USB hard drive transfer forces system into a cawl

I attached an external USB 2.0 hdd and stored data on it at a rate of about 35MB/s. This took really long, cause it was a larger backup. CPU load didn't exceed 20%.
However, the whole system suddenly because slow to react and there were really bad freeze spikes coming up repeatedly that would completely freeze the system for like 10 seconds or so.
Basically the system because very hard to use, and that over the course of some hours till the backup was finished.
It's a Core i7 with 8 GB RAM of which about 6GB were free.
Now I think that must be a bug in the kernel, since a mere USB 2.0 transfer shouldn't be able to freeze this kind of system?
I tried a workaround by specifying
ionice -c 3 -p <pid of the copy process>
but although to me it seemed that the general system slowdown disappeared, the frequent freezes remained.
Are there maybe any unofficial kernel patches available for USB transfers that would prevent the system from freezing? Any other solution?

karol wrote:
It's a known issue and it has been present since forever.
What filesystems, what schedulers, are you using the stock Arch kernel? Does it happen with the -ck kernel?
What command did you use exactly to move your data?
I write into a truecrypt container that's on an NTFS-formatted USB stick and contains an Ext4 file system.
I used two commands, both cause these problems, the first one being even worse than the second one.
truecrypt -t -c <..create encrypted container file..>
dd if=/dev/sda of=/<..truecrypt container mount point> bs=1M
No idea what schedulers, how do I find out?
Stock kernel yes, except I had to patch it with:
CONFIG_HZ_1000=y
CONFIG_HZ=1000
which I needed for my NVidia GPU to prevent it from crashing randomly when Bumblee daemon tries to enable it and enter an unusable state until system gets rebooted.
This goes with kernel parameters:
rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1 acpi_enforce_resources=lax
I haven't tried that "ck" kernel because I read how people reported that it didn't help them with this problem.

Similar Messages

  • FW400 or USB hard drives freeze the system until unplugged

    Here's what happens, and I can reliably reproduce with any external HD either FW400 or USB:
    I'll plug it in and it'll work just fine... for a while.
    Then, at a seemingly random time, all disk activity to ANY disk will halt. This means internal SATA2, eSATA2, USB Flash, FW400, USB, etc. Any disk queries go unanswered. If I try and open a video off the external disk, QT opens then hangs.
    Usually, when I disconnect the disk, I get the usual "Device not ejected" error, but then my system returns to its normal state.
    Again, this is with any HD I've tried, both on FW400 and USB. Also, a FW400 DVD-RW has this same problem. It seems to be a generic disk issue... though this problem does NOT include eSATA disks - they work just fine and don't hose the system.
    The only difference between the eSATA disks and the FW400/USB disks is that, at least with the FW400 disk I currently have next to me, it's formatted with the Apple Partition Map whereas the eSATA are formatted with GUID Partition Map.
    Here's the console log from plugging in the HD on a FW400 port then watching it become unresponsive:
    Dec 10 09:28:40 Defiant kernel[0]: IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0xc715f00, 3 -> 2) timed out after 100146 ms
    Dec 10 09:33:40 Defiant kernel[0]: IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0xc715f00, 2 -> 1) timed out after 100123 ms
    // At this point, I unplugged it
    Dec 10 09:34:20 Defiant /usr/sbin/spindump[20189]: process 20184 is being monitored
    Dec 10 09:34:21 Defiant /usr/sbin/spindump[20189]: process 20184 is being force quit
    Dec 10 09:34:30 Defiant diskarbitrationd[44]: QuickTime Player [20184]:83839 not responding.
    Dec 10 09:34:30 Defiant diskarbitrationd[44]: mds [34]:14595 not responding.
    Dec 10 09:34:30 Defiant diskarbitrationd[44]: fseventsd [40]:13059 not responding.
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test' (fd=0) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/index State' (fd=26) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/live. 0.indexGroups' (fd=32) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310' (fd=33) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/journ alAttr.28' (fd=34) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/live. 0.indexIds' (fd=35) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/live. 0.indexHead' (fd=36) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/store .db' (fd=49) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/.stor e.db' (fd=50) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test' (fd=59) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/journ alLive' (fd=60) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:34:34 Defiant mds[34]: (Error) LSOF: File '/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310/journ alSync' (fd=62) left open on device 234881041
    Dec 10 09:35:20 Defiant kernel[0]: IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType00::setPowerState(0xc715f00, 1 -> 4) timed out after 100239 ms
    // At this point, my system usually returns to its normal state. This time, it did not, so I plugged the drive back in via USB (external hard drive has both USB and FW400), and got the following logs before unplugging it.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk5s3: replay_journal: from: 17478144 to: 18109440 (joffset 0x749000)
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk5s3: journal replay done.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: I/O error.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:06: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: lkNum 14920] [LBlkNum 14920] [FSLogMsgID 1006091285] [FSLogMsgOrder First]
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant com.apple.launchd[128] ([0x0-0x760760].com.apple.quicktimeplayer[20184]): Exited: Terminated
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant mds[34]: (/Volumes/Stability Test/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/1A194423-2C4A-4DB5-8EFA-4AABCA422310)(Erro r) IndexCI in openPayload:open err: 6, 0.indexPositions
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant fseventsd[40]: event logs in /Volumes/Stability Test 1/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (518 1 1527)
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk4s3: dojnlio: strategy err 0x6
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant fseventsd[40]: log dir: /Volumes/Stability Test 1/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 3FDB756A-ADEB-4531-821A-CBA1C2D273FE
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk4s3: writejournalheader: error writing the journal header!
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant /usr/sbin/spindump[20189]: process 20184 is being no longer being monitored
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:06: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk4s3: dojnlio: strategy err 0x6
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk4s3: end_transaction: only wrote 0 of 61952 bytes to the journal!
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:06: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:06 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:07: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:07: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:07: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:07 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:09: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:09 Defiant kernel[0]: disk4s3: media is not present.
    Dec 10 09:37:09 Defiant kernel[0]:
    Dec 10 09:37:09: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Dec 10 09:37:09 Defiant kernel[0]: jnl: disk4s3: close: journal 0x40e2a28, is invalid. aborting outstanding transactions
    I see the "I/O Error" above... but don't believe its the disk. Again, completely different disks, both confirmed working on a G5 iMac, cause my MacBook Pro 17" C2D to stop responding, both running Leopard.
    Any ideas as to what's wrong? Or even better, how to fix it? It'd be really nice to use my USB drive for Time Machine, FW for temporary storage, and my eSATA disks for high-speed temporary stuff... instead of using an eSATA disk for Time Machine...

    Me again. I think I have solved and/or understood the USB problems I have seen.
    The issue of the external drive 'ticking' may indicate a lack of bus power, according to various other threads in this forum. There also seem to be differences between left and right USB ports. My external drive does not mount at all when plugged into the left USB port, even though the power light is on.
    I was still getting an intermittent problem with the drive plugged into the right hand port. This appears to have been fixed by reformatting the drive in a different way, creating a single Partition rather than using Erase in Disk Utility. I have also disabled Spotlight indexing on the backup disk: maybe that's what really fixed it?
    The other observation I have is that the drive only seems to work if the cable is connected to the computer first, then to the drive.

  • Partitioning and Formatting USB Hard Drive

    I'm using a FreeAgent USB hard drive on my system, but placed a lot of files on it before realizing that Mac can't write to an NTFS file system. I've got about 35 GB of files on a 250GB drive. So, two questions:
    1. Is there something I can use to partition the drive and format part of it to FAT32 and part of it to the Mac format (realizing that I won't be able to read the Mac formatted partition in Windows).
    2. Is it possible to partition the drive without removing the files that are now on it and reformatting (obviously leaving part of it as NTFS)?
    I'll probably be able to do 1, but just thought I'd ask about 2 for information purposes.
    Thanks,

    I suppose I could just format it FAT, but I have some vague notion that the Mac format will work better with the Mac OS, especially for backing up. I'd primarily use the Mac partition for backup, and for storage of video files that just take up too much space on the MacBook internal HD. Don't know how realistic that is, and I'm also not sure which backup program would be best suited. I'm pretty new to the Mac environment, and am not even all that sure whether to keep the *.dmg files that I've used to install several programs that I purchased for the Mac.

  • 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 do I transfer all my Firefox saved passwords to my new hard drive and operating system? Going from xp to windows 7.

    How do I transfer all my Firefox saved passwords to my new hard drive and operating system? Going from xp to windows 7. I have the old hard drive hooked up as drive f. Can I copy and paste from old drive directory to new drive directory?

    You need to copy 2 files, key3.db and signons.sqlite, from the old [[profiles|profile folder]] to the profile folder on the new computer.

  • Changing external USB hard drive into a FireWire Drive???

    I have been reading in some of the other discussions about how it is possible to change a USB external hard drive into a FireWire external hard drive. Is this true ??? I recently pruchased an external USB hard drive only to now find out that I cannot use it to boot from. Apparently OSX will only boot from a FireWire drive ??? Is there some way to change my current external USB hard drive into a FireWire compatible drive or do I have to purchase a FireWire drive ??? Thanks.

    All I can remember was an internal USB/firewire hub (for PCs, by the way), I haven't seen external adapters like cables; but you may simply ask in your local computer store about.
    Yes, you can boot only from firewire drives. I was told that it is possible the new Intel Macs are able to boot from USB drives, but haven't had the time to verify this so far.
    A possible solution may be to remove the harddisk from the USB enclosure and put it into a firewire case. This should work and you just need to buy the firewire case without the need for another harddisk. Just ensure that the case is able to take your harddrive (2.5" / 3.5" drives, connection interface).

  • HT1408 How do i transfer  a portion of an iTuunes library from a portable USB hard drive can be used as well. iTunes portion of library from a portable USB hard drive on a PC to a Mac?

    How do i transfer a portion of an iTuunes library from a portable USB hard drive on a PC to a Mac?

    You post in the iTunes forum.
    https://discussions.apple.com/community/itunes

  • Slow transfer speed to external USB hard drive

    I'm not sure if this forum is the right fit, but here goes. I'm trying to transfer files from a firewire external hard drive (partitioned as os x) to a usd external hard drive (partitioned as fat 32) but the transfer rate is very slow. I can watch the file count during the transfer and it only transfers one file about every two seconds (files are 1 meg each). Since I'm tranferring over 13,000 files it takes forever. Any ideas why transferring to a usb hard drive is so slow?

    USB drives are slow to start with. If you have a USB 2.0 compatible drive (and the computer has USB 2.0 supported ports) you can expect average transfer rates that are about 60 percent those of FW400. To aggravate the matter your USB drive is formatted FAT32. That slows it down even more.
    You could speed things up by putting the FAT32 drive in a Firewire enclosure in order to transfer files to it. Then return it to the USB enclosure in order to transfer the files to the PC. Or replace the USB enclosure with one that supports both FW800 and USB 2.0.
    At the rate you observed (1 MB every 2 seconds) it should only take around 8 hours (which is considerably shorter than "forever"). Not much consolation, I know.
    If you have no better alternatives and if both computers support 100BT or Gigabit Ethernet, then you might consider networking them and doing the transfer over Ethernet. You might actually achieve faster transfer rates than using the USB drive. 100BT Ethernet should be able to move the data around 3-4 MBs/second which is about 6 times faster than what you're now observing.

  • Transfer imovie files to usb hard drive

    I want to get a usb hard drive to free up operating space on mac hard drive
    I want to save a movie file which is about 26gb to the separate hard drive . I have been reading that it is not possible to save files bigger than 8gb unless the hard drive is formated to ntsc rather than fat32.
    Any clues. before I buy something that is of limited use.

    1. If t is a USB drive then you will not be able to play or edit the project without copying it back to your hard disk. iMovie can only be 'fed' via firewire.
    2. FAT32 has 4gb (or is it even a 2GB?) limit in file size.
    3. NTSC is a television system used in the US, the other being PAL used in Europe.
    SO: Your external hard disk should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and should be connected via firewire.

  • External USB Hard Drive not showing up on Time Capsule

    Hi all,
    I have a 500 Gb Time Capsule that used to be able to detect my external USB hard drives. I had to store my things for a while and have just started using the Time Capsule again. The TC works fine, however, the same USB external hard drives I used to connect to the TC are not showing up anymore :s They show up on the desktop when I connect them directly to my MacBook via USB. I have been through most of the file sharing options in Airport Utility and System Preferences but have not been able to solve this. I can't think of any settings that would have changed from when they were showing up in the past. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thx

    yosemite won't work with ntfs drives for some reason, i've had the same issue with my toshiba. i thought ok lemme buy another one, and transfer it over maybe it's a driver issue which i've tried over and over, apple support can't figure it out.
    here's a simple fix, but the problem is i have an external where all my photography and video files are stored, so i can't access them right now and it's making my life ****.
    http://guides.macrumors.com/Formatting_an_External_Device
    that does work and make the drive mountable now, but problem being i can't obviously reformat the old drive and lose everything. once the new drive is formatted for mac i can't plug it into a pc to transfer the files from. which is the only problem now. but formatting the drive for mac only DOES work. but you're just screwed and not able to use it ntfs. hope the link helps SOME people.

  • MAC Mini & 2.5 USB Hard Drive Issue

    Strange thing happening with a new MAC Mini:
    For Christmas, I bought my wife a brand new MAC mini. Everything has been working fine. So, for our anniversary, I bought her a 120 gig USB hard drive (I know, I'm such a romantic
    Anyway, ever since I hooked up the hard drive (USB Drive) to her system, it seems that when I first turn the MINI on, the keyboard and mouse completely stop working. once, I had to hold the power button in to hard boot it, then, when it restarted, everything was working fine again.
    Tonight, when I turned the MINI on, it did the same thing. No keyboard or mouse. Then, after I hard booted it, the mini never booted up. Black screen. USB hard drive light was on, but, no MAC power light and screen was black.
    Now, I just unplugged the USB drive and all is working fine again.
    It seems that the USB hard drive being plugged in while powering the MINI up is giving me some grief.
    Does anyone have any ideas as to what can be happening here? It is a brand new MINI with Leopard installed. I highly doubt I have a defective MAC because everything was fine until I plugged a USB HDD into it. With the drive unplugged, it seems that it works fine.
    No Operating System(s) are on the USB drive. Just pictures and movie files.
    Here is the drive I got her:
    http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8110750
    Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
    Gary

    I'm sorry. I should have been more detailed in my description. It is a Toshiba drive. here are the specs:
    The Toshiba HDDR120E02X 120GB Hard Drive is USB-powered and includes an internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology. Ready to go out of the box and certified to work with Windows XP and Vista as well as Mac OS 10.3.9 or later.
    Technical Information
    Storage Capacity
    120GB
    Drive Performance
    Data Transfer Rate
    480Mbps External Maximum USB 2.0
    Interfaces/Ports
    Interfaces/Ports
    USB 2.0 USB
    Physical Characteristics
    Form Factor
    External Hot-swappable Portable
    Miscellaneous
    Compatibility
    USB 1.1
    Plug n Play
    I didnt have it hooked to the keyboard though. I have had some trouble trying that in the past, so, other than my mouse, nothing else is plugged into the keyboard.
    Thanks again for your help.

  • LaCie d2 195 GB USB hard drive and new iMac

    Has anybody had a problem with a LaCie d2 drive that is connected via USB instead of FireWire? I have both types of external hard drives; the FireWire connected LaCie has worked flawlessly, as has a Seagate 300GB FireWire drive. But my poor little LaCie 195 GB USB hard drive bit the dust when I tried to copy my iPhoto library from it to the hard drive of my new iMac Intel Core. The entire Mac froze up, even though there was disk activity on the LaCie. After waiting for 25 minutes for the Mac to unfreeze, I finally manually powered down the system. Unfortunately this corrupted my LaCie disk, and it could not be repaired using Disk Utility. Even when I tried to repartition the drive, Disk Utility simply hung to the point where I had to do a Force Quit to get out of it.
    I forgot to mention that I was connecting the LaCie through a powered USB 2.0 hub - that could be a source of the problem, but it worked flawlessly in my iMac G5. I did reconnect it directly to a USB port on the iMac, but still could not get Disk Utility to repartition the drive.
    Luckily I had a secondary backup of my photo and music files, or I'd really be crying right now.
    Any thoughts?
    Thanks,
    JD
    PowerBook G4 12   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  
    PowerBook G4 12   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  

    Mac 1 Ghz G4 1 gig Ram Os 10.4.5
    My Firewire connected LaCie Bigdrive started disconnecting spontaneously with a complaint from the iMac that it was disconnected improperly.
    Finally it did so once more and has not mounted via FW since. However, USB does mount it but big files take all day to transfer.
    I took out the Maxator from the LaCie drive and put it in a FW/USB caddy, ok for a while then the same story. USB only mounting.
    Informed with some confidence by a poster on Bombich's website
    ( http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?p=25658#25658 ) that it was the boot drive OS
    Tried new cable. repaired boot drive disc, repaired permissions, ran DiscWarrior over it, repaired permisssions, ran downloaded 10.4.5 combo, ran DiscWarrior over it and finally repaired permissions again.
    No Joy.
    i would most appreciate useful suggestions.
    Regards and thanks in advance
    Anoop in the UK
    apollo11
    View Public Profile
    Send a private message to %1$s
    Find More Posts by apollo11
    Add apollo11 to Your Buddy List
    Reply

  • Can't see contents of USB hard drive connected to Time Capsule

    Hi. I have a USB hard drive connected to my Time Capsule (which I just got today). I just want to use it as a shared drive, so that the users in my home can use it to access common files (media files, stuff like that).
    The TC's set up is to enable file sharing with accounts. AirPort Disk Guest Access is not allowed.
    When I authenticate as a user via Finder I can see the disk, see that disk space has been used, but can't see the contents. I'm guessing this is because the files that are actually on there belong to some other user.
    Is my guess right? Any suggestions as to how we can all use it as a transfer drive?
    Col

    Fixed it. I connected the USB drive directly to my computer, and dragged the folder into the 'Shared' folder, which Time Capsule had created. The original folder is now visible, which is what I wanted!

  • 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

  • AirPort Extreme and shared USB Hard Drive

    I received an AirPort Extreme for Christmas with the intent of using it to share a network Hard Drive and Printer between the multiple machines on our home network. I've finally gotten it set up with Bonjour on the PC's, and the AirPort Utility on all machines. It's connected via ethernet cable to a Dell PC, and wirelessly to an iMac, a Dell Laptop, my iPhone and a PS3. Internet functionality is great for all devices.
    My next step was to connect a Seagate 750GB External USB Hard Drive to the APE. This drive was previously connected to the Dell PC, and was formatted as NTFS. I went through the hassle of converting it to FAT32, I connected it to the router, and both Dell's and the iMac can see the drive. I haven't checked if the PS3 can see it yet, but since I haven't found Bonjour for the PS3, I'm not holding my breath. The iPhone - well, mine isn't jailbroken at the moment.
    A few quick hints I learned from doing a lot of web surfing and trial-and-error. These could save people a LOT of time...
    + Don't format a external drive as either an Apple Drive (HFS+) or as a Windows Drive (NTFS) if you plan on using data off it on both a Mac and a PC. Windows won't read HFS+ without a converter, APE won't accept NTFS. It needs to be FAT32 as this is nearly universal.
    + Windows will only format a maximum of 32GB as FAT32. It's a stupid limit, and you have to jump hoops to get it to do a larger drive size.
    + Use the Disk Utility on the Mac to erase the drive and reformat it as an MS-DOS partition. It will work up to a drive of about 2TB according to what I've read. On the Mac, MS-DOS partition = FAT32, and it formatted my 750GB drive as a single 750GB partition.
    Now, I've begun the task of copying all our media to the drive. Copied a few pictures, no problem. Copied a few MP3's, no problem. Where the problems start is in trying to copy movies to the drive. We have ripped most of our DVD's to DivX / H.264, to keep the kids from destroying the DVD's (trust me, DVD's scratch EASY in the hands of a 5-year old). So I have about 50 movies to transfer, each around 1GB in size.
    Each time I try to transfer a movie to the drive, I get an error "*Error Copying File or Folder*" which displays the message "*Cannot copy BlahBlahBlah: The specified network name is no longer available.*" This also results in the HDD becoming unavailable to the other machines on the network. I've had to un-plug and then re-plug the APE a few times to get the HDD to work again. Sometimes, the copy actually does work, even though I get this message. I know the easy work-around is to connect the HDD directly to the PC with the files on it and transfer them that way, but I shouldn't have to do that - it should just work.
    I'm wondering if anyone else has any kind of a similar experience? It appears that I can stream music and video from the drive easily enough, it's the writing to the drive that seems to be the issue. Thanks in advance...
    Best Regards,
    Jeff

    I would think you would have better luck formatting it as HFS+ (Macintosh Extended File System). You'll still be able to see it from your non-Mac PCs.
    http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6370006#6370006

Maybe you are looking for