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External drive cuts out.

garyjcarr

garyjcarr

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 3, 2007
41
0
toronto
I bought a Lacie external drive for my G4 and it would 'disappear' off my desktop. If I needed it I would boot it up. I thought this was 'normal' Then I got a G5 and downloaded Leopard and love it. However... This operating system offers Time Machine and I suddenly discovered that my 'disappearing' external drive wasn't normal. I got alerts notifying me that it shut down improperly because Time Machine requires it running. Is this a faulty external drive or could it be a conflict problem with something on my hard drive?
Gary
 
I would say that you have a defective drive (or a bad cable, or bad power supply for the drive).

The drive should never unmount and disappear by itself. That is just asking for data corruption.

You should have to manually eject it (like you do with CD's) before shutting it down or removing it.

I would contact Lacie. But, you could try a different data cable or power supply for the drive first.
 
flyinmac said:
I would say that you have a defective drive (or a bad cable, or bad power supply for the drive).

The drive should never unmount and disappear by itself. That is just asking for data corruption.

You should have to manually eject it (like you do with CD's) before shutting it down or removing it.

I would contact Lacie. But, you could try a different data cable or power supply for the drive first.
Click to expand...
In Addition to that, Try using a diffrent Firewire port (If you have one). Also reset your PRAM (Apple(Command) + Option + P +R At boot up untill you hear 2-3 start chimes).
 
flyinmac said:
I would say that you have a defective drive (or a bad cable, or bad power supply for the drive).

The drive should never unmount and disappear by itself. That is just asking for data corruption.

You should have to manually eject it (like you do with CD's) before shutting it down or removing it.

I would contact Lacie. But, you could try a different data cable or power supply for the drive first.
Click to expand...
I-took the drive into Apple yesterday along with the firewire cable and power cord. I'm hoping it's one of these and not my hard drive.
Gary
 
Smoke said:
In Addition to that, Try using a diffrent Firewire port (If you have one). Also reset your PRAM (Apple(Command) + Option + P +R At boot up untill you hear 2-3 start chimes).
Click to expand...

Smoke -it can't be a port issue because it started with my G4. And it's continuing on the G5
 
garyjcarr said:
The hard drive is 235 GB and I've used 62
Click to expand...
Thats a good one.....i've ran into issues with 1TB drives similar to this......have you tried resetting your PRAM and PMU? What G5 do you have? (iMac? Power Mac?)
 
Smoke said:
Thats a good one.....i've ran into issues with 1TB drives similar to this......have you tried resetting your PRAM and PMU? What G5 do you have? (iMac? Power Mac?)
Click to expand...

I have the 10.5 Power Mac... no I haven't reset PRAM or PMU. What are these?
 
garyjcarr said:
I have the 10.5 Power Mac... no I haven't reset PRAM or PMU. What are these?
Click to expand...

Ok, Power down your computer.
Unplug all cables from it (I mean all of them)
Now i dont quite remember with your model BUT.
Take the side access panel off, look underneath the memory Addin cards twars the bottom.
You Should See a button down there, if not dont worry, just make sure you had all cables disconnected for alteast 15 seconds.

If you do see it, press it once, a pencil eraser works great for this. WHAT EVER YOU DO JUST BE SURE YOU PRESS IT ONCE!!!!

After thats done goahead put the panel back on, plug it all back in.

When you ear the start tone (the apple chime) press Apple(or command depending on your keyboard) + Option + P + R and hold these till you hear that chime twice more.


PMU = Power Managment Unit (What gets power, when, and how much to give).
PRAM = This just basically stores some Hardware settings for your Mac, its ok to flush it, the computer just redetects it.

This Should Resolve that issue, Unless, Infact the drive is bad.
 
Smoke said:
Ok, Power down your computer.
Unplug all cables from it (I mean all of them)
Now i dont quite remember with your model BUT.
Take the side access panel off, look underneath the memory Addin cards twars the bottom.
You Should See a button down there, if not dont worry, just make sure you had all cables disconnected for alteast 15 seconds.

If you do see it, press it once, a pencil eraser works great for this. WHAT EVER YOU DO JUST BE SURE YOU PRESS IT ONCE!!!!

After thats done goahead put the panel back on, plug it all back in.

When you ear the start tone (the apple chime) press Apple(or command depending on your keyboard) + Option + P + R and hold these till you hear that chime twice more.


PMU = Power Managment Unit (What gets power, when, and how much to give).
PRAM = This just basically stores some Hardware settings for your Mac, its ok to flush it, the computer just redetects it.

This Should Resolve that issue, Unless, Infact the drive is bad.
Click to expand...
I'm back from the Apple store and there is nothing wrong with the drive so the problem lies with my hard drive or something that's on it conflicting with the drive. They told me to go to system preferences in accounts and open a new user. I did that and restarted the computer and the external drive was up - not like before. I also did that PRAM reset so I'll wait until morning and if the drive is still on my desktop I'll test it to see if it was the new user or PRAM that fixed it.
 
garyjcarr said:
I'm back from the Apple store and there is nothing wrong with the drive so the problem lies with my hard drive or something that's on it conflicting with the drive. They told me to go to system preferences in accounts and open a new user. I did that and restarted the computer and the external drive was up - not like before. I also did that PRAM reset so I'll wait until morning and if the drive is still on my desktop I'll test it to see if it was the new user or PRAM that fixed it.
Click to expand...

Cool cool, everything working good now man?
 
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