Usb hard drive good/bad idea?

greetings,
I was informed that it was a bad idea to attach a usb hard drive because it will be running(spinning/processing) at all times awaiting commands to whomever needs to access via network. furthermore adding that this would effect longevity of the hard drive as well as creating heating issues. he suggested that a better solution is to setup an extra computer(which i have access to) as a server with all my hard drives attached.
my goal is to allow all to access a single hard drive via network.
so my questions are: 1) is it true that a usb hard drive attached to the ap extreme will running 24/7? & 2) which is the better solution to allow all to access a hard drive a) usb hard drive attached to the ap extreme or b) create a server with the extra mac mini?
thank you in advance for your responses!

Ok, in case anyone is interested, done a little research, flash drives are fat 32 format, the hd is ntfs format, just on a whim i tried a hub as Jerry had mentioned above since I had one laying around, no difference, so I reformatted my hd to fat 32, put partial music library on the hd, will try it today. Another note to this, a few people have said that if music is spread over 8 folders, only the 8 will show up, also you will have to manually select the folder to be played through media source, solution here is 1 massive folder, I will try this as well.

Similar Messages

Multiple USB hard drives - too much of a good thing?

How much throughput does USB on a late 2007 model Mini really have?
I ask because I have a USB audio interface and I'm thinking about buying a pair of USB hard drives too. Do I need to worry about trying to do too much through USB at once?

The problem with USB is that whilst it has a reasonably good theoretical 'speed' at 480Mbits/sec, the bus has no hardware controller dedicated to it, so the actual speed data can move is determined by how busy the system is doing other things. The 480Mbits/sec speed is thusly a burst value, not a sustainable one.
For the same reason, USB drives can be problematic if the intention is to continuously stream data (HD video for example) because while the drive(s) would likely be perfectly OK in moving files about (because the data can be moved at varying speed) for continuous data, USB can stall out.
Much will therefore depend on exactly what your drives are doing. Personally, I'd go for at least dual interface external drives containing both USB and firewire, and use the firewire option. Firewire has the advantage that it does have a hardware controller, so while it's 400MBits/sec speed is theoretically lower than USB2.0, it is a fully sustainable data rate, so for continuous streaming, more reliable.
I hope that makes some sense!

External USB hard drive not being recognized

Hello! I'm sure this has been posted before, but excuse my naivety with this sort of thing...
I have a mac mini 10.5.6 (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and I run the Time Machine function to an external usb hard drive. The hard drive worked fine (plugged into the usb port on an older keyboard), but I went out and bought a new aluminum apple keyboard (because they look so cool ^_^ ) - I plugged the external usb drive into the keyboard and it wasn't recognized, so I tried plugging the external drive directly into the mac mini, but it is still not recognized. It is not showing up in Disk Utility or in System Profiler
Help? I'd hate to have to give up this fancy keyboard...
Thank you!
Dr. E

I believe I had my external drive plugged into the (old) keyboard because with the old mac that I had didn't have a free usb port for it - so when I got the mini I just plugged things back in where they were. But I have always had the Time Machine back up to this drive (connected to the keyboard) though it has been slow (another reason I thought the new keyboard was a good idea).
I tried restarting the computer without the alu keyboard plugged in, but same problem of no drive showing up.
Here is what System Profiler has to say about my drive:
USB2.0 Storage Device:
Capacity: 93.16 GB
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x6830
Vendor ID: 0x04b4 (Cypress Semiconductor)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: DEF107920F07
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor
Location ID: 0x3d130000
Current Available (mA): 100
Current Required (mA): 0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
USB:
Capacity: 92.84 GB
Available: 53.14 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/USB
I don't know the brand or model as it has 'always' been in the case that in which it currently resides and I didn't physically buy the thing :\ I do know that no software was installed with the drive as I assumed that when I put all the old info from the original mac to the mini that it was the sort of thing that would carry over.
Sorry I'm not terribly helpful - Thank you!
Dr. E

2.5" external USB hard drive not recognized by my iMac

I have a small 2.5" external USB hard drive that my intel iMac will not mount or see. My 12" G4 Powerbook sees it fine and it is formatted in Mac OS Extended. My iMac is bootcamped and XP on my iMac sees the drive but not OS X Tiger on the iMac, (wierd) I have Tiger on both my Macs too.
Why does the intel based OS X refuse to see this external 2.5 HD. It sees a 3.5" USB one I have but not the small one. I know it is software.

Hey coby,
Well thanks for the star. Not sure I deserve it.
i then tried connecting the drive to each USB port again, and voila! i have found one it works in. I guess my computer's ports must be a little worn.
Hmm well try looking inside and see if there's some smutz in there, if the contacts are dirty or bent or worn.
i was starting to think i would have to go out and get a USB hub to give it some more power.
Is it powered off the USB? If so that actually might be a good idea since that puts a lot of strain on the connectors. Even if it's self powered it might be a good idea since it would take the strain off an obviously flakey USB.
richard

USB hard drive is not recognized on MBP running Lion

Hello,
I have:
- Freecom ToughDrive Pro USB hard drive
- New MBP running Lion 10.7.3
When I plug the disk in an USB port in the MBP, the light that indicates operation starts blinking but very lighltly colored and the disk is not recognized by the computer. I have put data on it using iMac Snow Leopard. I have plugged the disk into a MBP running Snow Leopard and it works. I have also tried another Lion (older MBP) and it also works.
What is wrong? How come the disk is not mounted or shown in Disk Utility. Can it be a power issue? Any ideas?
I have noticed there a lot of similar posts in the forum and none has been satisfactorily solved. Is this a mayor Lion bug? If yes, how can I downgrade to Snow Leopard?

dafnedr wrote:
Thanks for the reply.
However... how is it possible that with all other MBPs I have tried it works just fine? Has Apple lowered the power levels in recent models? The other MBP where I have tried the disk on are just over a year old, my current one is only a month old.
Are you saying that USB ports on different Apple computers are supplying different levels of power? That's psychotic! It should be a standard power level... or it should go up on newer models... not down!!!
I think I'm just gonna return this piece of scrape and get my old (one year old) MBP back... Snow Leopard was bliss compared to this... I rather go back than have to jump to a store to buy a cable to make something work that should work by default.
On the one Mac it does not work on that Mac does not put out enough power to fully power the drive. If it works on other Mac's we know that the drive works, so that question is answered. And it doesn't work on your newest Mac then there can only one answer, Not Enough Power is being put out by the USB port to fully power it.
Yes the one Mac that it is not working on has a lower USB power output. Why, I have no idea.
This is Very Common you can find posts about it on all notebook forums. Psychotic, No. Yes Mac is touted as "It Just Works" which is a flat out LIE.
Do what you think is best for you. Good Luck

Changing permissions on external usb hard drive

This is similar to the other thread about USB hard drive permissions, but I didn't want to hijack.
I just got the USB drive working, as root I can read and write to it.
As user it still automounts, but I don't have read write permissions. Here's some output:
[ali@misbarch ~]$ cd /media/disk
[ali@misbarch disk]$ ls -l
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2008-05-08 01:14 lost+found
The permissions tab in properties of /disk show:
Owner: root (root)
Access: Read & Write
Group: root
Access: Read only
Others: Read only
So I want to change "Others" to read and write also. I'm not very good with the chmod numbers, I've read the man page, but is that how I would do this? Would a simple
chmod 777 -R /media/disk
be advisable? Or is that just a bad work around and not the proper solution?
Once I got it readable, I copied the info off it as root, and I unmounted it, deleted the partition, created the partition, made an ext3 file system, all as root. Does that have anything to do with it?

stojic wrote:
There is a slightly better solution: change the group of /media/disk to storage, change permissions to 775 and add users that need to be able to write to disk to the storage group (you need to log out and log in that users before changes are visible).
So, as root:
# chgrp storage /media/disk
# chmod 775 /media/disk
# gpasswd -a user_name storage
This way everyone will be able to read the disk, but only root and users in storage group will be able to write to it. Still, if you want everyone to be able to read/write, chmod 777 is a good solution.
Nice solution, thanks, I'm already added to the group storage, but media/disk wasn't part of storage, it was part of root! Thanks for the solution and suggestions.

Can iTunes be On Laptop & Song on a USB Hard Drive?

I am running out of Room on my Laptop, I would like to run iTunes on the Laptop but have the Songs on a USB Hard-Drive -Can I do this?
And, How do I tell iTunes to find the Songs? Or, is there some way to have iTunes transfer the Songs on to the USB Hard-Drive?
Thanks

1) I copied the iTunes Folder from in/on My PC > My Music -without consolidating
Not necessarily a problem but it's a good idea. Sorry I didn't add that step.
If you have items in your iTunes library and they are stored outside of /Music/iTunes/iTunes media folder, then you need to consolidate.
By default, everything is copied to this folder when you install iTunes. However, if you go to iTunes prefs > Advanced and uncheck *Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library* then items will not be put into this folder.
This is when you would need to consolidate.
Generally, it's more a precautionary step.
Should I point back to that Folder and "Consolidate" it? (next part too)
Launch iTunes again holding Shift, select *Choose library* then select /Music/iTunes/ folder.
Then iTunes menu File > Library > Organize library > Consolidate.
After it finishes, quit iTunes.
2) Should I Export the Library to the New Drive -or Use Microsoft's Copy Command?
Neither. In Windows Explorer, just drag from /Music/ to the external drive.

I believe my macbook pro hard drive is bad. I erased the drive and reinstalled the OS and the macbook still runs really slow. I dont know if the hard drive is the issue.

I believe my macbook pro hard drive is bad. I erased the drive and reinstalled the OS and the macbook still runs really slow. I dont know if the hard drive is the issue.

Did you try an SMC reset too? It's easily done and none of those resets to the best of my knowledge hurt anything. When I was fooling with my system, which at one point was a home made Fusion setup, I needed to reset the SMC sometimes to get the drives recognized. Reading the documentation the sudden motion sensor is drive related but that seems to be about it.
Some more specifics may be needed about the drive itself, the model number of your unit, and the OS version you're running.
At present, the problem seems sort of odd to me. FWIW cable problems can be quite intermittent. I used Scannerz to find some of the problems on my original system that I later converted to a new HD and SSD combo. It can find lots of problems if you learn how to use it right (HD problems, logic board system faults, and cable problems) but you need to get a system at least partially up and running to use it, and it doesn't sound to me like your there right now (in other words, don't go out and buy it because at this point I don't know how it could help you)
Another word of advice would be to not go out and start throwing parts at a problem unless you have a good idea what the source of the problem is. If you have a logic board problem, new drives and new cables won't make it go away, you'll just be wasting your money. Logic board problems, cable problems, and drive problems can all have very similar end user symptoms. The article that I linked above named "Hard Drive Problems" has a section on general symptoms of problems and if you read the article it becomes clear there's a lot of overlap associated with different types of problems.
I assume that your unit isn't under warranty. If, by chance it is I wouldn't even fool with it and I'd take it to Apple and let them deal with the problem. You also might want to check with whatever Apple sources you have available to test your system, like an Apple store, and see how much they'll charge (if anything) to evaluate the system.
I certainly hope this helps.

USB Hard drive hangs KT4V Mainboard

Hi,
I am wondering if anyone else is having USB 2.0 problems with MSI KT4V Mainboards?
I am getting system hangs when an external (Acom Data) USB 2.0 hard drive is connected to the following:
MSI KT4V-L KT400 Mainboard
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
512MB PC3200 400 MHz DDR Memory
60 GB internal IDE hard drive
60GB External ACom Data USB 2.0 hard drive
Windows XP Pro
I have already updated every driver, bios, etc.. via the MSI Live Update 2 util. This is a brand new system. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Brent

wonkanoby - Yes, the external HD has its own powersupply. It was connected to an external powered hub, but I connected it directly to the mainboard... same hang results.
I have "legacy support" turned on in the bios. There are no hardware conflicts in the device manager.
I really think that this mainboard is either bad or the KT4V has problems with external USB hard drives. It only hangs when I have the hard drive connected. I have other USB devices connected and I don't have any problems. The drive is about 3 months old and was used on the previous mainboard (MSI 6380E KT333 w/AMD XP 1600+) on a USB 2.0 PCI card with no problems.
I have now put in the USB 2.0 PCI card on the KT4V mainboard and disabled the built in USB 2.0 ports. I will see if my luck is any better. If this works, the KT4V is definately going back.
Thanks again for any suggestions!
Brent

I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

Unfortunately, Time Machine backups that are stored on a drive that has been connected directly to a Mac are completely different than Time Machine backups that are stored on a Time Capsule.
Frankly, it is not worth the effort and trouble to try to transfer the old backups to the new Time Capsule.....my opinion....having done this in the past.
It is possible though, but I would not recommend it due to the complexity and downsides involved with this. To give you an idea of how to do this, check out this support article.
http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
Even if you transfer the "old" backups over to the Time Capsule successfully, Time Machine will not simply "add on" to the old backups.
Time Machine will make a new complete backup of your Mac and then add incremental backups from that point.
My advice.....start a new backup on the Time Capsule and move forward. Keep the USB hard drive around for a month, maybe 2 or 3 in case you need to go back to an old backup for some reason. At that time, you will not likely need the old backups at all since you will have a current 2-3 month history of new backups. At that point, you can erase the USB drive and use it for another purpose.

How to restore machine using a TM backup on a usb hard drive from older imac to a brand new iMac?

My imac (the one that had a superdrive in it), had a broken superdrive and was sent for repair. Whilst being "repaired" the screen was broken. I now have a brand new imac albeit without a dvd drive. My question is how to I restore my the old TM back up which had been made to an external usb hard drive to the new imac. Help files say that I should not restore from a TM file to a different machine and that I should use migration assistant. Whilst I can see the external usb drive in TM it is not being recognised in Migration assistant when I click on back up from a TM backup on another machine or disk.
Any ideas?
Just noticed that this new machine is running OSX 10.8.4 the broken imac was on mavericks

This is very simple first run Software Update on the new machine and get your machine upgraded to the most recent version of Mountain Lion 10.8.5. Install all other software updates Apple recommends in Software Update. Then care fully read Pondini's guide on using Migration Assistant located at:
http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html
Your migrated data will be in a new account, to access it log into the new account.
Also DO NOT repeat DO NOTuse Wi-Fi to migrate data, if your TM backup drive uses USB, then connect it via USB and follow the on-screen instructions as described in Pondini's guide.

USB hard drive not detected on reboot

I am running Windows 7 Ulitmate 64-bit on my 2011 15" Macbook Pro. I have a USB Hard Drive (WD My Passport SE - USB 3.0/2.0 - 1 TB).
The hard drive is formatted for HFS+ and I am running Mac Drive 8 to detect it in Windows.
For some reason when I reboot (in Windows), the hard drive won't be there until I unplug it and plug it back in.
This is really annoying! Can anybody help me? I'm pretty good with things like this but I can't think of any reason this shouldn't be working right.
HELP =T
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL

I am having the exact same problem. WD 1TB Passport. USB 3.0 drive. Running on Windows 7 Pro 64 via Bootcamp.
My 1TB Passport is formatted with FAT32 and works with Windows and Mac OS.
I was getting the same problem when I was running Windows XP Pro on the same MacBook Pro. I was hoping the upgrade to Windows 7 would remidy the issue but it did not.
The drive light is on in a steady state when I boot and I have the same symptoms as reported by everyone else above.
In my research, I am leaning towards thinking that it is a power issue related to the cable used to connect the USB 3.0 Drive or something to do with the USB driver for Bootcamp, but researching the WD site suggests it's a power issue, not a faulty or failing drive.
I have a 500GB WD Passport USB 2.0 also attached to my computer, also running FAT32 and it starts up no problem. It's just the USB 3.0 drive that is having this issue.
Also worth noting; the drive is detected properly when I boot in Mac OS X. It's only the Windows side I have to unplug and plug back in to access the drive.

USB Hard drive, permission issue on one partition

Hi,
I have an issue with my USB hard drive, when I pluged it the 3 partitions are mounted, and 2 of them grant access to the users group:
mount
/dev/sdc6 on /media/usbhd-sdc6 type ext2 (rw,relatime)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/usbhd-sdc1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sdc5 on /media/usbhd-sdc5 type vfat (rw,relatime,utf8,gid=100,umask=002)
ls -l /media/
drwxrwxr-x 1 root users 4096 Jun 29 22:21 usbhd-sdc1
drwxrwxr-x 18 root users 16384 Dec 31 1969 usbhd-sdc5
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 29 22:21 usbhd-sdc6
I read the wiki page about udev, but I can not solve this issue.
PS : HAL is removed from my daemons list.

> You can write on "usb" because the right are : drwxrwxrwx
They appear only when I use 'sudo mount -o rw,noauto,async,user,umask=1000' instead of plain 'sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb2'.
I use vfat for that USB stick, so maybe that's why it works for me. The first two listings in your first post show the drives in different order, but of course the mountpoints show that the offending drive is ext2 not vfat, my bad.
Edit: This is how my ext3 USB stick behaves like:
[karol@black test]$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
[karol@black test]$ mount | grep sdb1
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/usb type ext3 (rw)
[karol@black test]$ ls -l /mnt
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 karol users 4096 07-03 01:08 usb
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-09-14 usb2
This time /mnt/usb is an ext3. As you can see, there's no root, I (karol) an the owner, so I can rw to my heart's content. Maybe you should change the ownership - 'chown' (man chown if you're not familiar w/ that command).
Last edited by karol (2010-07-02 23:05:52)

Backup a dual boot iMac with OSX + Vista to Time capsule and USB hard drive

I have just bought a Time Capsule which is now working as my WiFi Network base station and backs up an iMac and a Macbook. The iMac has both OSX and Vista (using Boot Camp) and I was using a USB Hard Drive that has 2 partitions (HFS+ for the Mac; NTFS for Vista) to back up the iMac. Rather than leave this attached to the iMac just to back up the Vista partition I would like to move it to the Time Capsule's USB port and use it as NAS. The idea being that it becomes a NAS with one partition used to back up the Windows data when I run the iMac with Vista and the other partition to archive the Time Machine backups from both the iMac and Macbook. I tried to connect it as it was but got an error and reading the forum it seems that it won't work unless both partitions are HFS+ or FAT. If I reformat the NTFS partition to HFS+ will I be able to use the built in backup function of Vista to back up the Vista partition to the USB hard drive? I read somewhere else that Time Capsule takes care of the formatting for an external NAS drive and Windows will be able to read and write to it even though it's not NTFS. Any ideas comments appreciated.

This is crude but if you need a work around, just plug the USB drive directly into the iMac.. copy the files to it.. then plug it into the TC.
You also do not need to use the TC as an intermediary between your iMac and MBP.. just turn on sharing in the computer.. so you can directly copy files from one to the other.. Macs have public access directory preconfigured for each user account.
As far as mounting the TC..
In finder use Go, Connect to server.. and type.
AFP://TCname or TCipaddress
Where TCname is the actual name of the TC.. I strongly recommend you follow SMB network rules.. ie if your TC has a name like
Fred Blog's Time Capsule 2445566.
It is too long.. it has spaces and it has non-alphanumeric characters.
Shorten it to FredTC
No spaces no characters that are NOT alphanumeric.
TCIPaddress is simply the standard IP.
You can also use CIFS://TCname which according to the article forces the connection back to SMB1 rather than SMB2 which as usual is broken.
But I would definitely use AFP if possible. I cannot understand the decision to move to SMB as standard.

USB Hard Drive with Time Machine/Time Capsule

Does a USB hard drive connected to a Time Machine volume or a Time Capsule become an extension of that volume for Time Machine's purposes, or does it become just a place to
copy what's already on the TM/TC, or both?
And if both, I hope that user procedures for choosing the option I
want to use is simple and foolproof.

fanboy512 wrote:
A USB hard drive if formatted correctly can be used as another source of Time Machine backup destination..or can be used as a networked HD but is not an extension of the the Time Capsule per say.
Message was edited by: fanboy512
I am sorry. I do not understand.
In a Time Machine (without Time Capsule) scenario, I would have Time Machine working with an external hard drive connected via FireWire 800. So, with a USB drive connected to the FireWire drive, would I then see two volumes? Or only one?
In a Time Capsule scenario, with a second USB drive connected to to the back of the Time Capsule, you say it becomes a networked HD. I have four questions.
What good is a networked HD to me?
I cannot use the second USB drive to make the Time Capsule volume bigger - True?/False?
I cannot use the second USB drive to make a backup copy of the Time Capsule volume - True?/False?
To backup the Time Capsule volume, I could simply do a Desktop copy/drag to an external FireWire hard drive - True?/False?
By the way, one objective is to first buy a 500 GB Time Capsule and then find a way to get more capacity later in time if I need it.

Usb hard drive good/bad idea?

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