OS X :: External Hard Drive Constantly Working / Reading
Jan 13, 2010
I recently bought an external hard drive (like 2 weeks ago)- I put two partitions on it, one set as a Time Machine backup (HFS+) and one as file storage (FAT32 to make compatible with Windows XP boot on my Macbook Pro). When I first got it, I remember being surprised by how quiet it was. I filled it up and now, whenever I plug the drive in, it makes a sound like it's constantly reading (reminds me of the sound old, old computers used to make when thinking a lot, i.e. with the blinking orange light).
As soon as I start 'using' it (for instance, turning Time Machine backup on, etc.) it suddenly starts running quiet again. I made sure to make it 'invisible' to Spotlight so it doesn't index the drive... what else could be accessing the drive and making it work so hard? The constant 'grinding' of the drive is really bothersome!
View 1 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Feb 5, 2009
Basically, my friend got his new MacBook Alu for Christmas, but currently all the hard disk is doing is reading constantly, even when he has nothing running.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Sep 5, 2010
For some reason my Lacie external drive that's hooked up to my imac is constantly being read for no reason. It's never idle and never rests until I eject it. I'm afraid the drive's gonna fail soon and all my work gone? Did a search but can't find anything online.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Nov 4, 2010
I took 2 storage HDs out of my Mac Pro and stuck them in this external HD which I just bought.when I plug it in to my Macbook Pro and turn it on, nothing happens. It all lights up and the harddrives churn for a little bit, but nothing shows up on the desktop or in Disk Utility. What am I doing wrong? I have tried FW400, FW800, and USB2.0. I'm new to external enclosures, so tell me if there is some song and dance routine I need to perform to get it to show up.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Aug 30, 2009
I just upgraded to snow leopard and when I try to plug in my external hard drive I get a prompt saying "the disk inserted was not readable by this computer." It was working before when I was running leopard.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 6, 2010
My MacBook Pro is fairly new, but I have a 500g Western Digital external hard drive that was originally hooked up to my previous computer, a PC. When I plugged in my external, I was able to move files from it to my Mac. However, I was unable to delete files off of the external while it was plugged into my Mac and I could not add files, either.
When I booted up my old PC and plugged the external into it, it worked fine. So I can only assume that since I first used it on my PC, I'm having trouble using it on my Mac. A friend of mine told me something about how I'd have to reformat my computer and start over. PLEASE tell me this is not the case. Does anybody know a way to fix this that lets me keep my Mac as is and not have to delete anything?
View 16 Replies
View Related
May 19, 2012
My external hard drive is not working in my MacBook Air. What can I do?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Sep 2, 2014
I have an hitachi external hard drive. It has always worked up until yesterday with no problems. Today it has stopped working with my macbook pro and my works hp laptop, it will still light up and I can hear that it is turned on but it won't appear on the screen. I cannot find any trace of it on my macbook, I've tried the disk utility but it is not there. I tried a friends hp laptop and it is working fine on that.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 3, 2010
I need to work on iMovie projects from that external portable drive. Would you have any recommendations?
View 5 Replies
View Related
May 5, 2012
I have an external hard rive that has worked with my macbook air before, I have it plugged in to the laptop and the power on the hard drive is on but the computer is now not recognizing it, how can I get it to recognize the external hard drive?
Info:
MacBook Air
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 5, 2014
I am trying to copy CDs to my macbook air and I have done this quite a few times before. Suddenly though the attempts fail (on more than on disc). I insert the disc, iTunes reads and displays the tracks on the disc and starts spinning the disc (i.e. I can hear it). The iTunes window shows and initial progress on the first track and then gives me an error message saying it can't read or write to the disc ...Â
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 24, 2012
I currently just got a macbook pro 2011, 15". Two internal drives (120 GB SSD for OS and Programs, 750 GB HDD for Data) & external USB Optical DVD/RWÂ The issue I'm having is when I insert a real DVD into the external optical drive (which is the orignal from the macbook pro not store bought) it doesn't read the DVD. I have installed Quicktime, VLC player and everytime the external just gives me the VIDEO AND AUDIO TS folders. what I need to do so I can play DVD's from my external? Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 12, 2012
I have a late 2009 MacBook pro, running the latest version of Lion. Last week, I experienced a Kernel panic at start up, and was unable to launch the OS, even with the recovery boot. Starting in verbose told me that there was a sata issue. I opened the computer, replaced the internal hard drive with lion set upon it, and tried to start again, without any success. I bought a SATA-USB cable to plug my old hard drive. My computer is now running normally, but with the former internal hard drive plugged in USB.
Disk manager sees the new one and I can read data written upon it, but I can't write anything nor erase or partition it. So both the hard drives are OK (I tested them in a friend's MacBook pro and it worked), the computer seems OK too, because I'm running it presently, but any internal hard drive won't work. The cable that links the hard drive to the motherboard does not seem to be damaged, however, the status indicator light is not working since that time.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 7 Replies
View Related
Jul 1, 2014
I just removed my Windows 7 using Bootcamp, since it wouldn't start up properly anymore. The thing is, there was this error in Bootcamp while uninstalling Windows. I wasn't able to read all of what the error was, so I removed the Windows again, or at least that's what the Mac seemed to be doing, until it got stuck somewhere for a suspiciously long time. I forced quit it, which might've been a bad move. Â So anyway, when I checked Bootcamp again, the option for removing Windows wasn't there anymore, so I assumed all is well. Until I saw the storage and Diskutility."Â
I did Verify Disk and Repair Disk before the last image. As you can see, the disk appears to be OK. But obviously it's not. The Windows 7 I had seems to have been uninstalled, since I can't find it in the selection part when pressing "alt" while turning it on.Â
What's happening to my hard drive?
View 8 Replies
View Related
Feb 17, 2012
If I encrypt an external drive using File Vault 2 (Lion 10.7.3) as a Time Machine backup from my current laptop, then later purchase a new laptop and attempt to read that encrypted backup, will there be any problems to consider? Â
1) I expect that, since the password will be stored on my current laptop, there would be a problem reading the password on a new laptop Â
2) I was told that opening a File Vault 2Â encrypted external drive would require the same laptop, as the encryption creates a match of serial numbers between the laptop and the encrypted drive.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Oct 19, 2007
I've had my G5 for a couple years. I keep it under my desk, so I don't hear much from it, but I have noticed that the hard drive is constantly spinning. It's been doing it for as long as I can remember. Any ideas why, and whether I should expect a failure because of it?
View 2 Replies
View Related
May 16, 2012
When I plug my mobile broadband device and looked to my hd's info, the size of the used area constantly rises. There is only 45 gb left on a 250 gb hard drive while i only filled 95 gb. I checked /var/log and nothing unusual 25 mb size. I used whatsize app to find where all that invisible data is but couldn'T manage. Whatsize says there is 45 gb left in the hard drive but also shows the sum of used 95 gb.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
View 8 Replies
View Related
Aug 21, 2009
I put it on Craig's list so wanted to wipe the drive and figure I'd play around with OS 9 a little just for fun. While in OS 9 it prompted me to upgrade the firmware on the DVD-ROM drive. I thought that sounded like a good idea since it makes some terrible noises when a disc is in... anyway, I did the firmware upgrade and everything went fine. That's the only real change I can think of that might have contributed to this new issue.Anyway, after that I put 10.3 on it again (I had 10.4 on it before) and it wouldn't sleep correctly. Everything looks like its going to sleep ok, then the hard drive spins up, then back down, over and over again endlessly.
View 7 Replies
View Related
May 5, 2012
I have discovered that my Mac running OS X v. 10.7.3 is storing a screenshot about every 5 minutes while the computer is actively used. I cannot find anything in the Activity Monitor that looks out of place.Â
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 8 Replies
View Related
Sep 9, 2009
My PowerBook G4 (Alum) died. I've had it for 4 years, taken it with me to Alaska and all over the lower 48, and have had nothing but happy experiences. I knew she was gonna go, but I was hoping she'd hold on until I could afford a MacBook. Alas, no. The problem appears to be the ability of the logic board to communicate with the hard drive. I can hear the HD spin, but even with Disk Warrior, I cannot locate it. The Mac Geniuses at my local Apple store confirmed this and gave me a shoulder to cry on. I've run Disk Warrior, Disk Utility, and tried finding it using the target disk mode - no luck.
The problem is that I've got 4 years of teaching materials, 6000 songs, and irreplaceable pictures on the HD, so I can't bring myself to just trash it. It's true that you only fail to back up you stuff once. This is my once. I've heard that with PC hard drives, you can just drop the old HD into a USB HD box and use it as an external HD. I can't afford professional data retrevial, and I want to give this option a try if it'll work with a Mac HD. Any ideas or suggestions?
View 7 Replies
View Related
Nov 12, 2009
if i delete files off my internal hard drive (Macintosh HD), will it still be on my external hard drive or will it just add to it?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Oct 14, 2009
with cloning/copying the content one an external hard drive onto a new external hard drive. Basically, I have a 500GB FW400 drive which I use to store my media files. It's full, so I purchased a 1TB FW800 drive to replace it. Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting "insufficient space" errors.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 31, 2012
Recently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive). After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too. Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2012
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 12, 2012
I need to back up hard drive to an external hard drive. How can I do this automactically?Â
Powermac g5
10.4.11
tiger
Info:
Mac OS X (10.4.11)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Aug 9, 2006
i have a power mac g-5 quad with an external dvd drive and a external hard drive and 2gb of ram. on my ext. hard drive i downloaded mac the ripper and that is where i put all my dvds, now today on my pmac i was using mac the ripper, popcorn, itunes, safari all at once and it froze up on me?why? could the ram be an issue? how may programs can i use at once with my pmac?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Mar 5, 2012
I've had an iMac for just about a year and over time I guess I just didn't notice but the machine always ran very quietly. At the same time the back of the computer would heat up so bad that it would nearly burn my hand if I left it there. Well last week I decided to upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard and when I did the install failed and froze up the hard drive. I took the computer in to the apple store and they determined that it had to have a new hard drive installed because the old one (only a year old) had a physical malfunction (was broke). So anyway I have my iMac back and get it started up, backed up from time machine, and then finally get Lion istalled - and now all of the sudden I notice that the fans in the computer are CONSTANTLY blowing - I can hear them spinning and can hear the air venting out of the back of the computer - and the computer is STILL really hot on the backside of the screen. Â
So now I am wondering if the originial problem was the computer heating up and if that may have broken the otherwise good hard drive? Also now that I have a new hard drive - should I be concerned about the fans being on ALL the time? I mean they never go off. Even when I leave the computer for hours and come back to it and the screen is asleep the fans are STILL buzzing away at top speed. Here is the stats on the computer at the time that I'm typing this note - there are no other programs running than Firefox and Mail. Also - I don't know what the optical drive is exaclty - but if it's the DVD drive (superdrive) - there is nothing in the DVD disc driveÂ
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 12, 2010
Looking for opinions or comparisons on performance between an internal mac hard drive vs an external firewire 800 hard drive or better. Is the performance on an internal MP drive or iMac internal drive much faster than connecting to a firewire 800 drive? I'm sure it depends on the drive, I'm wondering about apple factory installed internal drive vs say a WD external firewire 800
View 12 Replies
View Related
Aug 19, 2007
In other words... I have moved my music library to the external hard drive, as per an earlier thread I read here on the forums. It worked like quite well. Now that it is working perfectly, I am having a hard time leaving well enough alone. It is never a good idea for me to think too much...Can itunes be installed and run on/from an external hard drive? If so, how?
View 15 Replies
View Related
Dec 31, 2009
my mac has a pioneer dvd drive in it and it wont read my dvd+r dl and I am wanting to burn a mac os 10.5.dmg to it and install 10.5 but the dang thing is ejecting it. So what should I do to get it to work get the external dvd and run it from it or get a external hard drive and try it that way.
View 6 Replies
View Related
