ? __queue_work+0x136/0x390
[ 1440.339606] [<ffffffff814e03c3>] wait_for_common+0xd3/0x180
[ 1440.339612] [<ffffffff81093b10>] ? wake_up_process+0x40/0x40
[ 1440.339617] [<ffffffff814e048d>] wait_for_completion+0x1d/0x20
[ 1440.339625] [<ffffffff811c8bd0>] writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0x80/0xb0
[ 1440.339648] [<ffffffff811c8c25>] writeback_inodes_sb+0x25/0x30
[ 1440.339655] [<ffffffff811cdedd>] sync_filesystem+0x2d/0xa0
[ 1440.339662] [<ffffffff811a1cb0>] generic_shutdown_super+0x30/0xe0
[ 1440.339668] [<ffffffff811a1f97>] kill_block_super+0x27/0x70
[ 1440.339678] [<ffffffff811a22fd>] deactivate_locked_super+0x3d/0x60
[ 1440.339684] [<ffffffff811a28e6>] deactivate_super+0x46/0x60
[ 1440.339689] [<ffffffff811bdeaf>] mntput_no_expire+0xef/0x150
[ 1440.339695] [<ffffffff811bf0b1>] SyS_umount+0x91/0x3b0
[ 1440.339701] [<ffffffff814ea5dd>] system_call_fastpath+0x1a/0x1f
[ 1560.250364] INFO: task umount:1540 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
[ 1560.250371] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
[ 1560.250375] umount D ffff88021da81950 0 1540 1539 0x00000004
[ 1560.250383] ffff8801d9ad7c70 0000000000000082 0000000000014500 ffff8801d9ad7fd8
[ 1560.250390] ffff8801d9ad7fd8 0000000000014500 ffff88021da81950 ffff88022ec94500
[ 1560.250397] ffff8801d9ad7bc0 ffffffff81091995 ffff88022211c380 0000000000000002
[ 1560.250403] Call Trace:
[ 1560.250416] [<ffffffff81091995>] ? check_preempt_curr+0x85/0xa0
[ 1560.250422] [<ffffffff8108ecfa>] ? ttwu_stat+0x9a/0x110
[ 1560.250429] [<ffffffff81093a0c>] ? try_to_wake_up+0x1fc/0x2c0
[ 1560.250435] [<ffffffff814e1029>] schedule+0x29/0x70
[ 1560.250442] [<ffffffff814dd909>] schedule_timeout+0x219/0x290
[ 1560.250448] [<ffffffff8107b746>] ? __queue_work+0x136/0x390
[ 1560.250454] [<ffffffff814e03c3>] wait_for_common+0xd3/0x180
[ 1560.250460] [<ffffffff81093b10>] ? wake_up_process+0x40/0x40
[ 1560.250465] [<ffffffff814e048d>] wait_for_completion+0x1d/0x20
[ 1560.250473] [<ffffffff811c8bd0>] writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0x80/0xb0
[ 1560.250493] [<ffffffff811c8c25>] writeback_inodes_sb+0x25/0x30
[ 1560.250499] [<ffffffff811cdedd>] sync_filesystem+0x2d/0xa0
[ 1560.250506] [<ffffffff811a1cb0>] generic_shutdown_super+0x30/0xe0
[ 1560.250513] [<ffffffff811a1f97>] kill_block_super+0x27/0x70
[ 1560.250522] [<ffffffff811a22fd>] deactivate_locked_super+0x3d/0x60
[ 1560.250528] [<ffffffff811a28e6>] deactivate_super+0x46/0x60
[ 1560.250533] [<ffffffff811bdeaf>] mntput_no_expire+0xef/0x150
[ 1560.250538] [<ffffffff811bf0b1>] SyS_umount+0x91/0x3b0
[ 1560.250545] [<ffffffff814ea5dd>] system_call_fastpath+0x1a/0x1f
[ 1560.250550] INFO: task sync:1547 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
[ 1560.250553] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
[ 1560.250556] sync D ffffffff811cdd00 0 1547 985 0x00000000
[ 1560.250561] ffff8801be2e1e68 0000000000000086 0000000000014500 ffff8801be2e1fd8
[ 1560.250567] ffff8801be2e1fd8 0000000000014500 ffff8801c1335460 ffff8801be2e1e70
[ 1560.250573] ffffffff811326ab ffff8801be2e1de0 ffff88020bdbc280 0000000000000080
[ 1560.250579] Call Trace:
[ 1560.250586] [<ffffffff811326ab>] ? filemap_fdatawait_range+0x17b/0x1a0
[ 1560.250594] [<ffffffff811cdd00>] ? generic_write_sync+0x60/0x60
[ 1560.250599] [<ffffffff814e1029>] schedule+0x29/0x70
[ 1560.250604] [<ffffffff814e1d85>] rwsem_down_read_failed+0xc5/0x120
[ 1560.250610] [<ffffffff81292744>] call_rwsem_down_read_failed+0x14/0x30
[ 1560.250616] [<ffffffff814dffa7>] ? down_read+0x17/0x20
[ 1560.250620] [<ffffffff811a34cc>] iterate_supers+0x9c/0x110
[ 1560.250628] [<ffffffff811cdf85>] sys_sync+0x35/0x90
[ 1560.250633] [<ffffffff814ea5dd>] system_call_fastpath+0x1a/0x1f

mr.MikyMaus wrote:You do know that flash memories have limited number of write cycles, right?
Limited how? Like all storage devices have (in other words, after a while they break)?
The drive is completely new, like 3 weeks or something.

Mini doesn't always connect bluetooth and external (USB) drives on boot

I have had a new Intel mini for 4 months now (we also have a PPC G5, which we love). In the last few weeks the mini started to not connect my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, nor recognize some of my USB peripherals when booting up. When this happens, it also makes a repeated "startup sound - bong!" echo when the start button is pressed. I have two external USB drives, one 500GB Phantom and one 500GB WD MyBook. When the Apple logo appears at boot, I can see the activity lights flashing on the drives as the BIOS interrogates the USB connections, but after the Leopard start up desktop appears, the only drive shown is Macintosh HD, the mouse pointer is at the top left of the display and will not move, nor will the keyboard do anything. I have read every post on this subject and tried all of the resets suggested. Sometimes this works after a few attempts, sometimes it takes 6 or more tries - disconnecting all cables, and turning the computer on again and again. Occasionally the WD MyBook drive appears on the desktop, yet still the Bluetooth is unresponsive and the other drive absent. I am getting frustrated having to disconnect everything and trying to boot this thing up, sometimes for one hour or longer before I can use it properly (all of my work is on the external drives).
There MUST be a firmware update for this by now, because I see that I am not the only one experiencing these problems, and this is obviously some problem with how the BIOS is communicating with the bus.

Hi amyta pdx-
I'd be careful jumping to conclusions or the troubleshooting process may get clouded. For one thing those WD drives are junk and most people using them eventually have problems.
What happens with everything disconnected from the Mac except a mouse connected to a USB port on the Mac and the monitor connected to the video port only?
Luck-
-DP

Attaching USB drive causes EX4 to become unresponsive.

Hello, I have tried to setup a usb to nas backup a few times and keep having the same problem. Upon attaching the 4TB usb drive (usb 3.0) to the back of the EX4 the NAS becomes unresponsive. I can no longer access it from the dashboard or the my cloud app on a mobile device. The app says it is offline. The ex4 is on but no drives are spinning. The usb drive is spinning however.
Once, I was able to see the EX4 and the attached USB drive in my file explorer. It showed the USB drive as a share. It said something like "Share 2_1." However the internal folders were not visible. Then the EX4 froze and went unresponsive - which caused me to try and manually shut it down. It did not power down and after making sure no data was being transferred I had to pull the power (as recommended on this forum).
Once I was able to get as far as setup up a USB to NAS backup on the dashboard. I set up the source and destination folders, etc. upon saving the job the EX4 is inaccessible, while the USB drive spins.
What's going on? Is it taking a long time to index the attached drive? Is it not compatible with the USB drive (seagate 4tb external NTFS USB 3.0)?
Any insight or advice would be great. Thanks!

By default the EX4 will scan the attached USB share for media. This process takes all the CPU of the EX4 for long periods of time, and can also lead tot he creation of numerous metadata directories in your attached drive. You should turn this off. In addition, if you use the USB drive for backups, the DEFAULT option for the EX4 is to commence backups when the drive is connected. This setting can be turned off in the GUI setup for the backup jobs. In addiiton, in my experience, NTFS drives take more overhead than EXT formatted drives.

After 10.5.6, external drives cause boot to hang

When I boot my iMac, it hangs with the grey apple on a white screen of I have external firewire drives attached. It never gets to the point where the little gear starts revolving. When I unplug the drives, the boot goes to completion.
After booting, I can use any number of external firewire drives with no problems. All of my drives have passed Disk Utility checks.
I have several firewire 400 and one firewire 800 drive, all cause the same problem. I have tried resetting the firmware, which doesn't help.

Sorry, my posting indicated in the section below about my machine, that I use 10.5.5, but I use 10.5.6.

USB ports causing lag/freezes

Hi,
Hoping I am posting this in the right place. So, just recently Ive been having some problems with my HP Pavilion laptop. Having a mouse plugged into any of the three USB ports causes sound lag, fps drop and stutters on the movement of the mouse.
I first noticed this in a game where the sound started breaking up along with some frame rate stutter. Checked sound drivers etc and no problems found. Eventually made the link between having a mouse plugged in and the problem occuring. To clarify, when I unplug the mouse all of the problems stop. I can plug the mouse back in and all will be fine for a few minutes and then the stuttering etc will start again.
The problem persists regardless of which port the mouse is plugged into and I have tried a couple of different mice so the problem seems to be internal to the laptop. All the mouse drivers are up to date as are the USB drivers.
Rather at a loss - im hoping someone here can shed some light on the issue.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

@-Banzai- ,
Hello and thank you for posting on the HP support forums. This may be due to recent windows updates.
Please try doing a system restore back before the problem started.
Using Microsoft System Restore (Windows 8)
If that does not fix it then check this out.
Go to control panel, system, device manger....under Human Interface Devices, delete all items and reboot. The system will reinstall the drivers and hopefully your mouse will work.
Please let me know how things go.
Thank you again for posting and have a great day.
Please click the "Thumbs Up" on the bottom right of this post to say thank you if you appreciate the support I provide!
Also be sure to mark my post as “Accept as Solution" if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others who face the same challenge find the same solution.
D5GR
I work on behalf of HP

Copying to and from external drive causes Finder Freeze

I recently purchased a Shintaro USB HD dock to archive my many Gigs of Video footage.
I plug it all in and powered up without problems. Plugged a SATA disk into the dock it showed up (it was previously formated in an FW drive)
The drive showed up on the desktop and the files on it were there as well. When I try to either copy files to or from the dock the copy window comes up works for about 40% of whatever file I'm copying and then Freezes.
I've tried several disks and all do the same.
I cannot relaunch the finder, I cannot stop the process in Activity monitor, all I can do is power down, restart and try again.
I have tried using both a USB hub and hooked direct to the USB card in my PowerMac but the same thing happens everytime.
When I look at the external drive it has all the icons there but all the files are Zero Bytes.
Anybody got any ideas ?

Hi Brett,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Tiger Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
Use Disk Utility to Repair the external drives.
While still in Safe Mode, move these files to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist
Reboot & test.

Help - Unmounting external USB drives causes error to system drive

Hi,
I am having problems with my Mid 2009 24" iMac OS 10.6.7. When unmounting external drives(usb OR firewire), I get either a message that "your computer must be restarted...." or sometimes system freezes.
Upon reboot and examining system drive with Disk Utility, I will find file count and/or folder count errors. I must then reboot from my SL disc, repair the errors and reboot, after which the system seems to run without problems...
So far, upon reconnecting and mounting those external drives, I have found no errors or anything that would lead me to believe that they were not unmounted correctly...
Any help with this would be appreciated. It is beginning to be frustrating to go through this crash and repair of the system drive each time I try to use an external drive....
Thanks,
JP

I have heard others with this problem so I am really surprised none here can help. My iMac has just crashed for the third time with corrupted disks because of this problem.
I will try Macfixit or something. Thanks

USB drive causes high-pitched squeal...

I have the K8N Neo Platinum and when I plug my Lexar 128mb USB 2.0 drive into my back ports, a high pitch squeal emits from the motherboard.
The sounds actually stops when data is being passed through it, or when the power to it stops when I opt to safely remove it in the control panel icon. Anybody know how to stop this problem?

If you can't solve your issue and no one in the community can help, contact support to speak with a tech support agent at (800) 631-3811.
- Peter

NVidia Video Driver Causes Immediate freezing upon loading to desktop (K8N Neo2 Plat)...

after many a reinstall, order of loading drivers, i have finally traced my system's problem to the nvidia video drivers. i have no clue what to do. install everything (new nforce drivers, sp2, audio and ethernet drivers, windowsupdate, etc. EVERYTHING except running the nvidia video drivers package and the system does not freeze.
as soon as the video drivers are loaded, restart and once i get to the desktop it freezes. every single time. go into safe mode, remove video drivers, restart and the system doesn't freeze. fast write is disabled. all dram settings at auto. cool and quiet disableed. system specs are:
MSI K8N Neo2 Plat MB (bios is v1.3)
AMD64 3200+ Winchester Core
BFG 6800GT OC AGP Video Card
2*512MB Mushkin Dual Channel Blue Ram (2-3-3-6-1T at 200Mhz)
120GB WD Caviar 7200RPM 8MB Cache IDE HD
NEC ND3520A 16x DVD Burner
CoolerMaster Wave Master Aluminum Case
Coolermaster RS-450-ACLY Power Supply
any ideas?

well i'll be damned. spread spectrum. it was spread spectrum being enabled. there just isn't a more satifying feeling that thinking you figured out what was causing freezes and then finding out it's repeatable!!
spread spectrum on. freeze. reboot. freeze. reboot. freeze. spread spectrum disabled. reboot. no freeze. reboot. no freeze. reboot. no freeze. spread spectrum back on. reboot. freeze. reboot. freeze.
i love it.

USB Hub causes Boot Up to hang...

Hey all, I'm a newbie to this site and also to the world of Mac, I recently purchased a New iMac and its fantastic! Now I have a slight issue, I added a USB hub to the Mac and it works fine, all devices that are connected work with no issues what so ever, but when I turn off the Mac and reboot it, it hangs on the white screen, no Apple logo or the spinning loading wheel, that is until I unplug the USB hub and it boots right up!.. I have found also which is interesting, that if my iPod is not docked, the Mac boots up with no problems, so it seems like a conflict between the iPod and the Hub? Does this sound logical and is it also fixable? otherwise I just have to revert to unplugging my Hub everytime I boot up my Mac? Cheers guys, I hope you can help..
Darren

Hi, I tried what you said, but the Mac wont boot whether the iPod is docked or not, the only way it works now is to totally unplug my USB hub wait for it to boot up and plug it back in again? Maybe a dodgy hub? or is there another reason/ solution?
Cheers

Combo drive causes boot failure

How do you fix an iBook that will not boot from hard drive when the combo drive is plugged in to the logic board? If the drive cable is unplugged, the iBook will boot from the hard drive when connected to the firewire port. It will also boot from the logic board if the combo drive is unplugged. Is the problem the optical drive? Is it the cable? Is it the logic board?
The computer functions perfctly with the optcal drive removed.
G3 iBook 800mhz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Quote
Originally posted by whelmond
I have tried almost everything, nothing seems to work, I am trying to flash my BIOS.. but I don't know how.. (no FDD, and a NTFS filesystem..)
If you have the solution, please post it!!
last time I flased my BIOS I`ve done so from a Bootable cd
just created a Floppy image with dos and the BIOS image on it and set it as the Bootable image for the CD

I've downloaded Windows 7 onto my USB drive and Boot Camp does not recognize the disk.

Following the Apple Support manual, I've initiated the creation of a partition and downloaded Windows 7 from Microsoft's online store to a USB disk. When I attempt to initiate the creation of my partition to install Windows 7, I receive a notification that my installer disc could not be found.
Thanks in advance!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
If your Mac has got the SuperDrive, you can't install Windows from a USB disk

USB Drive causes Boot Freeze

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