New-ish Macbook Pro won't recognize my hard drives

[julez456]

I just recently bought a Macbook Pro about 2 weeks ago. Everything's been working great up until today. First I noticed that my MBP wouldn't recognize my phone when I plugged it into the USB. (Its an Android phone - don't bash me for it) I just thought it was my phone at first. A couple hours later I tried transferring some files to my external hard drive (1TB iomega) and my MBP wouldn't recognize it. I plugged in another one of my external HD (320 GB Maxtor), same problem. I then tried my other external HD (500 GB Western Digital), same problem. I tried a different USB port, different cord, rebooting the mac, nothing seems to be working. It will recognize my ipod touch tho. Being that its happening on 4 different devices, I doubt its the devices themselves. Its not the cord because I tried 2 different ones, 3 if you count the one for my phone which uses micro USB.

I am very new to the mac world so other than the things I have tried already, I don't have a clue what to try next. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Oh yea, one more thing, all my hard drives are formatted for pc being that I just recently bought my MBP, I had all these hard drives before my mac. And they have all connected fine to my MBP in the past week or so.

 

[Blue Velvet]

I just recently bought a Macbook Pro about 2 weeks ago.

You're still under warranty. Have you tried calling Apple, or visiting a store, telling them what you've told us?

Did you change anything at all about your Mac today? You say everything was working up until that point.

 

[No1nfoProvided]

It could be that all the drives you have are formatted in NTFS, so your Mac can't mount it. Open up Disk Utility when you plug one of em in and see if it recognizes it. If it does, look at the information and see what it's formatted as.

 

[iLog.Genius]

It could be that all the drives you have are formatted in NTFS, so your Mac can't mount it. Open up Disk Utility when you plug one of em in and see if it recognizes it. If it does, look at the information and see what it's formatted as.

I don't think the drive format matters and it shouldn't be a problem. OS X will read NTFS drives but is unable to write to them without third-party software.

If you open the console, does it give you any error messages/logs when you connect the drives/phones?

 

[No1nfoProvided]

I don't think the drive format matters and it shouldn't be a problem. OS X will read NTFS drives but is unable to write to them without third-party software.

If you open the console, does it give you any error messages/logs when you connect the drives/phones?

That's true, I forgot about that. My bad.

 

[julez456]

I don't think the drive format matters and it shouldn't be a problem. OS X will read NTFS drives but is unable to write to them without third-party software.

If you open the console, does it give you any error messages/logs when you connect the drives/phones?

This is the message I get in console when I plug in one of my hard drives. I'm at work right now so I can't test the other 2.

10/6/10 8:54:47 AM kernel USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 60F26FFFFFFF 0x59b 0x571 0x0

This is the message I get when I plug in my phone. Well nevermind on that. I plugged in my phone and today my mac recognized it. I'm not sure why it did today and didn't yesterday because I didn't do anything different with my mac since my original post last night. It still won't recognize my hard drive tho and I guess its safe to say it won't recognize the other 2 I have at home either. Someone help plz. This is frustrating. I switched to mac because of the problems I kept having with pc's only to start having problems with my mac 2 weeks in.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Are the drives bus powered or do they have a separate power supply? By default (I believe) they won't show up on the Desktop, but should appear in Finder. Do the drives show up in either System Profiler or Disk Utility (you'll find both in your Utilities folder in the Applications folder)?

 

[Fishrrman]

The Mac laptops (with the possible exception of the MacBook Air) do not provide enough USB "bus power" to get most external drives up-and-running so that they will mount on the desktop.

This is because Apple's "standards" for their USB implementation provide less bus power than on the PC side. Not sure of why Apple chose to do things this way, but that's the way it is.

If the drives that you're trying to connect are USB, and if you were trying to get them running from bus power (without using their external power supplies), chances are they won't "mount up" properly on the desktop.

You _might_ hear the drive "spin up" -- or at least try to do so -- but it still may not have enough power to get fully operational.

My suggestion is to use the power supply blocks that came with the drives.

That can make a world of difference!

 

[julez456]

Are the drives bus powered or do they have a separate power supply? By default (I believe) they won't show up on the Desktop, but should appear in Finder. Do the drives show up in either System Profiler or Disk Utility (you'll find both in your Utilities folder in the Applications folder)?

The 3 drives that I have used are bus powered. I have 2 other drives that are power supplied but those have never been plugged into my MBP so I'm not sure if those would be recognized or not. These 3 that I have tried all have worked within the past week and they all have shown up on the Desktop when plugged in. Yesterday for some reason they stopped mounting. This drive I have with me today shows up in both System Profiler and Disk Utility. Hopefully that is a good sign?? It does not show up in Finder tho.

 

[julez456]

The Mac laptops (with the possible exception of the MacBook Air) do not provide enough USB "bus power" to get most external drives up-and-running so that they will mount on the desktop.

This is because Apple's "standards" for their USB implementation provide less bus power than on the PC side. Not sure of why Apple chose to do things this way, but that's the way it is.

If the drives that you're trying to connect are USB, and if you were trying to get them running from bus power (without using their external power supplies), chances are they won't "mount up" properly on the desktop.

You _might_ hear the drive "spin up" -- or at least try to do so -- but it still may not have enough power to get fully operational.

My suggestion is to use the power supply blocks that came with the drives.

That can make a world of difference!

None of the 3 drives I'm using have external power supplies. They are all portable drives and only power on by USB. The last one I bought came with a mini USB to double USB cable (I guess for more power) but I left that cord at home. I didn't think to try that last night because all of my drives have already been used and mounted properly within the last week or so. I will try that cord when I get home to see if it helps. Until then, anyone have any other suggestions.

 

[DewGuy1999]

The 3 drives that I have used are bus powered. I have 2 other drives that are power supplied but those have never been plugged into my MBP so I'm not sure if those would be recognized or not. These 3 that I have tried all have worked within the past week and they all have shown up on the Desktop when plugged in. Yesterday for some reason they stopped mounting. This drive I have with me today shows up in both System Profiler and Disk Utility. Hopefully that is a good sign?? It does not show up in Finder tho.

Fishrrman comments about the USB bus power could be the cause, but why they would work and then not work doesn't seem to make sense. Do you have one of those dual head USB cables or an external power supply to use with the drive(s)? That would answer the power question.

There are options to have hard drives show/not show on the Desktop and Finder. I thought the default was not show on Desktop and to show in Finder. I suppose it's possible that they're mounting just not showing on the Desktop or Finder.

 

[julez456]

Fishrrman comments about the USB bus power could be the cause, but why they would work and then not work doesn't seem to make sense. Do you have one of those dual head USB cables or an external power supply to use with the drive(s)? That would answer the power question.

There are options to have hard drives show/not show on the Desktop and Finder. I thought the default was not show on Desktop and to show in Finder. I suppose it's possible that they're mounting just not showing on the Desktop or Finder.

I have a dual head USB cord at home I can try when I get off work to test the power theory. Where do I find the options to have hard drives show/not show on the Desktop and Finder? I can't find that option.

 

[DewGuy1999]

None of the 3 drives I'm using have external power supplies. They are all portable drives and only power on by USB. The last one I bought came with a mini USB to double USB cable (I guess for more power) but I left that cord at home. I didn't think to try that last night because all of my drives have already been used and mounted properly within the last week or so. I will try that cord when I get home to see if it helps. Until then, anyone have any other suggestions.

Assuming that your Desktop/Finder preferences are set to show hard drives, a possibility is that the hard drive(s)'s visibility bit is set to invisible. This article, AppleSprite: Controlling Hard Drive Visibility With Onyx tells how to use OnyX to change a currently visible hard drive to invisible. Instead of making it invisible, make it visible and maybe your drive(s) would show up?

 

[DewGuy1999]

I have a dual head USB cord at home I can try when I get off work to test the power theory. Where do I find the options to have hard drives show/not show on the Desktop and Finder? I can't find that option.

This is from 10.4.11, so it might be slightly different for 10.5 or 10.6, but should be in the general area.

With the Desktop active (no windows open), go to Finder menu choose Preferences..., under General tab select what you want for Show these items on the Desktop:. Under the Sidebar tab select what you want for Show these items in the Sidebar:.

 

[iLog.Genius]

The bus power problem isn't the cause. I use one with dual USB heads and it connects without a problem. It's likely that's it's a software problem and not a hardware problem.

 

[julez456]

Assuming that your Desktop/Finder preferences are set to show hard drives, a possibility is that the hard drive(s)'s visibility bit is set to invisible. This article, AppleSprite: Controlling Hard Drive Visibility With Onyx tells how to use OnyX to change a currently visible hard drive to invisible. Instead of making it invisible, make it visible and maybe your drive(s) would show up?

Ok..well it seems that using the Onyx program from this post has enabled me to be able to mount the HD again and read the files but now I am unable to write to the drive and I was able to before (I think). I read in another post above that I should not be able to write to it if it was formatted NTFS without a 3rd party application but before this problem started happening I, if I'm not mistaken, was writing to it without any 3rd party apps. I know for a fact I was on another HD that I have at home but that one is formatted FAT32. Any suggestions on figuring out how I can start writing to this HD again (without re-formatting plz)? Thanks for everyone's help thus far. You guys have been a big help to a mac noob like me.

 

[iLog.Genius]

Good to see you're able to mount external HDD's. As for writing, check to see which format the HDD is formatted in. If it's NTFS, it isn't possible to write without software like NTFS-3G/MacFUSE unless you do some terminal commands which I doubt you have performed since you're new. If it's FAT then yes, it's possible to write without software.

 

[julez456]

Ok I just wanted to update everyone that helped me out. I got home from work earlier and tried all my drives. Everything seems to be working fine now. Thanks to everyone who helped out with the suggestions.