Why do hard drives disappear off network?

I have a PowerMac G5 with a number of external Firewire hard drives. One of them failed today so I had to turn it off. As soon as I did, the FW800 drive chain, including shared 1TB drive used as the home's iTunes library, are no longer visible on the network. They show up on the G5 and there is nothing wrong with them or the connections.
What would cause all three FW800 drives to drop off the network radar, so they can't be seen when I'm logged in from any other computer? It's the weirdest thing and it's got me scratching my head. I'm baffled.
To help you analyze the problem, here is the configuration:
* Internal Mac FW800 port goes to a 1TB backup drive, which is daisy chained to another 1TB backup drive, as well as the 1TB iTunes drive and a FW400 drive. This daisy chain was necessary because there is only one 800-speed port available on the computer. That entire daisy chain is no longer visible on the network, but it was when the now-defunct drive was connected and running at the end of that chain. That's what has me confused.
* Internal Mac FW400 port goes to a 160GB portable drive. This one is visible on the network.
* 1 PCI card FW400 port goes to a 500GB drive which is daisy chained to another 500GB backup drive. Neither of these are visible on the network, but they used to be.
* 1 PCI card FW400 port goes to a 320GB drive which is daisy chained to another 320GB backup drive. These both continue to be visible on the network.
* 1 PCI card FW400 port goes to a video camera for digital video input.
So two of the daisy chains dropped off the network as soon as one drive was turned off. What gives with that? I know I can look for a new PCI card with FW800 ports, but that's not the point. My issue is that this configuration worked fine on the network when there was an extra drive attached. How would removing a drive from the chain cause it to disappear from view?

The drive was not "erased". It was simply partitioned. If you want to actually "erase" the drive, you need to select the "write zeros to drive" option. This does not really "erase" the drive either but it overwrites all of the data on the drive with zeros which is as close to being erased as a drive can get. This will take much longer that the simple "erase drive" option which only deletes the drives directory.

Similar Messages

Why External Hard Drives turn off Automatically?

Im using a Mac Pro and I having that problem and I want to know why.
Any hints I'll appreciate...
Robert

By off do you mean "sleep"? (drive spinning down after a while) or do you mean - off as in completely off? (power down)
If its the second - then you'll have to take a look at the drive as there might be something wrong with it.
If its sleeping - spinning down, then it depends on the controller and interface. Most enclosures allows spinning down the drives after a certain amount of time. When the drive is connected by USB etc then the controller has the responsibility and there is nothing you can do about it... If its connected via eSATA and your controller allows you to control the spinning (not all do) then you can go to your system preferences and select your energy settings... there you should have a box that allows you to put your drives to sleep when possible. But it will do all of them - not just the external ones.
Some controllers (again SATA of some sort) allows you to individually set external drives to sleep. The RocketRAID does that...
But again - if the external drive is USB etc... then nothing you can do to prevent the spinning down unless you write or read from the drive every 10 minutes or so...

Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

Hello Helpful Folks,
I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
**bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
-1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
- "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
-2 empty DIMM slots
-1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
-NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
-PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
-3 Empty PCI Slots
-OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
-Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
-2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
-3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
-1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
-OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
-FCP 3
-DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
-OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
-Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
-Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
-Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
-OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
-After Effects 5.0
-QuickTime Player 6.0.2
-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
-Toast Titanium 5.0.2
Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
-Photshop 6.0
-Microsoft Word & Excel
# of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
# of Control Panels:
-Enabled: 34
-Disabled: 0
# of Extensions:
-Enabled: 174
-Disabled: 0
note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
Smart things I did:
-Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
-Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
-Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
-Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
Dumb things I did:
-Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
-Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
-Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
-Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
RECENT UPGRADES:
Here's what I did, and how I did it:
Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
-Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
-Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
Rebuild Desktop
PRAM Reset
Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
I tried restarting without extensions.
I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
This is where I am now:
The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
Sincerely,
Patterson
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867 Mac OS 9.2.x 17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

Thank you Rodney and John,
The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
-Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
-Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
-Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
Cheers,
Patterson

Can not shut down late 2011 MacBook Pro and turn it back on again without the hard drive disappearing?

Ok, I have searched for months for an answer to this question to no avail, probably because no one has experienced it before. I am hoping however that you guys can help me figure this one out cause it is driving me nuts! Also, I am not entirely sure what section of the support I should put this under so if I stick it in the wrong place, I apologize.
Right now my problem is very simple. When I turn off my laptop, and then try to turn it back on, my internal hard drive disappears... and I get the blinking folder with a question mark on it. I have figured out something interesting however. I have an install disk with Ubuntu Linux on it. If I boot into that first, then RESTART the laptop, not shut down and turn back on, it reads the internal hard drive just fine and I can boot as if there is nothing wrong.
Second part to the problem... If I allow the laptop in either OSX or Windows to go to sleep (aka shut off the hard drive but the computer remains on), when I attempt to wake it up, I am greeted with the usual log in screen of whichever OS I am in, but is frozen and after a few seconds goes black and restarts the computer to find that... Surprise! The hard drive is gone
I have tried every trick in the book that I can think of, but can not seem to come up with a solution to the problem... I know when the problem happened and if anyone thinks that that will help them figure this out I will type everything I did up till, including the crash that caused this, and my attempted fixes, but I have class right now so only if you guys want it I will type all that out.
What I am currently running is:
2011 MacBook Pro 13in screen
4Gb of Ram
1TB internal Hard Drive
OSX 10.11.whatever the newest update is... just updated the other day again.
Windows 8.1 on BootCamp 5 (yea I know its not supposed to work but it does) again, fully updated
Ubuntu 13.10 (I think? Doesn't really matter, its just an install disk I use to boot the computer)
If there is anything else that you guys need me to provide, I can, just simply ask. I can provide as much info as is necessary.

Sorry it took me so long to write back, But unfortunately this didn't help my issue.
My uncle and I did a lot of tests on this computer and have narrowed down the location of the problem a little bit.
We tried to first reset the SMC and the NVRAM as suggested, but the only thing that did was make the fans run on full tilt for the first session after restarting it for some reason. After that we tried re installing OSX over the OSX that was already on the system (not removing any of the files). This also didn't do anything but make refit stop working. Then we moved onto the next task at hand by removing the hard drive entirely and booting it as an external drive from one of the USB ports... as long as you booted it with the options key held down, it worked perfectly fine. Then we put an alternative hard drive into the computer and installed OSX on that. This time there was no trouble booting anything up. Everything seemed to work flawlessly. So we made a backup of my original drive (OSX, Windows, and all) onto an external hard drive and tested booting to it via USB. That again worked perfectly fine and booted right up with no problems. So after that we formatted the original hard drive and reinstated OSX. We then proceeded to transfer all the old files from the backup onto this new installation and LOW AND BEHOLD..... we were back to square one with it refusing to recognize the hard drive again.
So this basically told us that there appears to be something either wrong with the hard drive, or something got really screwed up in the software along the lines and by me copying all my old files back over, I just ended up bringing the screwed up file back over with it! (despite not copying over any settings of any kind) So I am still extremely confused as to what is going wrong... did some boot sector possibly get screwed up may be?

Hard drives turning off

I have a 2 hard drive RAID set up with identical Iomega hard drives. They are both connected to a FireWire 400 hub which goes into my computer (iMac G5.) Whenever I'm doing something hard drive-intensive (exporting video from FCP, using Compressor with files from RAID, importing video to RAID scratch disk) one or both of the hard drives turns off. The blue light goes out but the drive keeps spinning. Sometimes the icon stays on the desktop, sometimes I get the Device Removal error message.
But here's the strange thing. If I plug in and turn on some other FireWire device (camcorder, A-D converter box) the blue light comes back on and the RAID starts working again.
This happens to both the drives, but usually not both at once, so I don't think the drives are bad. Would undoing the RAID solve this problem? I would hate to have to do that though because I don't believe there's away to do that without erasing the drives right? I have absolutely no idea on this one.

I have actually been running with the "Put the hard disks to sleep whenever possible" option off since before I got the drives, but they turn off anyway. I don't think it's that anyway, because 1) The option has been on for a few days and the hard drives stop spinning, but the light stays on when they are sleeping, and 2) The drive(s) only turn off (light off, disk spinning) when there is activity like copying or writing files happening. If they were sleeping it would (or should) only happen when they aren't being used. After I turned on the "Put the hard disks to sleep whenever possible" option, the drives sleep and wake up ok, but the lights are always on except when they are spinning up.

USB keys and external hard drives disappear after 30 seconds to 1 minute of being mounted.

I just got my 15' MacBook Pro refurbished (by Apple), and everything is working well except my USB ports. My USB keys appear for 30 seconds to as much as 2 minutes before disappearing from eveywhere, my desktop, finder and disk utility. I have a 1 TB WD passport for mac that also has the same problem, but can stay on the desktop and copy files for around 10 minutes. Then error -36 shows up, the hard drive disappears from the desktop and finder, but only appears in disk utility. It is powered as well, The light is currently flashing indicating it's receiving power as I am typing this. But still, no way i can copy anyhting onto it.
I have searched and searched for the solution to this problem, I have tried using apple script to find "invisible hard drives." and that doesn't work either.
On my windows partition in bootcamp, all usb keys work perfectly fine.
Is it because the USB ports are out of energy and dying? If so, should the refurbishment have covered that and replaced them? (Note: refurbishment included everything from my Keysboard to my battery to my Optical drive and cable optical drive flex)
Is there anything I can do to fix this problem on my own?
Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated.

Hi wdmpfm,
Here is something from an earlier post on the -36 error that may help to identify the issue:
A -36 is a disc I/O error. You might have a corrupt file, or a corrupted drive. Try creating a new file and see if you still get the error. If you do, it might be wise to run a Disc Repair program to see if it can find any errors that it can fix.
And one from another thread:
You need to format your drive correctly. New drives come formatted for Windows, & then they seem to work — but not properly.
+Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility+
Choose one of the +Mac OS Extended+ formats.
Obviously first you will have to back-up all the data you have already put on the drive, because it will all be lost when you re-format.
Hope one of these may help!
Cheers,
GB

My second internal hard drive disappeared

My second internal hard drive disappeared a couple of days ago taking many gigs of iTunes with it. It does not appear on the desktop, finder or anywhere else. When I click on a song in iTunes I get "The song “Cowell: Set Of Five - 4” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I try "locate," well it shows me the Main Disk. Not helpful. I've read lots of posts about vanishing drives and crashing drives on Leopard (I run Snow and was about to go to Lion). Did my drive die or did it go into the witness protection program? Irony is that I bought a 2 TB external drive last week to back up the iTunes drive and procrastinated. Suggestions? Experiences?
JCEspinosa

Is it listed in Disk Utility?

Internal & external hard drives disappeared in Finder

It happened yesterday on my G5 running 10.4.6. I have 2 hard drives inside my G5 and one external hard drive connected with firewire 800. The second hard drive and the external hard drive disappeared in Finder. But the one that has the system on it is fine. They did show up in Disk Utility. But it said they are both "not mounted".
When I tried to repair them in disk utility, it said:
"Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"
Does anyone know how to fix it? I have lots of stuff in those hard drives.
Thanks
Ti Powerbook G4 1Ghz, PowerMac G5 Dual-Core 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Sounds like you have a major problem that Disk Utility cannot fix. This has happened before to other users. I suggest you get a copy of DiskWarrior and that will probably fix it. You can read about/buy it here:
Alsoft DiskWarrior
Mulder

Can you share an external hard drive over a network when your Apple Airport Extreme is in bridge mode?

Hello, is it possible to share an external hard drive over a network when I have my Airport Extreme in bridge mode? I can't use my AE as my main router at the moment but still want to be able to use the hard drive on the network, and the router I am using isn't capable of adding an external hard drive. I use Windows 7 and the other router is a Netgear. I have searched the communities and have not come across an answer to this question. I have tried several configurations within windows to try and see the hard drive but none have worked. I can see the hard drive when I run Airport utlities, but it cannot be seen on the network. Thanks to anyone who can help!

I think there is some confusion in this thread..
If you are sharing on a local LAN port forwarding is not required.
is it possible to share an external hard drive over a network when I have my Airport Extreme in bridge mode?
Answer is yes.. no port forwarding, mapping whatever term is used.. is needed. Port mapping is required when you cross over a NAT router.. as long as all the devices are inside a single LAN.. then no port mapping.
I assign to my Airport Extreme, do I do so with the settings of:
Service: SMB
Type: TCP
Server IP: xx.x.x.x
Port Start: 445
Port End: 445
This would not work even from WAN.. SMB is blocked by all responsible ISP.. there is simply too many unprotected windows machines out there. If they allowed SMB .. the world would be flooded with hijacked bots. And stolen data like bank accounts. SMB is not a secure protocol.
But this is not necessary on a LAN.
The problem can be Mavericks which does a terrible job presenting network drives.. The usual recommendations are to use AFP or force the connection to CIFS (ie SMB1 not 2).
If you use airport,, then use AFP.
In finder.. Go, Connect to server.
AFP://AEname or AEIPaddress. (replace with the network name of the AE or its actual IP address).
When asked for password.. type public if you did not change it or use whatever password you put.
Store the password in the keychain.

I can't see my external hard drive on the network.

I can't see my external hard drive on the network. I have a WRT160NL router with USB. I plugged the drive in the USB and set up a share in the router config.

Did you map the drive? It won't show up in Explorer automatically like a jump drive or an external drive plugged directly into the PC will.
You didn't mention the OS you're running, but what you want to do is choose "Map a network drive" and you'll see the router listed as a network device. Click on it and you should see the external drive listed. You can map it from there.

How do i add an external hard drive to my network

how do i add an external hard drive to my network

If your external HDD has a USB interface and is formatted in either HFS+ or FAT32, you can connect it directly to the USB port on your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn). You would then use the AirPort Utility to configure the AEBSn to share out the HDD over the network.
Please see the following Apple Support article on how to mount the HDD on your computer.

Can I install onto an external hard drive + run off it?

Can I install onto an external hard drive + run off it?
If possible, will the system run at the *same* speed as the built in hard drive?
ALSO: Am I correct in saying that if I replace my current hard drive with an SSD one?
If so: that *****
Thanks
Omar

OS X doesn't matter what disk you boot from, as long as it can be formatted properly in Disk Utility. You can boot from a USB stick drive if it's big enough.
Thunderbolt would be the fastest, the drive would be the limiting factor there. You can find Thunderbolt drives like these at stores like macsales.com. But USB 3 might also feel fast enough.
If you have boot systems installed on many drives connected to your Mac, the way you tell the Mac which one to use is to hold down the Option key at startup. This will present icons of all the connected drives you can boot from, then you just pick one and go.

Hard drive disappears and Disk Utility is not finding it

I woke my computer up from sleep this morning, launched Final Cut Pro and it threw me an error. It said there was a permissions error for one of the volumes FCP was using, then my hard drive disappeared.
It does not show up in Disk Utility, nor does it appear in System Profiler.
I took the SATA drive out of my Mac Pro and tried to mount it using an external SATA to USB dock. It spins and sounds ok, but still won't mount.
Anything I can do to revive this drive?

all of this pretty clearly indicates that the drive is dead. get a new one.

Why does my external hard drive disappear?

I've tried USB2, Firewire 800, and network connection (Time Capsule). None of the drives stays connected long enough to get a backup done. The drive just disappears and the backup stops. i tried this with a brand new drive from Western Digital, and also bought a brand new 3TB Time Capsule. They just don't work! With the new WD My Book Studio, made for Mac, it only stays connected for less than 5 minutes, then disappears. The backup stops because the Mac can't find the hard drive.
I have a 27" intel-based iMac with Mountain Lion.
I'm very frustrated that I can't do a simple backup. I'm thinking of leaving Apple computers over this. i currentlyh have two 27" iMacs, an Air Book, and iPad 3rd gen, and iPhone 4S. So I am a Mac addict.
But if I'm going to have these kinds of problems I may leave Macs forever and use Windows. Seems like Apple and the MAc computers have lost their edge, especially after going to the intel chip sets.
Will anyone out there please give me some tips on how to fix this problem!
Thanks,
Gary

Hi Gary, certainly frustrating.
Only thing I can think of trying is booting from your Restore Partition using CMD+r, then try to install on one of those drives... if it lasts long enough... thinking this may tll us if it's HW or SW issue.
Though if you had a 10.6 Install Disc to boot from I think that'd be a better test.
Or...
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

Why is my hard drive disappearing?

Hi all,
For several months now, my hard drive space has been gradually shrinking at a steady clip and I have not been able to figure out why. I lose about 3-4gb per month and this has been occurring for a few months (at least that is how long ago that I first noticed it was happening). During this time I have not downloaded anything major--no music, no applications, no photos, no movies, nothing really. The only files that have been added are PDF's, Word docs, and Excel spreadsheets that I use for work. Nothing I've added even comes close to accounting for this persistent loss of disk space. For what it's worth, the applications I use 99% of the time are Word, Excel, Preview, Mail, Calendar, iTunes, Firefox, and Parallels.
For the life of me I cannot figure out why this is happening. I've spent hours upon hours on these and other forums looking for a solution and so far nothing has worked. I've cleared out my caches and logs and that didn't help. I downloaded Whatsize to identify large files and I couldn't find anything. I've had a new hard drive installed (unrelated issue) and that didn't change anything. I've run AVG free virus scan on my Parallels VM (Windows XP Professional) and I've run ClamXav free virus scan on my Mac and neither identified any viruses.
I've found countless answers on these forums in the past, but this is the first time I've ever been completely stumped. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?? Is there anything in the folders I can't access (ex. root) that might be chewing up space? Any chance Parallels or one of the applications I run on the VM is cranking out some massive log somewhere that I'm not aware of (I have Parallels running all day for work-related tasks)?
Thank you in advance for any input. Also, thanks to all of you out there that take the time to read posts from people like me and offer your expert help. It is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Tom

Looks like it's going down a bit!?
BTW, OSX can mark off a lot of space that doesn't show up anywhere to defrag big files.
Might be an errant growing System file, not sure what you used to clear caches, but I think this one does it better...
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 5 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 5 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.

Why do hard drives disappear off network?

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