External Hard Drive Help

deadsilence · 01-10-2007, 01:04 AM

I bought a generic WD external hard drive and I've spent the last two weeks trying to get it to work with my mac. I have a mac mini 1.42ghz g4, 1gb, etc. It's a basic 250gb hard drive, I ran disc utility and erased the hard drive using the mac os extended (journaled) format...is there anything I'm missing?

The problem I'm having is everytime I try to drag a file onto the hd it will copy 7-90mb and then freeze. What am I doing wrong?

deadsilence · 01-10-2007, 02:20 AM

Ok if nothing else can somebody tell me when the mac capable guys sign on?

sinclair_tm · 01-10-2007, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadsilence

Ok if nothing else can somebody tell me when the mac capable guys sign on?

around lunch time and late evenings mountain time.

now, which model extrenal dive did you get? what version os are you running? how is the drive powered? what is the size of the files you are trying to copy? what kind of files are they? are you doing/running anything else while you are trying to copy the files? are there any errors? and what do you mean by freeze?

deadsilence · 01-10-2007, 07:30 PM

I mean freezing, like a windows machine, it begins to slow down and then finder freezes. I'm running tiger, the drive has it's own seperate power supply, and I'm trying to movie various media files, images, mp3's, videos, video ts files...everything from a few hundred kb to nearly a gig. As far as the model I'm not sure, it's the unit shown here, it's a western digital hd installed in a basic usb 2.0 housing.

sinclair_tm · 01-10-2007, 10:32 PM

well, being it has a refurb disk in it, i'd be inclined to think the drive is bad. are there any other computer you can try it on to see if it does it too? that would be my 1st test, try a different computer.

deadsilence · 01-11-2007, 02:14 AM

My laptop is down for the count but I can try my parent's pc or wait until I get to work tomorrow...I'm surprised it didn't occur to me to try it on another system.

deadsilence · 01-19-2007, 01:12 PM

Works fine on the PC, transfer rate is slower than I would've imagined esp using usb 2.0 but it at least transfered...

deadsilence · 01-20-2007, 07:51 AM

It took roughly two minutes or so to transfer 500mb of music but otherwise it worked fine.

**Done_Fishin** · 01-20-2007, 08:30 AM

Don't forget that as a USB drive it will have recieve the contents IMMEDIATELY as you send them across and the "shopping list" will gradually get longer and longer possibly slowing down the system since the system may not be able to keep pace with the transfer. Are you sure that teh USB is also the fast USB 2 connection and not a slow USB1 on the problematic PC?

deadsilence · 01-21-2007, 02:47 AM

Well it's supposed to be the 2.0, if it's not then it was falsely labelled.

**Done_Fishin** · 01-21-2007, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadsilence

Well it's supposed to be the 2.0, if it's not then it was falsely labelled.

My Asus P4S800D also has USB2 capabilities but whenever I plug in a USB2 device I always get a warning that I can better speed if I change to an alternative port, only thing is that it don't make any difference what port I plug into, I still get the same response. But I'm working Windows not Mac! It's the price you pay by being conventional

... I do know that my system tends to slow down when dumping to any external USB drive, I don't know if that helps you though.
I am assuming that you have similar abilities to the ones Windows has that allow you to configure the drive "accesswise" ..ie write behind caching etc. However as a USB drive you really want to make sure that the data transfers securely, especially if you move data rather than copy ..
Have you checked your BIOS config to ensure that USB 2 is enabled, also check any parameters to do with HDD's are set up correctly

sinclair_tm · 01-21-2007, 09:24 PM

well, macs don't have bioses, so there is no place to set that stuff up. if the mac supports usb2, the os will automatically use that protocol when a usb2 device is plugged in. a good way to check is to plug the drive in, and launch the system profiler found in the utility folder. click on usb in the devices area, and then highlight the port the drive is plugged into, it will list the speed of the port. and then highlight the drive, and it will list the speed the drive is running at. if it says max is 480, then its at usb2 speeds.

**Done_Fishin** · 01-22-2007, 02:34 PM

Thanks for that update Sinclair .. I haven't played with Macs since they were still called Apple ... and that was even before Sinclairs came out!
Always good to be reminded that the better machine was never given the chance to evolve.

sinclair_tm · 01-22-2007, 04:25 PM

well, they have evolved, they use openfirmware, which allows alot more control than a bios, only if you know what your doing. and the macintosh is a different bread alltogether then the old apples were.

**Done_Fishin** · 01-23-2007, 04:57 AM

When I said "evolved" I meant like the "IBM Compatable" PC where lots os people are making interchangeable parts and "Custom" fittings. I didn't mean anything detrimental. I've seen Macs in a local shop in Athens (dedicated to Mac) and they have a totally diffrent look to them than I remember from back in the 80's when they first made the transition from Apple.

sinclair_tm · 01-23-2007, 12:17 PM

i see

01-10-2007, 01:04 AM	#1 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	External Hard Drive Help I bought a generic WD external hard drive and I've spent the last two weeks trying to get it to work with my mac. I have a mac mini 1.42ghz g4, 1gb, etc. It's a basic 250gb hard drive, I ran disc utility and erased the hard drive using the mac os extended (journaled) format...is there anything I'm missing? The problem I'm having is everytime I try to drag a file onto the hd it will copy 7-90mb and then freeze. What am I doing wrong?

01-20-2007, 08:30 AM	#9 (permalink)
Done_Fishin Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brit living in Greece Posts: 7,531 OS: WinME, WinXP Pro SP3, Win7 Beta, Ubuntu 9.04 & Netbook Remix & CD2USB, Mepis 6.5, Fedora 10 My System	Don't forget that as a USB drive it will have recieve the contents IMMEDIATELY as you send them across and the "shopping list" will gradually get longer and longer possibly slowing down the system since the system may not be able to keep pace with the transfer. Are you sure that teh USB is also the fast USB 2 connection and not a slow USB1 on the problematic PC? __________________ . . I'm not old!! I'm age impaired .. D_F I DON'T PLAY GAMES How to mark your thread as solved HDD DIAG UTILS TSF's Photographer's Corner Last edited by Done_Fishin; 01-20-2007 at 08:48 AM.

01-22-2007, 02:34 PM	#13 (permalink)
Done_Fishin Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brit living in Greece Posts: 7,531 OS: WinME, WinXP Pro SP3, Win7 Beta, Ubuntu 9.04 & Netbook Remix & CD2USB, Mepis 6.5, Fedora 10 My System	Thanks for that update Sinclair .. I haven't played with Macs since they were still called Apple ... and that was even before Sinclairs came out! Always good to be reminded that the better machine was never given the chance to evolve. __________________ . . I'm not old!! I'm age impaired .. D_F I DON'T PLAY GAMES How to mark your thread as solved HDD DIAG UTILS TSF's Photographer's Corner

01-23-2007, 04:57 AM	#15 (permalink)
Done_Fishin Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brit living in Greece Posts: 7,531 OS: WinME, WinXP Pro SP3, Win7 Beta, Ubuntu 9.04 & Netbook Remix & CD2USB, Mepis 6.5, Fedora 10 My System	When I said "evolved" I meant like the "IBM Compatable" PC where lots os people are making interchangeable parts and "Custom" fittings. I didn't mean anything detrimental. I've seen Macs in a local shop in Athens (dedicated to Mac) and they have a totally diffrent look to them than I remember from back in the 80's when they first made the transition from Apple. __________________ . . I'm not old!! I'm age impaired .. D_F I DON'T PLAY GAMES How to mark your thread as solved HDD DIAG UTILS TSF's Photographer's Corner

01-10-2007, 02:20 AM	#2 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	Ok if nothing else can somebody tell me when the mac capable guys sign on?

01-10-2007, 07:30 PM	#4 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	I mean freezing, like a windows machine, it begins to slow down and then finder freezes. I'm running tiger, the drive has it's own seperate power supply, and I'm trying to movie various media files, images, mp3's, videos, video ts files...everything from a few hundred kb to nearly a gig. As far as the model I'm not sure, it's the unit shown here, it's a western digital hd installed in a basic usb 2.0 housing.

01-11-2007, 02:14 AM	#6 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	My laptop is down for the count but I can try my parent's pc or wait until I get to work tomorrow...I'm surprised it didn't occur to me to try it on another system.

01-19-2007, 01:12 PM	#7 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	Works fine on the PC, transfer rate is slower than I would've imagined esp using usb 2.0 but it at least transfered...

01-20-2007, 07:51 AM	#8 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	It took roughly two minutes or so to transfer 500mb of music but otherwise it worked fine.

01-21-2007, 02:47 AM	#10 (permalink)
deadsilence Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 7 OS: OS 10.4	Well it's supposed to be the 2.0, if it's not then it was falsely labelled.