Mac Pro :: External Hard Disk No Longer Operates At USB2 Speeds?
May 6, 2012
I have an external Lacie 1 TB hard disk which used to operate at USB2 speeds, but ever since I upgraded to my my Intel Mac Pro (from a G5) it only operates at USB1 speeds regardless of which USB port I plug it into. When I open up System Profiler, it reports "speed up to 12 Mb/sec" which of course is only USB1.1. It used to show "speed up to 480 Mb/sec". Do I need to reformat it something? Can I force it to connect at USB2 speeds?
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2 x 2.66 Dual Core
View 3 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Nov 30, 2008
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little.
Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
System: Mac Pro (early 2008) Mac OS X (10.5.5) 3.2Ghz 8-core - 16GB Ram - 4x1TB SATA - GeForce 8800GT - Dell 30" 3008WFP A02 - Gateway 21" FPD2185W - 3xMyBook external drives
View 8 Replies
View Related
Jun 6, 2009
I am looking for a SELF-Powered USB2.0/FW 400 external hard drive, does such a beautiful piece of hardware exist?
View 17 Replies
View Related
Aug 12, 2007
Anyone have suggestions? I have a single 1.8ghz g5, 1gb ram, 10.4.10. I have a maxtor OneTouch III USB 2.0 200gb drive attached to it.
I can not seem to eject/unmount this drive. Every time i hook it up I just have to end up pulling the USB plug or turning the drive off suddenly to get it to "eject" but then i get the improper device removal error/warning message.
I have tried dragging to trash, I have tried apple E (which is what I usually do to any device) and I have tried going into disk utility and ejecting/unmounting from there as well. no dice.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2010
I recently bought a VANTEC NexStar 3 NST-360FBSU-BK. In the exclosure, I have a SATA drive capable of 3.0Gb/second. It's attached to my Late 2009 Mac Mini via FireWire 800. Based upon my understanding and in this situation, the FireWire should be the bottleneck. Therefore, I should be enjoying bandwidth somewhere shy of 800Mb/second. nfortunately, I'm not getting any where near that speed. I can transfer a 726MB file in 18.6 seconds. According to my math, that's ~5808Mb/18.6 seconds = ~312 Mb/second. This is not even FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speed.For completeness sake, I also just upgraded from 2GB of ram to 4GB (both PC8500) but nothing seems negatively affected (in fact the computer is much, much more snappy!).
View 7 Replies
View Related
Jun 5, 2009
I have the 2007 intel mini and I am looking for hard drive options. Was thinking of installing a 320 gig 7200 drive in it but they are about the same price point as an external 1 TB 7200 3.5 drive. Is it possible to just run the mini off the external drive via firewire or USB2? Would that be slower than using the internal drive?
View 7 Replies
View Related
Sep 24, 2010
I have had this WD "my book" ext. HD for about a year without a problem. Today after restarting the computer I got a notice, instead of the HD icon. On screen I got a box that said "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer" below this was 3 options. Initialize, ignore, eject". I was afraid that initialize would erase or reformat the drive so I pressed eject, I've tried many times but still the same thing. Has my ext. HD died? Should I click initialize? All my backup data & time machine, music,etc., is on this drive, I don't know what to do.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 24, 2012
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research. I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper!
Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'. And it needs to be reformatted. It's become a read only disk. When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question. I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969! These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years.
I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure. Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state! Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive? And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 3 Replies
View Related
Feb 15, 2011
Recently I purchased an external hard disk, to put all of my pictures of my baby due to space limitations on my internal laptop drive. Since my Canon camera 10 megapixel pictures take up a ton of space this was occurring at an alarming rate. My intention was also to back up to DVD but never got to it. This is both a comment and a question.
Now said baby, is getting really good at pulling cords etc. He managed to do this on the external drive firewire cable. As far as i know the drive was not in the process of actually writing. However, after a few minutes and trying to re-plug the drive the OS crashed with a Grey Screen of Death hardware error that tells you that you need to push the power button..
This apparently corrupted the drive's directory. Upon reboot the drive would not mount. Since there were time machine backups on the drive too Diskwarrior was not able to reconstruct the drive in the built in memory available on the computer. Time machine stores millions of files and Diskwarrior apparently wants to keep it all in memory at once. Since my computer has 2GB you would hope that would be enough but apparently not. So that failed. Other utilities seemed to be able to find the files but not restore the directory. I also took it to the apple store they were not able to recover it.
I have to say this is extremely distressing, and hard to believe that a simple accident like this could cost the loss of thousands of pictures. I did send it to a rescue company but that was expensive but I think apple needs to do something about this situation.
On Windows there is a way to disable the write cache for external drives. This is not available for Mac OS X. This would prevent this rather common occurrence of a plug accidentally becoming disengaged when the drive is not in the process of writing. This reduces the odds but I still think apple, in order to become clearly superior, needs a better solution.
I know Apple has experimented with ZFS would this not eliminate this possibility of this kind of disaster? Is this in Snow Leopard desktop? I know they are thinking this is a business customer focused technology but clearly if it can eliminate this kind of thing then I think it is extremely useful to their non server customers. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this issue but ZFS is designed to deal with these issues. HFS+ is extremely fragile to disk corruption.
I know my situation is not that uncommon and this is not the first time this has happened to me with an external drive. You would think I had learned. I hate to think of how many other people have had the same thing happen to them.
Information:
MacBook Pro
Mac OS X (10.5.8)
View -1 Replies
View Related
Feb 15, 2011
I've download a Seagate Diagnostics programme to check whether my external Seagate FreeAgent Desk is working properly or not. However, when I run the programme, it indicates that cannot find the disk.
View -1 Replies
View Related
Jun 27, 2014
I have a Seagate 1 TB Backup Plus Drive which was working perfectly fine until I plugged it into a USB hub. It detected it while in the hub and I was able to get files off of it, but when I ejected it from the hub and put it back into the USB slot on the computer it was not detected by finder. It shows up in the disk utility and I clicked verify and repair and it says:
Verify and Repair volume “Seagate Backup Plus Drive”
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Is there any way to get this to work properly again? Or if not is there a way for me to recover my files on the external hard drive?
I have a Macbook PRO late 2011 running OS X Mavericks.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 5, 2012
I am having difficulties burning 88.x MB DMG files to CDs (new CD-Rs and an old CD-RW) onto two different external USB2 disc burner drives (both have power AC connected: HP and LG Super brands). The new Mac Mini (no disc slot drive)'s updated 64-bit Mac OS X 10.7.4's Disk Utilities tries to burn and then fail right away or after a few seconds. The error says "Unable to burn 'whatever.dmg' (The disc drive did not respond properly and can't recover or retry." Nothing interesting in dmesg, but Disk Utility's logs had details:[URL].
I do see my drives' lights on during the burn. I can quick erase the old CD-RW fine. I can burn 538 MB from an 64-bit Windows 8 on my Acer AM3800 PC with the same discs and external burner drives without any problems. Also, I thought it was my USB cable extension, but it wasn't it. I don't use any USB hubs either. DMG files are fine too. I did notice copying from a CD to Mac Mini's local HDD was slow, but no failures.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jul 5, 2012
I am having difficulties burning 88.x MB DMG files to CDs (new CD-Rs and an old CD-RW) onto two different external USB2 disc burner drives (both have power AC connected: HP and LG Super brands). The new Mac Mini (no disc slot drive)'s updated 64-bit Mac OS X 10.7.4's Disk Utilities tries to burn and then fail right away or after a few seconds. The error says "Unable to burn 'whatever.dmg' (The disc drive did not respond properly and can't recover or retry." Nothing interesting in dmesg, but Disk Utility's logs had details: url...I do see my drives' lights on during the burn. I can quick erase the old CD-RW fine. I can burn 538 MB from an 64-bit Windows 8 on my Acer AM3800 PC with the same discs and external burner drives without any problems. Also, I thought it was my USB cable extension, but it wasn't it. I don't use any USB hubs either. DMG files are fine too. I did notice copying from a CD to Mac Mini's local HDD was slow, but no failures.
View 8 Replies
View Related
May 2, 2012
I am trying to back-up my computer to my external hard drive and a box is popping up saying "You can't open the application WD Backup.app because PowerPC applications are no longer supported." What does this mean? I have updated my system to Lion since my last back-up. What do I need to do?
Info:
Mac OS X (10.5.6)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 22, 2012
I have three external harddrives all of which are connected through different ports, all show up in finder, all show up in disk utility, but none of them will show up on my desktop. I looked at a few other posts similar to mine but the answers given to other problems have not worked. There is no way all three of my cords are causing a connection problem and I have repaired and verifyd all the drives and still nothing.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 6, 2010
I have an external 500GB Freecom USB HDD with two Data partitions on it (FAT32 and NTFS). With a Windows tool, I made the two partitions smaller in order to free up some space (ca. 200GB) for an additional Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. This partition I wanted to create with the Mac OSX 10.6.4 Disk Utility. When I pluged in my USB HDD in my new iMac it mounted the two partitions, NTFS and EXT32 and the Disk Utility tool also showed the free (unpartitioned, almost 200GB) space on the HDD. Then, I chose to create a new Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition and let the tool do it. ...which I probably shouldn't have done. Disk utility stopped and showed an error message saying that it cannot read the partitions anymore and that it needs to be closed. No partitions can be mounted anymore since then on this HDD. Here is the logfile entry of Disk Utility (unfortunately, it's in German):............
View 2 Replies
View Related
Dec 22, 2010
I am writing about my friends computer. He has a Macbook Pro and the other day had an Iomega 500GB plugged into the 800 firewire port. He for some reason accidentally pressed down hard on the drive, heard a grinding sound and it was no longer recognizable by the MAC HD. So, he then consequently plugged in his other backup drive to begin to make a clone, which is a LaCie External, and that drive then got corrupted when he plugged it in. So now, no backup what so ever.
Tonight, he went to an appt. with an Apple Genius Bar worker and they told him it was a coincidence and that once his Iomega was corrupted and he tried to boot the LaCie off of that, it corrupted the other drives too. He told my friend he has B-tree errors and needs data recovery on the external hard drives and that could be done.
My question is can he do this himself with an $100 program or does it pay to bring it into someone? He doesn't have a lot of $$$ to spend unfortunately so that's the issue. If anyone has dealt with this problem and has had a satisfactory outcome, please do not hesitate to advise!
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jan 31, 2012
I've connected my new Iomega Minimax with a firewire cable directly to my iMAc but nothing appears on my desktop.
Info:
iMac
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 5, 2007
Anyone have suggestions? I have a single 1.8ghz g5, 1gb ram, 10.4.10. I have a maxtor OneTouch III USB 2.0 200gb drive attached to it.
I can not seem to eject/unmount this drive. Every time i hook it up I just have to end up pulling the USB plug or turning the drive off suddenly to get it to "eject" but then i get the improper device removal error/warning message.
I have tried dragging to trash, I have tried apple E (which is what I usually do to any device) and I have tried going into disk utility and ejecting/unmounting from there as well. no dice.
View 22 Replies
View Related
Aug 3, 2009
I have two internals (300gb,1tb) and several externals.
I want to optimize my file placement for speed and working. I mostly run logic studio.
How should I do this?
Right now all the programs and project files are on the 300gb drive.I'm willing to buy an additional drive.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 2, 2009
I've bought three over the last two years, and only one of them has lasted longer than 18 months. I think one of them may have been damaged in a fifteen hour flight, but it still works (albeit too slow to the point that it's unusuable.) My .5 TB monster just died last week, which had almost all of my video files from the last year, totaling 300 GB in data loss. What can I do to avoid such situations? Should I maybe get a 1 TB disk for everyday use to replace my .5 TB disk, then a 2.5 TB disk (or bigger) just for backups? What sort of backup software should I use? (not Time Machine, I'm not interested in backing up my entire computer several times, just my FCP files.) How long do external hard disks last for you?
View 7 Replies
View Related
Sep 28, 2009
My intention is to partition an external HD in half allowing it to serve as a backup for a pc running windows xp, and the other half as a backup for a mac(10.5. I am using a Seagate external HD(new) that was initially partitioned on a windows xp computer.
The 1st half of the 1TB HD was formatted in NTFS format, and the second half was erased and (I thought) reformatted in HFS plus but when I attempt to use CCC(Carbon Copy) to copy the mac 1/2 of the hard drive, I get this message:
"You may have difficulty booting from this target volume, the underlying disk is not formatted with a partitioning scheme that Apple recommends for Intel Macs."
I have read the recommendations that the external HD need to be partitioned with APM or GPT, but I cannot seem to get to that option now for the mac side of the external HD.
In the Disk Utility, the external HD shows both sections of the partitioned drive(the xp section and the leopard). I do not want to reformat the entire drive(both sections) if at all possible.
I just want the Mac side of the ext drive to be properly prepared for CCC, and the windows side to remain as is.
View 11 Replies
View Related
Jan 12, 2010
I want to get an external hard drive for my Airport Extreme, in the range 1tb (maybe 1.5tb but likely 1tb). Google reveals some people have had problems with particular drives so I thought I would ask which drives work well so I can just avoid any problems in the first place?
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 25, 2010
My external hard drive has been corrupted and the error message is telling me to reformat it. However, through all the research I have done to find out how, everything I've found has told me to use Disk Utility to just erase everything on the disk to do this. When I try to do this, it tells me that I can't erase anything because the disk cannot be unnmounted. What should I do?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jun 17, 2010
I had a WD external hard disk which I was using on my pc but not any more since I'm not a PC user any more. However, I'm a mac user now but when I connected my WD external hard disk I found out that I have lost everything on it. I thought may be because of my mac so I connected on my PC again and i have not seen any file which means I lost everything. Give me any software on mac that will get everything that I have lost.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 14, 2012
I need to download Lion from Apple Store to an external Hard Drive and make it bootable. Where can I find step by step procedure?
Info:
Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Mac Book Pro 2.6, 2006, iCloud
View 4 Replies
View Related
Apr 14, 2012
My Mac Pro [with 4 internal disks, 2 External Disks (Sata Raid 0), and several external FireWire disks and a Voyager disk station] has a little problem with letting externals go Since a few weeks I have a problem with unmounting my externals. After unmount, the unmounted disk will mount again immediately.No time to disconnect cables and/or power. Hinders disk management, backup, and simple disconnecting disks. It only happens with disks (FireWire 400/800/ SATA and USB alike). USB sticks work fine.
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 28, 2012
I have format an External Hard disk for Mac. Can you advise how to format back to FAT32 format for Window
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 30, 2012
I am unable to find any results in spot light search from my external hard disk. is there any way to index the files on my external hard disk?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 6 Replies
View Related
May 11, 2012
How do I reformat a USB external drive with two partitions one of which is corrupted.
Disk Utility will not work because the faulty partition prevents unmounting of the disk.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Macbook Air bought August 2011
View 2 Replies
View Related
