Won't Boot with External HDD

[JHake10]

Hello,

I just bought my new Mac Mini and keep all my documents on an external hard drive (1TB if that makes a difference). Any time the Mac Mini is restarted it will play the Mac Boot up sound over and over again and will not boot. If I unplug the external hard drive and power off and on the Mac Mini every thing boots fine. Has anybody else experienced this issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Darby67]

What type of connection is the external HD? USB2? FW800? Have you tried plugging in after restart? Do you have another cable? IS the drive powered or powering through the port?

 

[blevins321]

In your system preferences under Startup Disk, select your internal MacHD and click the restart button in the window. That might help.

 

[JHake10]

It is a 1TB Verbatim drive that has external power and is connected USB port. I have another windows based computer and leaving it plugged in does not affect the system when it reboots. Once the system is booted, I plug the drive in and everything is fine, just if I need to restart the system I need to unplug the drive and plug it back in after the operating system has loaded. I will try the Start up Disk suggestion, thanks for all your help.