Hardware :: Using External Flash Drives - Mac + Pc Ok?
Apr 7, 2009
I just inserted a brand new flash drive into my macbook, a 16 gig sandisk cruzer. I thought the system would ask me to reformat it, but it didn`t. It looks like i can add and delete files without any problem, though. Is it ok to use this same drive to share files between my windows and mac? will there be any kind of format issues or problems? Just asking to be sure I won`t do anything wrong before I pop it in my pc lol
[URL] Though I've never done it myself, I've gleaned that it's possible to partition/raid multiple HDs together to act as 1 HD Might it be possible to do the same to lots of Flash Drives serially linked with USB hubs? 1 USB port -> 1 hub (7 USB ports) -> 7 hubs (49 USB ports) -> 49 hubs (343 USB ports)
USB hubs /can/ be really cheap (given patience, they could probably be acquired for $3 per 7-port hub) If you go to conventions and stuff like that, they literally give away flash drives with the company's info on them. not the largest around, but I've seen 512MB (maybe larger now? that was several years ago) to get 343 ports, you would need 57 hubs ($171) 343 free 512MB flash drives cardboard box 18x18x18" (if each hub is 7x2x1", then 57 would take up 7x19x6") This would be big, but not ungodly so. This would give us 171.5 GB. (343 GB if each drive is 1GB) I'm not sure of the power requirements of these drives - might have to get hubs with own power supplies. anyways - is this possible? would it work how I think? USB 2.0 offers faster data transfer than SSD, but I don't know the speeds of flash drives.
A Verbatim Store 'N' Go 4GB is not even recognised by Mac OSX 10.5.6 when plugged in. Is this to be expected and can the Mac OS be configured to recognice it?
I purchased a 16GB PNY Attache and cloned my hard drive before I installed anything on it. My only reason is for backup and to run a few utilities. It seems to be a little leisurely when I boot from it though. Does anybody know if there are faster read and write ones or is this as good as it gets?
I really don't want a USB flash drive. USB sucks eggs simply because FireWire can do so much more (TDM, transfer speeds, etc.) OCZ was going to make a FireWire flash drive; heck, they had a FireWire 800 version built! Does anyone know of any FireWire flash drives? 800 is certainly preferable, since 400 is currently dead.
BEFORE I started experiencing problems with my HD, a year or so ago, and before it crashed, I made this backup (see "GREY_USB"). At that time, I was using iMovie 06 to produce video DVD's for animations of clients' products and business plans. AFTER my system crashed (and a move to the other side of the planet!), I was finally able to have my Powerbook rebuilt and restored (see 3 attachments beginning "BLACKORANGE".)
Only after getting fully settled here, did I realise iMovie is apparently not installed....at least, not as far as I can tell. Some version of it may be on one of these USB flash drives, but it's been so long since I tinkered with any of this alchemy, I don't remember a flaming thing about how to go about checking. Is it possible to view only, without downloading anything, exactly what applications/data are on BOTH flash drives, then, IF the iMovie dmg is still on one of them, to install it?
I'd prefer not to install iMovie 08 unless that's all I have; the expense of having to fit Final Cut into the budget right now is absolutely out of the question. If you need more details or info, let me know. As my signature indicates: Powerbook G4, Mac OS X 10.4.11 w/Safari 4.04, iLife 08, occasionally running external LaCie HD (well, when I find it and unpack it).
I can plug in an external USB keyboard and mouse however I can not mount and USB flash drives or USB external disks. I get the following error message:
kernel Flash Disk : family specific matching fails
I am running OSX 10.5.8 on a 15" Macbook Pro 2.53 Ghz. Apple Care has not be very helpful so far. I've verified/repaired disk permissions with lo luck.
I have a 2008 (2/2008) 24" aluminum imac that is not recognizing certain USB flash drives now. The drive (Sony 8gb) worked before but does not now. When started up with the drive in a USB port, system profiler will find it but disk utilities will not (nor does it appear on my desktop). I have tried all other USB ports in this computer with no results. This drive still works fine on all other macs in the house. This problem is isolated only to flash drives since all other USB accessories still function fine. I recently added a Sandisk imagemate all-in-one card reader to this system and suspect that this might have caused the problem since oddly enough, my Sandisk flash drive still works fine. The only driver I installed with this reader was the application start up button (to launch iphoto).
I have an aluminum numeric keyboard. and when I plugged in two scandisk Cruzer usbdrives it said that one of them wasn't getting enough power. So I read online and saw that some people said windows can provide enough power for both. So I turn on my virtual windows machine (which automatically mounted the usb drive that was connected) and then my mac was able to mount the second usb drive! But when I let windows try to host both drives in the keyboard windows said it couldn't power both devices either! this may just be because it was a vm.
But my point is at one time I had access to both drives in my keyboard(with one os for each one) but when using just a single one it wont work. Is there any way to change a setting so I can push out more power to my usb keyboard? I'm perfectly fine with terminal and editing files, but is there a setting to change anywhere?(it's only getting 300mA and the usb drives need 200 each and the keyboard itself needs 20 so that all fits in the 500mA range).
MacBook Pro "13-inch, Late 2011", 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 // RAM= 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Mac OS X 10.9.4 "Mavericks" (13E28)Â
The problem:
None of my USB Flash drives are accessible in Finder.Â
The drives do technically "Mount" properly - they show up in Disk Utility, with the "Unmount" & "Eject" buttons available (indicating it's mounted), and they're mounted to the path /Volumes/<Disk Name>. Also, the disks show up in the Finder Sidebar with the correct name etc.
However, If I click on the Finder icon for the drive, the window flashes white for a millisecond and then reverts back to whatever the window showed before (eg. my home folder's contents). Finder will not access them. This has occurred on 3 different USB Flash drives (all of the ones I own!), which are formatted for ye olde windoze, FAT16 or FAT32 (aka. MS-DOS).
The drives operate perfectly normally on an iMac running OS X 10.8.5 (accessible in Finder). I was able to copy files to/from & list the contents of the Flash drives normally.Â
In Disk Util. I can Unmount & re-mount without error. If I unplug the disk I get the expected "This disk was not unmounted properly" banner. Eject via DiskUtil appears to work properly without error, causing the disk to vanish from Disk Utility (as expected).
The directory /Volumes does not show the drive's directory (just "Macintosh HD") - in fact the first time I list /Volumes/ after plugging in a drive, it appears to show some folder in /Volumes that is quickly removed (kind of scrolls-up into itself) as soon as the /Volumes directory is listed - was it my drive playing hide-and-seek??
The Eject button / option (in right-click menu) is not available in the Finder.
If I use Finder > Go To Folder… and type in the "Mount Point" from Disk Utility, I get a "folder not found" error.Â
In DiskUtil, if I right-click the drive name and select Reveal In Finder…, strangely the folder will actually show up in /Volumes, and I can open the folder and view the drive contents (sometimes I have to Reveal it twice for it to work)! I was also able to create a new folder after this (which did show up on the iMac as well). However, if I tried to copy and files to the Flash drive, I get either
The operation can’t be completed because one or more required items can’t be found. (Error code -43)
(when I try to drag a file into the newly created folder on the Flash drive), or
The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8058).
(if I drop a file on the Flash drive's root directory, or try to copy a file form the Flash drive to my computer).Â
I have tried DiskUtil/"Repair Disk" on the flash drives, which doesn't show any errors or warnings (they appear to be ok - again they work fine on another Mac).
I also did a "Repair Permissions" on my MacBook, to no avail.Â
I seem to remember having this same problem on OS X 10.8 at some point last year, and think I solved it via an online hint, but I have yet to re-find that solution (I'm on OS 10.9 now).Â
Info: MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), USB Flash Drives formatted as FAT16
I am here because I am interested in buying my first Mac Laptop. I would be mainly using this in my High School during Lunch and Study hall to work on projects and research. My school only uses Apple computers so I don't think there will be a networking problem(heard there can be some unfriendly networks towards macs?). I have been looking into THIS I Book sold used by [URL]it dose not have a airport card (I dont know what that is) and the CD drive doesn't work but that doesn't bother me because I mainly use flash drives and SD cards.
I don't understand why after 4 Apple Repair Depot visits my MB Pro is STILL killing several USB FLASH and external hard drives a week. It has consistently done this since the day I bought it. I have fried a large variety of FLASH Memory sizes, shapes, through all USB ports and even through attached hubs. Once my mac does this to a USB device, it is no longer recognizable by any Mac or PC ever again. Unrecognized, it doesn't even leave an opportunity for Disk Utility to reformat, rewrite, perform first aid, verify...nothing. Third-party formatters don't work either. It also doesn't seem to matter what brand, size, or port I use. For a certain period the devices would become very hot and sometime actually melt into puddles of liquid plastic and metal.
On the 4th depot dispatch for this issue they did replace the mother board USB ports and EVERYTHING ELSE but the display hard drive, and case. This stopped the heating and melting problem, but I'm still frying the devices and rendering them unrecognizable. Does anyone have ANY IDEA of what may be causing this? Is there anything I can do to stop or prevent it? Apple sure can't explain it much less fix it. This is a huge EXPENSIVE problem, and I can't seem to get past it, and I'm in an endless loop of sending in in for constant repairs. WHat can be done to stop or prevent this from happening?
I use Paragon HFS+ for Windows which allows me to read and write to my HFS formatted drives. It works great for any external hard drive I use but when I use a flash drive it doesn't work. I format both my external hard drives and flash drives the same way, I use Disk Utility, I format them using Mac Extended Journaled and GUID partition scheme. When plugging in my flashdrive, my Windows 7 PC will not mount them. Disk Manager shows 3 partitions: EFI, Fat32 and some empty space. If I format my flash drives using the Master Boot Record partition scheme they work great.
So, here's what I have so far: External hard drives work fine when formatted with the GUID Partition scheme. (Mac extended journaled) Hard drives also show 3 partitions in Windows Disk Manager: EFI, HFS and empty spaceFlashdrives show 3 partitions but oddly enough the second partition shows as FAT32. But is completely unusable in Windows 7 Flash drives have to be formatted using the Master Boot Record partition scheme when formatting them as HFS+ volumes in order to work on Windows 7Windows 7 supports GUID partition schemes.
What is causing my Macbook Pro to treat an external hard drive differently then a flash drive when formatting them? Experience and common sense tells me that it shouldn't matter whether it's a flash drive or spindle drive, both should format the same. Granted, I could simply use exFat or FAT32 on my flash drives for cross platform compatibility however I prefer to use HFS+ when possible.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2007 MBP, 2.16Ghz, 3 Gigs of RAM
ive googled everywhere for this type of process; whether it be an application or a bunch of scripts that would be able to do this, it didnt help me at all and/or i didnt understand it at all. is there a simple application that will allow me to plug in my usb drive and it will seamlessly sync with the "documents" and "pictures" folders, for example. basically, i want it to act like im syncing my iphone with my computer: how it automatically updates every time i plug in my iphone. also, i want the program to update the old files with newer, updated files, whether it was updated on my computer, or from another computer saved on the usb drive. basically (again), i want my usb flash drive to be exactly verbatim with the personalized selected folders on my macbook pro (with the older files updated with the newly modified files).
I have purchased two (from different places) 16Gb Flash drives. Ok they are "no name" but never had probs with the 4GB and 8Gb before like this. When I get to about 4GB of copied items they stop, saying I have "no user access priveledges. Then they won't empty.. or allow anything to trrash. The won't eject, I have to pull them out.. they then will empty. I can then start again.. same thing! I have tried Disk Utility, Formatting, Partitioning, Journaled and non Journald. Each time I get the same pattern. I have tried copying 4gb and more at one time and 1, 2, 3GB at a time. I have tried on two different iMacs 24in Intel and a 20in iMac G5 with the exact same results. Obviously it is the sticks but is there a way round it?
Although they work fine on other computers, my external hard drive and USB key won't show up on my macbook. I know it gives power to them since my external lights up when it's plugged in, and I see that they're connected in the System Profiler, but they don't appear on the desktop. Also, my ipod shows up in iTunes, but the computer always says it's corrupted, although it works fine. I thought that was an iPod/iTunes thing but since finding out about my hard drives.
When I boot up, my external drives are not on the desktop. I discovered that if the Finder is relaunched, they show up and all is well. Another issue that may be related: When powering down, the computer needs a force-quit most of the time. It hangs on the spinning gear
I have a few external drives for my Macbook Pro. One of the drives is an Iomega MaxMini with USB ports on the back to add drives.
My question is; when I hook up the drives to my laptop I get about 4 drive icons on the desktop for each of the partitions, and when I need to remove them I have to eject them or move them to the trash icon. Is there a way I can put the drives in a folder of some kind that I can just eject and make the desktop look less cluttered?
I am having issues with mu G-tech and Lacie external FW800 drives mounting to the desktop. The drives just spin and click and never mount. I tried different cables and both- front and back ports.
i am very interested in buying a Mac. But I need an external hard drive for my stuff. What are the best 1TB or higher external hard drives for a Mac Book Pro?
I did a computing job after being retired for many months, and I got paid in hard drives.However, I also want to plug in my SATA DVD burner to the card at the same time. is that possible? A RAID set and a DVD burner on the same controller?I've never done anything above a RAID-0 before so ANY info would be appreciated, especially having to do with this particular model (others are out of my price range!
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup: Mac OS X 10.5.6 PowerPc G5 Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
I'm currently using the 2TB drive as my time machine backup and the other drives for mostly media files (lots of movies, tv shows, etc.). What I would like to do is combine the non-backup drives to show up as a single drive in leopard. Is this possible? RAID 0 is out of the question since they're different sizes. Is there a way in Disk Utility to do this?
I have purchased a MBA (love it!), and I am about to sell my Windows desktop. I will be duel-booting OS X and Win 7 on my MBA, and I might add a Mac mini or a self-built Windows box to my network down the road (mostly to serve video and other files). I am getting an Airport Extreme to add to my current wireless G router/DSL modem. The AE will serve as my wireless N access point (N for the MBA, G from the other wifi router for my iPhone), and I will use it to connect my printer and an external 1TB drive. I can't decide whether to built a cheap Windows box to be my file server (and to perform random tasks when the MBA is with me) or to buy some NAS system to serve my files.
My other question is what format do I use for my external drive and a couple of pen drives I use as backup for my documents and pictures. They are currently formatted NTFS, and I realize I cannot modify them from OS X. But Mac formatting isn't visible in Windows without an added program, right? I often have files above the size limit for Fat32. So which format do I chose? One of the pen drives is used for school where I transfer Visual Studio programming files; another is a photo/document backup that I keep in a fireproof safe. Will I just need to keep one pen drive only for my programming classes formatted to NTFS? What do other people do?
I often use external hard drives to back up my work. Recently I purchased a 1TB Lacie drive. I took a week to build a lovely new file structure for my work. At the end of this week, I began deleting the old files on other hard drives so as to transfer my new neatly structured work back on. In the midst of this, the brand new hard drive crashed, illiciting only the clicking sound of death.
That hard drive, some of my work (a very small amount but still) and a week's worth of sweat and blood was gone in an instant. The person I took it to to look at it mentioned a power surge as being a possible cause for the crash. Anyway, I returned the lacie and bought a 1T Western Digital Mybook (silver). I then began dumping the old back ups onto this.
A week in and this one is crashed too. No clicking sound of death. It calmly sits on my desk with it's unceasing unblinking blue light and refuses to show up in utilities no matter what I do. So I assume it's a goner also. I'll return it also of course. Is something causing these drives to fail...that exists in my walls? Are there power surges causing my drives to die...? OR is it simply a case of bad luck with my choices of new drives?
I have two USB hard drives connected to my iMac. Since installing SL, I have experienced data loss on both. Example: I open a folder in the Finder. I then CMD-UP to move to the next level up, only to find that the folder I was just viewing is no longer in the list.
