Western Digital USB External Drive

I am using Windows 7 and just bought Western Digital My Book Essential 3.0 external drive. My computer will not boot up with the drive connected. If I disconnect the drive it will boot up. When I reconnect the drive after boot up, it works fine.
Is there a change in the bios required?

Yes there is a setting for that in the BIOS.
Look for it in boot devices and remove USB boot option.
If you ever need to boot to a USB device you can re-enable it.

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Advice on usb external drives

let me start by saying i love my new intel imac i bought in march. its doing what i need it to do and much much more.im going to need backup space soon for photos,video clips,audio ect. i was hoping for any advice on what are my best options for usb external drives.
p.s.im waiting till i can back up all my OSX stuff before i install bootcamp
looking foward to playing around with that !
thanks............

My advice is to not bother with USB. Get a USB/FireWire drive instead. It is more flexible - meaning you can use it on older Macs and PCs without USB - without sacrificing the speed and reliablility of FW.
The USB/FW drives do not cost that much more than a plain USB drive. Be sure to get a drive with the Oxford 911 chipset as they are the most stable and reliable chipset out there. Avoid the Prolific chipset.
I like the Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC. Mine has never let me down and I plan to get another one soon. You can also buy the enclosure and add your own drive. It is very easy to do.
First Gen 20" G5 iMac, upgraded 320GB Western Digital HD, 2GB Patriot RAM, AE/BT Mac OS X (10.4.6) 160 GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro USB/FW drive, Logitech Z-2300 speakers

My iMac Seagate 1T hard drive crashed. I replaced it with a Western Digital 1T hard drive. Where can I get the Lion OS?

My iMac Seagate 1T hard drive crashed. I replaced it with a Western Digital 1T hard drive. Where can I get the Lion OS?
The iMac comes up with a ? in a folder, even after starting with Option/Command/R keys pressed.
Please help.

Call Apple to purchase replacement discs or order a copy of Snow Leopard from Apple's Online Store. Follow these instructions:
Drive Preparation and Install Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. When completed quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard. Once you boot from Snow Leopard you should open Software Update and install all the available updates required. After you complete this and restart the computer open the App Store application in the Dock or Applications folder.
8. Sign into the App Store with your Apple ID and password. Purchase and download Lion.
9. After Lion's installer downloads, install Lion.

Which USB external drives are working best - advice please

I see that the USB Airport Disks are cuasing some fustration out there, but I plan to give it a try. Can someone give me some advice which brands seem to be the most compatible. From reading through these pages I beleive:
1. Drives with both firewire and USB connections are giving more problems. Probably safer (and cheaper) to get USB only drive.
2. I read that the Western Digital "My Book" drive seems to sleeping when not in use. Most others are always on. I like the idea of the sleep function.
3. Lacie drives seem to have more reported problems, but for now I'm assuming apple owners tend to frequently buy Lacie and also Lacie usually makes dual firewire/usb.
Any other advice out there?
Thanks, Tony

I started an unofficial compatibility list on my website ( to go alongside the printer list I manage)
The iFelix unofficial 802.11n Airport Extreme Hard Drive Compatibility List
http://tech.ifelix.net/8014.html
Please add drives to the comments link on the right of the page.

MDT 2012 deploy OS from USB external drive failed - need to unplug and plug it once again

We are using MDT 2012 and deploying Windows 7 using media (USB external hard drive). We can successfully deploy Windows 7 32 bit using this method but there is a problem with deploying Windows 7 64bit. This problem appears only on HP EliteBook 840. We can
boot into WinPE 64 bit and can start proper task sequence, all image is applied then after restart, before logon screen appears there is an error saying that cannot find litetouch.vbs script. After clicking ok, I can logon to Windows and there is no usb external
drive recognized. But when I unplug and plug usb drive once again it is recognized by Windows and can be used. I can see that Windows install some drivers just after plug it again
I checked BIOS looking for some USB power options - there is no such settings. And 32 bit deployment works ok. So this is not a case. Looks for me like a problem with proper usb drivers for 64 bit. I download all drivers from HP website (driver pack and
drivers only for USB 3.0). We are using make and model matching in MDT - works ok for all the rest hardware models. Any idea how to troubleshoot it?

Not sure what's going on here. Is this a USB "Flash" drive or a USB "Hard Drive". There *Is* a distinction.
I *thought* that MDT would copy itself to the c:\minint\scripts folder to continue installation.
Next time, when you see this error, Press Shift-F10 to get into a cmd.exe prompt. Can you find litetouch.vbs on any of the drives? Does the USB Drive appear?
IF in fact, the USB Drive is not appearing after the 1st reboot, then you have a problem. Why did the USB 3.0 driver not install. Check the Driver Installation Logs to verify.
Keith Garner - keithga.wordpress.com

Using a usb external drive with logic

I have a 500 GB Lacie usb hard drive which I'm currently using just to backup my system. (Still on Tiger by the way.) I'm in an older intel iMac (1.83. 2 gigs ram, 250 gig internal hard drive). After installing LP 8 and all the bells and whistles on the internal drive I now have less than half of my internal drive space available. My logic project files are there as well. Not a big problem but I'm trying to look further down the road... Usb drives are slower than firewire but my projects are relatively simple. I don't record more than 2 tracks simultaneously and rarely exceed 24 tracks total for a song. Two questions. First can I get by with my usb external drive? And second how do I move my projects onto and external drive and still have logic know where they are? Thanks

I have the oldest macbook (1.83. 2 gigs ram, 60 gig internal hard drive)
I have all my logic content on my external maxtor firewire 400 drive (usb 2.0 is actually faster than firewire 400) and everything is fine. the good thing is if your external drive has 7200rpm, but the ones with 5600rpm should do as well.
Once you drag your apple loops to logic from your external drive, logic will remember for the next visit. And when you are opening a project which is on the external drive , just find it with logic finder and all should be fine.

Problem mapping USB external drive connected to Airport Extreme on my PC

I am having a problem mapping my USB external drive in my PC running WIndows Vista. Here is what I have so far:
USB External Drive connected to my AirPort Extreme which is connected to my Century Link modem/router.
I have installed the USB drive using the Airport Utility. In the Disks section the Enable File Sharing is checked, Secure Shared Disks is set to With a Disk Password, I have entered the password in the next 2 rows, and finally AirPort Disks Gues Access is set to Not Allowed. The section below named These Settings Configure Windows File Sharing is empty. Am I supposed to put something here?
I was also told I need to map the drive in my PC, but when I go to do that via the Computer and the Map Network Drive, I get stuck where it asks me to enter a folder name. I read many of the posts which tell me I need to enter among other things the disk's ip address, but I am unable to find it anywhere. Where do I find what to put here?
Can someone please help this frustrated user?

I had my USB drive on my APE working with Time Machine under 10.5.1 very reliably. A few days ago however, I needed to suspend a backup operation, and when I came back to restart it, time machine refused to mount the disk image on the drive. After several attempts to get it to connect with no luck I decided to delete the image (the sparce image file) and start over. Now TM refuses to create a new image.
BTW, on the Mac OSX hints site there have been suggestions to start a backup with the drive directly connected, then stop the backup, move the sparce image file to the root of the drive, reconnect the drive to the APE base station to get it working. I tried this again, but I think Apple has changed something in 10.5.2, because when directly connected TM no longer creates a sparce image file.
Anybody else seen this behavior after upgrading to 10.5.2?

WD Essential 500GB USB External Drive Not Recognized

I have a WD USB External Drive which was formatted for use with my old windows based PC. Bought iMac G5 and at first recognized but now does not and when i run disk verify in dissk utility get following error message:
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** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
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Get same message when I try to repair, any help will be greatly appreciated

Hello! I would try hooking it back up to a pc and run the repair function from there or erase the drive as Mac format and start all over. Tom

USB External Drive Backup & Erase Woes

I have been using a Lacie 500GB USB external drive allocated as a backup disk for time machine. Over the last couple of weeks, the disk has been spontaneously ejecting itself from the desktop. This could happen when not backing up to time machine, or during the backup.
I am not a daily time machine backup-er, as I don't have much to backup on a daily basis (and I weekly backup to an alternative disk using Super Duper). What I had noticed with the time machine disk, is that the preparation prior to the backup beginning was a massive 40+GB, certainly not the amount of data which would have been 'new'.
To try to resolve this, I have used disk utility to verify the disk, and the snow leopard disc to check my boot disk on the Macbook Pro... there has not been a problem identified with either.
Today, I decided to erase the time machine disk, zero the data, and re-allocate the drive for time machine backup. After setting these preferences in disk utility, and clicking 'erase', the disk again erased itself, with the error message :
'Disk erase failed with the error: Assert: internal error, or unimplemented'
I then had an external disk which was not present on the desktop, and apparently in some sort of limbo between erased and mounted!
I was able to do a simpler format function on the disk via disk utility, the disk will mount, but the allocated disk space previously used by time machine is still present, and the format has only done that remaining space on the disk.
Anyone know what the above error message refers to, am I able to reformat the disk using the 'zero function', or has the disk failed and become unrecoverable?
Answers / suggestions kindly welcomed.

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
When you use Disk Utility to erase totally you need to click on the LaCie drive name not the name that appears on the desktop. Select how many partitions you want and give each partition the name you want it to have and perhaps also the partitioning scheme and other options that are available, then erase.
Doing this will of course make all that is on the drive unavailable to you.
These are LaCie's directions for their drives.
Some LaCie drives might also have firmware updates available - worth a check on their website.
Note that LaCie seem to have 2 yr warranty on their drives, at least the one I looked at on their website. If the drive is younger than this you might have a warranty claim.

USB external drive not readable by mac but readable by windows

Hi, I have a usb external drive (Seagate FreeAgentDesktop Media) which works fine with windows xp but cannot be read by the mac. I reinstalled the mac a couple of days ago because it was being very slow and I had a bunch of junk on it. Anyway, after that, it won't read the external drive. It will give me an error message saying that the disk is not readable by the computer. Sometimes it will give me the message saying that the drive was unmounted improperly by windows and for me to unmount it correctly. When I go back to windows, it's there, then I restart and go back to mac, it'll give me the message that the disk is not readable. I have 2 of these drives and both of them have this issue. I also tried disk warrior but it says that the file system cannot be rebuilt. I tried USB flashdrives and they work. I got all the data off of one of the external drives into the other and I couldn't format or even erase the drive because it says that the permission was denied. However, I could format it and erase it with the installation DVD. But I had the same result no matter what format they were in. I have very important data on these drives and I really need to be able to use them with both operating systems. Thanks a lot!

Hi Schmerz Meister;
If DiskWarrior say it can rebuild the disk about your only other alternative it to reformat it.
This will of course destroy all data on the disk so make sure you have copies of the data elsewhere,
Allan

Boot Camp with Win 8 Can't See The USB External Drive [MBR with NTFS, Fat32, HFS Partitions]

Hi. When I boot to Boot Camp with the latest Apple Windows Support drivers can't see my USB Flash Drive, DVD and OS X volumes but not my USB external drive that has an MBR partition scheme (using iPartition from GUID) and in there it has different volumes [HFS when I boot to Snow Leopard, Fat32, NTFS]. What can I do with Boot Camp to make it see my USB external drive and why isn't it seeing the USB when it can see the USB flash drive both use USB?
Thank you in advance.
God bless.

Buy Paragon NTFS for OS X $20.

Imovie9, 13"macbook aluminum and USB external drive

I know firewire is better, but is it totally impossible to use USB. Others have said its ok. Tom Wolsky on the FCE forum said that many people are returning the macbooks without firewire. I did a search on other discussions and some say its ok, while others say no.
Please do i really need a macbook pro or a white macbook. I will be editing HDV and eventually AVCHD.

Thank you! Yes. I have HDV today with an imac. I am deciding between the new macbook and the new white macbook. I really want the small form factor. I should really just buy the white one since it has firewire, but I don't want plastic and i like the new touchpad. I also want to get a flash drive HD camera that uses USB. I got concerned using a USB External drive for the AVCHD because of file sizes and making the USB drive unstable. I think i will ensure that i keep enough hard drive space on the macbook to do all editing and then move as much as I can to the external drive.

Trying to move aperture library from USB external drive to FW 800 external drive.i can see the projects but no thumbnails. Error application not responding. Verified permissions before started. It's been 3hours. Recommendations please

I have consolidated iPhoto into aperture 3.2.2 and now have both aperture and iPhoto put consolidated library on 2.0 USB external drive. Have been removing duplicate photos from 23,000 down to 15,000. Problem in trying to close aperture and now tried to move library from 2.0 USB to 800FW and can see projects but no thumbnails. Aperture error now reads not responding. Can I repair library on 2.0 at this point?

Sharon,
did you do anything else besides copying your library to a fire wire drive after your last post Aperture not responding ?
Since that library probalbly already needed fixing, I'd recommend to force quit Aperture and use the "First Aid" to repair your Library.
Aperture 3: Troubleshooting Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3805
Regards
Léonie

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Thank you.

Not Oracle VM-related, so I would say: "Google is your friend!".
Search for "grub change boot sequence": http://www.google.com/search?q=grub%20change%20boot%20sequence

Western Digital USB External Drive

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