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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Internal hard drives not mounting on startup

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Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: event logs in /Volumes/Media 1/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (454 0 68038)
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: Had metainfo
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: UUIDs match!
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Is "Media 1" the name of the volume, or is it just "Media"?

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.

2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
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cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
Thanks in advance

Hello Bob,
Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
any other thoughts?
thanks again

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I've had exactly the same trouble this morning.
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MacBook Pro 2009. 250 SD, HD 8Gb Ram.
I have had this issue for about a year...with no resolve!
Apple and the User community have not been able to solve issue.
I have had to work around it since the Oct 2013 Mavericks upgrade which “killed” (rendered unmountable) both my USB and Optical drives.
Hundreds of replies and remedies have not corrected my issue. Hundreds of replies stating that if there was a global issue it would of been fixed by Apple, not true. And dismissive replies stating that there must be a hardware issue are very discouraging.
So now, hoping to help the voiceless masses, I'm forced to share my experience.
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I fixed mine by uninstalling the software that came with the harddrive such as Tuxera and reinstalled it now myharddrive works again and i did not have to delete the harddrive and reformat it.
I tried a lot like reseting the Pram And connecting other harddrives but by unstalling the original software it works all over again. I hope this works for you because i was getting pretty frustrated myself.
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This is the forum for Intel based iMacs. You need to be posting in the iMac G5 forums for your G5 and the Powerbook forums for the Powerbook.

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Issue:
Mac OS X Tiger
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Invalid B-tree node size
The volume needs to be repaired.
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Is it possible that your hard drive is full enough that there was not enough space on it to complete the reinstall of OS X 10.4?
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042

External Hard Drive not mounting on bootup

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External hard drive not mounting on restart

Hi
I have 3 x 4TB RAID0 G-Tech EHDs. One of them only works at all when connected via the USB socket on the 'old-style' plug-in keyboard (USB2) but will not mount at all via the USB3 sockets. (This query is in another post)
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Welcome to the "Mountain Lion Destroys Hard Drive" club.
Join in. There is only a few thousands of us here.

Hard Drives Not Mounting - Help!

Hello,
This is my first post, so please forgive me if I leave anything out....
I recently had to replace my hard drive. Got it all going, then I noticed when I went to put a music CD in, that it would not show up. I tried others with no luck....then I put in a cd with data, and it showed up on the desktop....
While trying to mess around, I made my 2 LaCie external hard drives go away! I have tried checking cables, and they come on when the computer does, they don't show up in system profiler....
Please let me know what information you might need to help me diagnose these problems....my computer has been so good to me, I want it back up and running...
Powerbook G4 Ti 667 MHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 512 Ram

Hi, mcholley, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
I can't suggest any remedy for your optical drive not reading audio CDs but having no trouble with data CDs, except to say it's apparently a software problem, not hardware-based.
After replacing your hard drive, did you reinstall your operating system from scratch on it, or did you restore your OS from a backup you had made?
The disappearance of your external drives (are they USB or FireWire?) may be power-related. Are they externally powered, or are you powering them from the USB or FireWire bus? If they're bus-powered, are you connecting both of them at once? That won't work: together they demand more power from the bus than it can supply, and while they may spin, they won't mount. Connect only one of them at a time. Is either of them detected by Apple System Profiler when just one is connected to the Powerbook? Does it mount on the desktop then?
If you've been able to connect both drives to the Powerbook at the same time in the past, and both have mounted OK, then there's been some hardware change recently, other than your hard drive replacement, that has caused the loss of external drive detection. Is it possible that during your recent operations you've turned off one or both of the external drives, or disconnected it/them from the Powerbook, without dismounting it from the desktop first? Depending on what, if anything, the drive was doing at the time, that can make a FireWire drive unmountable and all the data on it inaccessible. In that case it may be necessary to erase and reformat the drive. I don't know whether the same is true of USB drives.
Do you have another Mac to which you can connect the drives, to see whether they show up on it? If they do, you might have to consider the possibility that the port(s) to which you've been connecting them on your Powerbook is bad.

Hard Drives not mounting

Hi there...I have a QuickSilver 2001 G4 Tower with two internal 60GB HD and one External Wester Digital 120 GB HD which is my boot drive. For a few weeks my internal hard drives would sometimes mount and sometimes not. Now they completely are not showing on the desktop or in any Disk Utilities I have. I examined the ribbon cable and notice that it goes right over the hinge on the G4 door to access the innards of the Mac. There seems to be a dimple in the cable as well as a break in the cable right in one of the cable strands. It is about 1/8" to 1/4" long.
Thinking I had some file issue I did a files system check (command-S, fsck, etc.). Before it ran the file check, One of the lines read:
IOATA Controller Device Blocking BUS
My assumption is that the break in the cable is preventing the signal from getting from or to the drives. Could this be the problem.
Also, my son picked up a seagate 60 GB Hard Drive from a friend that was formatted for a PC and had a ton of software on it. On the chance It might work, I hooked it up to the extra power cable and used the ribbon cable. Now the interesting thing is that it worked. Hole in the cable and all. The only thing I did not do, now that I think about it, was to try the other connector of the two head ribbon cable.
My question is: Is there any way to install this other HD inside my case without going though an interal SCSI bus?
Also, is there a way to get around the 128 GB limitation of internal drives. From the system profiler, my machine has these specs:
Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 867 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.3f1
Serial Number:
Any Help would be appreciated. Thanks
Al Hartman
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John...your help has been...well, HELPFUL! LOL
Another question. I have been doing video editing and DVD creation with the Apple Pro Tools...however, my machine is only a 867 mHz and I have limitations on using Motion and HD DVD creation. I have seen much discussion here about processor upgrades. I was wondering if you had any suggestions on that subject. I am kinda partial to Sonnett Technologies hardware. But I want to be sure it will work with the Pro Tools since I have read that some have had issues with some processor upgrades.
I also have a UMAX S900 clone which has a Sonnett Technologies upgrade card which has worked flawlessly (btw, I use the UMAX for all my system 9 work. I figure why clog up my G4 with all that other stuff? I have installed all my System 9 programs including PageMaker 4.2-- wow! I was surprised when that installed!). I had some old files in PageMaker 3. or 2 or something and could not open them with InDesign or Quark or PageMaker 6.5. I looked in my disk storage case and, lo and behold, my original back-up floppies (remember those) when I bought the 4.2 upgrade. Man did that bring back memories-- swapping disks to install-- SEVEN OF THEM!
Once again, I appreciate your help and hope you can supply some additional insights. I am going to pop off those connectors on the internal hard disks and reinstall...maybe something is just loose. I am not thinking it is the controller on the board. If it was, the PC disk would not have mounted...right?
Al

USB Hard Drive not mounting til after restart

This weekend I put a new internal hdd in my Power Mac G5, and decided to use this opportunity to go ahead and put Leopard on one of my macs.
I'm finding that it doesn't mount some my USB External Hard Drives (3.5" externaly powered cases) unless I plug them in, and then restart the computer. (It also works just starting up if the G5 is off.) The drive needs to be turned on before the start up.
This is the case with an older IDE->USB 5 inch case, a brand new sata->USB 3.5 case (with the former g5 drive inside, and a sata->usb newertech bridge on the g5 drive. A bus powered 2.5" one mounted fine without the restart. I have not tried any flash drives.
I've tried the different USB ports on the G5 with no difference. I have not tried plugging it into a hub that's pre-connected (either powered or non).
They don't show up in Disk Utility during the time they don't mount. They do after the plugged-in restart, though. They also unmount then remount fine after the plugged in-restart.
The drives work just fine on my MBP (running Tiger). They worked just fine before the Leopard upgrade. If I boot into the Tiger partition on the G5, they work just fine.
I've seen references to other people having what sounds sort of like this problem in google searches but nothing exact, and those threads seem to get sidetracked with useless comments (like "Well, you should just use Firewire!" etc).
Has anyone experience this...and moreover, anyone found a fix.

Two things to check:
The drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT 32
You almost always have to use a powered USB hub with the under powered port on the Time Capsule, even if the hard drive has its own power supply
Where are you expecting the drive to "show up"?

WD hard drive not mounting on startup...

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