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Firewire 800 drive prevents Mac from starting

Pagemakers

Pagemakers

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 28, 2008
2,952
1,227
Manchester UK
Just added a G-Tech mini drive to our Mac Pro to be used for Time Machine backups after out 3rd Time Capsule failed.

Problem is now, when the Mac boots up it hangs on the user password login page 50% of the time and the only way to fix the issue is to pull out the Mac power cord and re-boot.

The Macs are running Lion and never suffered these boot issues before. We now have the same problem on 3 Macs - all identical configurations.

The G-Tech drives are connected by Firewire 800 and are not set to be bootable drives.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Is it possible to automatically un-mount the external drive as the machine re-boots?
 
Pagemakers said:
Just added a G-Tech mini drive to our Mac Pro to be used for Time Machine backups after out 3rd Time Capsule failed.

Problem is now, when the Mac boots up it hangs on the user password login page 50% of the time and the only way to fix the issue is to pull out the Mac power cord and re-boot.

The Macs are running Lion and never suffered these boot issues before. We now have the same problem on 3 Macs - all identical configurations.

The G-Tech drives are connected by Firewire 800 and are not set to be bootable drives.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Is it possible to automatically un-mount the external drive as the machine re-boots?
Click to expand...

Take a look at the system preferences and go to Startup disk. Make sure that the external drive isn't in the list for startup. IF it's not I don't have a fic for that. Unfortunately I also have that issue. When I have my external lacie is connected the cpu sometimes looks at that disk and tries to startup off of it even though it's not in the startup list. I just make sure to start the machine up before connecting.
 
Thanks for your suggestion. Just checked and it's not in the startup.

Because I use this drive for Time Machine it is connected permanently.
 
wow that was some bad grammar on my part in that first post. Anyways...I do remember looking for some shell scripts to manually eject drives when booting up. You should probably be able to google it and find something that will work, or you might need to write your own. It's the only other thing I ever found besides simply not starting the drive till the machine is on. you could always utilize a switched power strip or supply for the external drive. That way you could turn everything on at once except for the drive. Something like this. You can even tuck them out of the way so you don't really see it.


Pagemakers said:
Thanks for your suggestion. Just checked and it's not in the startup.

Because I use this drive for Time Machine it is connected permanently.
Click to expand...
 
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A thought….

My drives are bus powered? Could this be the problem?

Maybe purchasing a separate power supply would fix the problem?
 
Last edited:
Now added power supplies to all drives and the Macs seem to boot OK now.

Hopefully this was the cause of the problem. If I don’t update this thread anymore, it was!!
 
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