Hard Drive Problems

[ethansimmons]

I just get a new iMac not to long ago. I use two external hard drives with it. At first they worked fine. Then about a week ago my computer would have trouble logging out or logging in or shutting down. It would just sit at a blank screen. If i unplugged the external hard drive it would be fine and finish whatever it was doing. Also when the hard drive mounts it dosent show that there are any files or folders in it. I have tried to repair it in disk utility but there is an error that says the hard drive cant be unmounted. Does any one know about this problem and how to fix it. Thanks

 

[Babooshka]

The same problem happens when I try to boot up with my iPod connected.

Although this may be total bubkis, I think it's because the machine is trying to boot off the removable device, whatever it may be. Probably total crap though.

 

[McGiord]

Please provide more details of your hardware:
1) how you connect your HDDs to your Mac?
2) how are they formatted, what partition type they have?
3) do you use Time Machine with any of those HDD?
4) do you share them with other computers?
5) What exactly triggers the failure?
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smoke kills

 

[ethansimmons]

1) They are both connected with USB 2.0
2) One is Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
The other is MS-DOS (fat32)
3) I do not use Time Machine
4) I have shared them with other computers but not for a while before these problems started.
5) There is no clear trigger. Sometimes just logging in or logging out without even using the hard drives causes it. Also hooking up my firewire camcorder while a hard drive is plugging in will cause it to happen.

hope this is useful. Thanks for the help

 

[McGiord]

Thanks for the details, now more people in the forum can have a better understanding of your problem.
One more question: what else do you have connected via USB?

My initial suggestion is to review your iMac's Activity Monitor and the Console for more clues.
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List of Honda assembly plants picture

 

[McGiord]

Is any application or document active from any of those HDD?
Do you have any of your media library in them?
Like all your photos or iTunes Library in one of your HDD?

As I understand you can't unmount a drive when something in it is in use but the System will prompt you a message giving you details of the reason.

See if this helps:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=455250
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vaporizer guide

 

[ethansimmons]

My keyboard and mouse are the only other things hooked up.
There is no media directory on either of the hdds.
And i do not have any thing open when this happens.

 

[ethansimmons]

Now the MS-DOS Drive will not even mount.
In Disk Utility when i try to mount it is says:

"The disk “disk1s1” could not be mounted.

Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."

When i try to repair disk it says:
"Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered:

Filesystem verify or repair failed."

It also says: "could not read boot block( Permission denied)"