OS X :: Snow Leopard Keeps Activating External Hard Drives
Oct 14, 2010
Just updated to 10.6 from 10.4, and one of the first things I notice is that it keeps spinning up my three external harddrives at actions that should not set them in use, like starting an application or opening the trash. It seems pretty random, though I'm suspecting it has something to do with mdworker, quicklookd or both. If anyone knows of a solution that doesn't involve unmounting the harddrives, do tell.
I have 4 external drives with about 12 volumes on them and it's literally spinning up a drive every 5 minutes, 24x7 when I am not even using the computer. Nothing weird is running, and it's clear the application is exactly Finder. (and rarely, fseventsd).Here is the output of
[code]....
Note the 02:10:12 "all drives spin up" event.That was opening a PDF in Preview. The PDF was in my home directory/Downloads on "Macintosh HD".The rest is entirely Finder; I was doing nothing at all. I'm hearing a spool-up literally every 4-5 minutes. I have essentially given up, and dismounted all the drives until I have need for something on one of them. Of course that kills Time Machine.
Since there is no rime or reason for these accesses, I am NOT impressed with the argument that "drives should spin 24x7, it's better for them".This is a home system, not a server. I know how often I actually need data off these drives - several times a day and many days not at all.So I should use a program to force them to spin 24x7 (by doing more unnecessary accesses)? That's like leaving a hot water faucet open 24x7 to deal with a glitch in an on-demand water heater.
I want the drives to spin down.And stay spun down.And then, when I choose to access something on one of the drives, or an application has something it's going to actually use the drive for (e.g. midnight backups) -- I want it to spin up. Simple enough?I am running 10.5 but my searches tell me Snow Leopard is worse, and Lion is worse yet.
This is the third drive that has failed since I was assigned this Mac Pro at work a few weeks ago, and the drive was purchased less than a week ago. The other two were older drives. They would suddenly stop being readable. Sometimes there was a problem ejecting the drive before it stopped becomeing readable (message would say the drive couldn't be ejected because another program is using it, when there were no programs open). One of them eventually mounted again and I recovered some of the files (but some files weren't readable when I tried to copy them). But that was just luck as they all seem now to be consistently unreadable. When I plug them in I get the message: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". same if I plug it into a different computer. And when I try to repair, it shows this: http://i.imgur.com/ivK9d.png. When it happed to the second drive, I just thought it was a fluke... but now a third, brand new drive? Something about the computer must be causing it.
I just can't figure this out. I have several external drives I use to edit video. Most are 1TB drives, and I recently got a couple 3TB drives I was hoping to use to consolodate my scratch drives and reorganize my footage, etc. Ideally, I'd like to just be able to drag the entire contents of the smaller drive over to the bigger one, but I can't, because I keep getting error messages. Sometimes it's "Cannot complete, [file name] is in use" or I get an "error -50" code.
Before I began the copy, I formatted the destination drive in Mac OS Extended (journaled), and zeroed out the data to protect against bad sectors. I've scanned the drives since to determine if there are any verification issues (no), and I've tried turning off icon preview and the preview pane, none of it solves the problem. What the eff is going on here??
(I'm using all firewire800 drives. Currently several LaCie and Western Digital drives, but only trying to copy one at a time)
I want to install snow leopard in my macbook (late 2006), but Im going to change my hard drive in two months. So i dont know if I have to wait for my new hard drive or not.
I would like to always have one external hard drive attached to my iMac for Time Machine backups, and another external hard drive off site - periodically swapping the two. The though is that if there is fire or theft, it won't help to have a hard drive onsite attached to the computer, because both the iMac and the hard drive could be lost. Is Time Machine smart enough to allow me to configure two drives, so that whenever I plug in one of the drives, it can figure out what needs to be backed up?
Looking to upgrade to Lion but want to back up to external hard drive first. I have OS X 10.6. Time capsule vs another plug in? I already have wirless via internet service so is Time capsule worth the $ vs another plug in product?
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I have an external hard drive which I first used with my pc. It is formatted for NTFS. Now with my new MBP, I want to back up data, and I am having no luck. The external hard drive is a Verbatim brand, 500GB. On their website FAT32 download dosnt work! I have tried disk utility with no luck. What am I missing?
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
This is a major issue for me, as I feel like I'm going to end up damaging my hard drive.
I am downloading a legal torrent to my external hard drive, however when I quit Transmission and try to eject my external drive, nothing happens. Snow Leopard doesn't even say it is in use like it is meant to. It just does nothing to eject the drive.
So I end up having to yank the USB plug out.
What gives? It ejects normally as long as I don't download to it.
I have no id� whats wrong, I want to install Snow Leopard(from the external) on my Core2duo Macbook pro, which is running Leopard at the moment.
I have a Snow Leopard image, and I have used Disc utility to partition the external hard drive (GUID), and I assume the partition and install went well on the external, because in Disc start the external appears as OSX 10.6.
Then the problem: The macbook wont boot from the newly made external it just gives me this sign (of course without the colours).
I have tried to start the macbook normal, and with the option key held down were the external pops up.
I have also tried to chose the external in disc start and reboot with no luck.
I have tried to start the Snow Leopard install(external) within Leopard where the install start fine, but when it reboots and wants to continue the install, the sign appears.
The external harddrive is a 5400rpm 40gb 2,5" which is only powered by the usb port maybe thats the problem?
How to adapt an external hard drive with Snow leopard (from my sold Mac Pro) to my Mac Book Pro with Lion?I would like to use the external on a permanant basis as it has 2T without deleting a lot of the programs.
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
How to adapt an external hard drive with Snow leopard (from my sold Mac Pro) to my Mac Book Pro with Lion? Any hints on where to start? I would like to use the external on a permanent basis as it has 2T without deleting a lot of the programs.
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I've been having this problem for a while now and its only with images and videos when i try to open any picture or video this msg comes up "The file couldn’t be opened because there is no such file" and i can only open it if i copied the file from my hard drive to my computer.when i open the info for the same picture (one in on the hard drive and one my computer) the one on the hard drive has nothing under "more info" while the one on my computer has a lot of details under "more info" .
I have installed my hard drive from a previous but terminally I'll iMac that was running Snow Leopard into a Sata to USB enclosure. This is displaying on the desktop of my new iMac running Lion as an external Hard drive,also system preferences sees it as a start up source.My question is , is it safe to restart into Snow leopard without causing a kernel panic and if it does boot will it be fast enough to use as it as a USB drive.
I went to make a copy of an important drive and accidentally re-formatted it (re-formatted mac journaled, originally mac journaled). The drive contained a bunch of important disk image files which I need to retrieve whole. I'm fairly confident that the files are still there and only the table information got overwritten, as the re-format took about 30 seconds. None of the recovery software I've seen however, can retrieve .dmg files, or such large files (these are up to 32 gb each in size).how I can retrieve these disk image files?
i was wondering if it is possible to install snow leopard without a superdrive or the remote disc utility, but from an external hard disk drive which the snow leopard files have been put on.i have already googled to the end of the world. no success so far.
I have a HITACHI touro desk 3TB external hard dive connected to my iMac OS X version 10.6.8 Every time i start up the system it stays on a grey screen until I unplug the usb of the external hard drive then the system boots up normally. I have tried connecting different usb cables, plug in to different usb ports, and nothing works. I have other external hard drives and they don't give me any problems. is a pain plugging and unplugging the usb cable.
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 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 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 was done doing various tasks on the iMac and when I decided to plug in the external hard drive for a Time Machine backup, the drive spun, but was never shown on the desktop.I also tried another external drive and had the same thing happen.
After rebooting (hey, this sounds like Windows!), the drive again showed up on the desktop and Time Machine worked fine.Is an external hard drive not showing up on the desktop a somewhat common issue?
i'm cloning my mac hd (mac book pro, snow leopard) and though i've made successful clones, the sum of the hard drives (mac hd and external hd) don't match. for instance, my mac hd reads at: 233.71 GB, however the cloned external hd reads at: 216.54 GB. can anyone explain this discrepancy? are there certain things that don't go into the clone that are on the mac hd?
Having chosen a useful large external hard drive I find it says 'Windows only'. Surely, though the software will not work, all I need to do is format the HD and it will work. The machine is: Seagate FreeAgent 500GB External Hard Drive USB2.0 16MB.
I am relatively new to Macs, have been using it for 5-6 months. I already know how to do everything but share folders and drives using my network connection. I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro. I have a 120GB Hard Drive hooked up to the iMac via Firewire. How can I share that Firewire External Hard Drive with my Macbook Pro? What are the steps I have to follow to connect both macs? Is there a way that I could also share my iMac's desktop files with my Macbook Pro? I already have a wi-fi connection between both computers, I just don't know how to share that hard drive between both simultaneously..
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
