USB Drives auto-mounting at startup?

I am new to the Mac, on little issue i have with my wonderful MAC is when i restart\start up the Mac, the USB Drives \ USB jump drives are not automatically mounted like they do in windows.
In order for it to be found, i have to unplug and reconnect the cable, there has to be away to automount these USB drives, any ideas? thanks.

Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Discussions.
This may be an issue with the firmware on the USB devices you cited. The same behavior has been noted with certain FireWire drives: some must be powered on before startup to be recognized, others are not recognized unless they are powered-up after after startup.
For your USB hard drives, check with the manufacturer to see if there is a firmware upgrade available for the enclosure. For your USB Flash Drives, there's generally no way to update the firmware: you'll have to live with the behavior and connect them after you startup your Mac.
Note that before either disconnecting or powering off any mounted external drive — FireWire or USB, flash drive or hard drive — Eject the drive using any of the following methods:
• Click the drive's Eject icon in the Finder Sidebar.
• Drag the drive's desktop icon to the Trash.
• Control-click the drive's desktop icon, then select Eject from the resulting context menu.
• In Disk Utility, select the drive, then either:- Click Eject in the Disk Utility tool bar.
- Select File > Eject Disk.
- Press Command-E.Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

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USB drive only mounts as Local Drive Need it to mount as USB Drive to create recovery drive

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Not all USB 3.0 is Windows 8 compatible. It will have the compability logo on the back or front of the package.
I have run across several interesting articles that mention Windows 8 can create the Recovery Drive with I assume any flash drive.
http://lifehacker.com/5991431/how-to-create-a-recovery-flash-drive-for-windows-8-and-free-up-some-ha...
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/create-a-recovery-drive-in-windows-8/7261
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Prevent internal drive from mounting at startup

How do I easily prevent an internal hard drive from mounting at startup?
The machine has two internal drives and I want the upper drive to not mount unless needed. Both are bootable but lower is chosen as the startup drive.
Thanks for any help.
G5 dual 2.5 ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Take it out and put it in a removable FW + SATA case.
There is little need or reason to have it not mount. If it is backup or emergency drive, external would be preferable... and put internal drive bay to some other use.

USB Drive not mounting on Mac Pro, mounts on other Macs?

Hello.
I have a USB drive that mounts on just about every Mac (just about because I haven't tried on them all) in our studio. Intel & PPC, 10.5.6 and 10.4.11. But, when I try and mount it on my Mac Pro, it won't mount. The only difference (other than it being a Mac Pro) is that it's running 10.5.7 — though, I have an iMac at home running 10.5.7 and it mounts there no problem as well?
I've confirmed the USB ports working (all of them), but for some reason, this drive doesn't mount (can't see it in Disk Utility or other 3rd party drive utilities)?
Anyone have any suggestions?
Regards,
Kristin.

Yea, I've already tried both of those things and neither have worked.
So weird. I've read a lot of reports on these boards about 10.5.7 and USB not playing well together, but the fat that I've been able to get it to mount on a 10.5.7 machine...?
k.

Prevent drive from mounting at startup

There is an archived message on this same subject that never received a reply.
I perform my backups to a second internal drive and would like to prevent it from mounting at startup. Any ideas?
To clarify: I can come up with many ways to UNmount a drive when a user logs in however I'd like the drive to simply not mount at startup. Our machine runs unattended, without a user logged in, so allowing the "backup drive" to not mount would be safer and also conserve a bit of energy (as unmounted drives are allowed to spin down.)
Qny and all help appreciated.
G5 Dual 1.8 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
If the drive gets its power from the computer to start up, you can't prevent it from mounting at startup. If the drive is under its own power, just leave its switch turned off until you are ready to mount it. Both Firewire and USB are hot connectable, meaning you can power it while it is already connected to the computer. SCSI on the other hand is not.
I have found this to be one weakness of the LaCie d2 case design is that it gets some power from the computer, and hence always mounts at startup if plugged in to the wall and connected to the computer.
Only cases that have a true on/off switch won't do that.
Backing up to internal drives is not wise. The whole point of having a backup drive is to have a drive that is able to recover information if the computer should permanently fail with the computer along with it, and also if the computer is stolen.

WD hard drive not mounting on startup...

Grrr! This is driving me nuts! I have a WD MyBook Essential 2.0T USB hard drive connected to my iMac 27" i7, and every time I reboot the iMac, the drive fails to remount. Disk Utility doesn't recognize it, either. My only option is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it. The drive then shows up. But pulling a cable is so very not an acceptable solution! Don't think data can be corrupted if the drive hasn't mounted, but still....
I have four other, older WD drives and none do this. I had a more recent WD MyBook Essential drive that also wouldn't mount on startup on my old MacBook Pro, wouldn't take the updated firmware, and kept corrupting files, and I ultimately replaced it with this new 2.0T drive shortly after getting the new iMac. But even with a new drive, new iMac, and different cable, I still can't get the WD drive to mount upon reboot. Arrggghh!
Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
Thanks!

Steve Porritt wrote:
Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
Thanks!
Western Digital has been playing with their firmwares for years. They keep trying to maximize power efficiency to anticipate when the computer will use the drive and shut it down when it's not required. This isn't really a good thing for Time Machine, and I don't want any vendor to constantly change their firmware for their purposes. Many other companies seem to be able to build drives that just work.
I've updated the firmwares on many of these drives for clients because they performed so flakey with both USB and Firewire. I think there are problems with the firmwares being designed to maximize power consumption at the cost of not being always ready for Time Machine. Some of the WD firmware is actually on the drive itself, not the interface chipset, so problems return when you swap out the drives in the cases...
In addition, I have no need for all of the freeware/backup programs and other features they junk up these drives with. I just want reliable drives for backing up files, without having to uninstall their embedded programs. I found this review that pretty much sums it up for me: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1FBX79QK9IR9N/ref=cmcr_prviewpnt#R1FBX79QK9IR9N
Looks like you've been burned twice by their eager, innovative engineers.
I buy all of my external hard drives from OWC at http://www.macsales.com

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Is "Media 1" the name of the volume, or is it just "Media"?

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I've started to experience a frustrating problem whereby any connected USB drive fails to mount after the Mac has been to sleep. Rather alarmingly I get an error message saying "disk not ejected properly"
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THANKS

You can boot OS X from USB2 or FireWire as well as internal drives. There are also two unused SATA ports hidden away inside that OS X can use, but Vista/XP won't see. There is a $24 kit from NewerTech to connect SATA cable, run out PCI slot adapter, and use eSATA shielded cable to a 2-drive enclosure ($67+).
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I have external backup and restore drives for Vista, Mac OS boot drive, 2-drive RAID for Vista, and Vista boot drive.
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USB Drives Stopped Mounting

Does anyone know why my three USB drives have stopped mounting? Disk Utility can't see them either? One is a portable one that draws power from the bus, that is still drawing the power. Is it a permissions problem?

Mine is model HD-HB250U2, which has also been discontinued. I've fixed permissions twice, plus reset PRAM and NVRAM. Still can't mount the drive. It's ironic that this is the drive I'm using for Time Machine.
My next step was to install the 10.5.7 Combo update. I think I can do this, even though I'm at actually at 10.5.7, based on this article.
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070824012114701
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[SOLVED]usb drive not mounting

I get this error when I try to mount a usb drive in pcmanfm. It used to work correctly before. Since then I tried uninstalling fam and installed gamin. But now I have reverted back to fam and I still see this. What could be the issue? I can mount the drive manually in CLI, but I was just wondering what suddenly happened.
inxs ~ > pcmanfm
(pcmanfm:4961): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1 char 57: '-' is not a valid character following a '<' character; it may not begin an element name
(pcmanfm:4961): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1 char 57: '-' is not a valid character following a '<' character; it may not begin an element name
Last edited by Inxsible (2009-02-13 05:43:07)

spookyln wrote:
this working like a charm.
edit your /etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<!DOCTYPE pkconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/PolicyKit/1.0/config.dtd">

<config version="0.1">
<match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable">
<return result="yes"/>
</match>
</config>
Bingo!! Man you guys are good.

How do I make an internal hard drive not mount at startup?

I have an internal hard drive hooked to an ACARD ATA RAID controller that I use for backup purposes, and I would like to mount and unmount it manually. Disk Utility in OS9 and earlier had an option not to mount a disk at startup, but I see no such option in OS X.
I can manually unmount the drive in Disk Utility, but it always comes back up when I reboot. How can I keep the drive from mounting upon reboot?

I discovered this in a quick internet search.
http://www.macseven.com/files/20070719how_to_prevent_a_drive_volume_frommounting.html
Please note that I have never personally done this and am not recommending it. But maybe it will give you some guidance.
Regards,
Steve M.

External USB drive wont mount but USB Flash Drive Wll?

I have an external usb hard drive formatted to NTFS. When I plug it in it shows up in my file manager as New Volume.
When I click on it I get an error message that says
"Cannot get volume fstype alternative"
I have made changes to PolicyKit and it didnt fix it.
I also have a Corsair Flash Drive that has no problem mounting and I can access it without errors.
I dont have a clue how to fix it since one works and the other doesnt.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Last edited by ziegen (2009-06-07 02:22:15)

Have you got ntfs-3g installed?

Firewire drive not mounting on startup

Just got a new 2.3 Dual Core running Tiger (10.4.4) and FCP 5. Strange thing is that I've connected a Lacie to the FW800 port, formatted it extended not journaled and it works fine...but...it doesn't mount automatically when I power my G5 on (I have to switch it on) nor does it switch itself off when I power off.
I have two other G5 systems running 10.3.9 and another 8 Lacies and WD drives connected to them an they all mount fine when I switch on and power off when i shut down.
As a matter of interest I tested one of my old Lacies, connecting via USB2 and this starts fine when I power up.
I suppose my next test will be with my other Lacies but thought I would raise it here in case anyone can help.
Any replies much appreciated.

Thanks for your reply Chris. I always have the drives plugged in but I don't usually need to actually power them up - they switch on automatically when I power up my G5. The reason I posted this query was because I've been using Lacies for about 4 years now including several on two other G5 systems I have and I've never had to manually switch the drive on or off before.
I was thinking it might be something to do with Tiger and the fact I am connecting via FW800.

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The filenames on my external disk aren't showing up right. I've used and am using a typical GNOME setup, and this only started happening when I stopped upgrading for a long while, then went with a complete re-install.
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There's more info over at the cross-posted thread in Desktop Environments, but I felt it would be more appropriate to ask here instead.

I've "fixed" the issue by adding this line to /etc/fstab:
UUID=3BEC-9DA3 /media/WD\040Passport vfat rw,user,uid=1000,gid=100,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=0,noauto,flush 0 0
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How can I determined what time a disk or a USB drive was mounted?

I need to know when a device was mounted -- date and time preferably. How can I get that information?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We're users here and don't speak for "Apple Inc."
Use Console.app to view system logs.
Most of the history isn't saved for very long, except for crash logs, when programs or devices cause errors.
System logs are intended to troubleshoot computer hardware and software issues. Period.
I hesitated to add this, but I'm concerned about what I perceive as the 'tone' of your inquiry:
If you're hoping to prove or disprove something related to employment or the law, you should not rely on system logs alone as conclusive evidence of anything. It's easy for anyone to change the system date and time. A computer that is not connected to the internet would have no way of 'knowing' the correct time.

USB Drives auto-mounting at startup?

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